[SixOfEleven]

It is time for the third XNA game programming challenge. This challenge will be four weeks in duration.

Challenge:
All about tiles!

Description:
This is another open challenge to build a game that uses tiles. There are many different types of games that use tiles, early RPGs being the most well known. Platform games are another genre that use tiles as well as strategy games.

Requirements:
The only requirement for this game is that you use tiles in the game to keep it open. If you are unfamiliar with tile engines you can read up on them in my blog here at Dream In Code or you can look through my tutorials on XNA Game Programming Adventures.

Scoring:
I will not take points off of a project for artwork or lack thereof. This is a programming challenge, not an art challenge. I’m looking for game play over assets. A game that is fun to play and doesn't have the best art will score higher than a game that doesn't play well and looks good. You’ve completed the challenge and have a chance to win Gold, Silver or Bronze.

There will be no prizes for these challenges other than bragging rights and the knowledge you gain while taking part. The challenge begins now! Gather your resources and begin writing your games! You have until August 9th to get submissions in. Anything submitted after August 9th will not be accepted.

You do not have submit your source code, but you can if you wish. Just use Visual Studio, or Visual C#, to create an installer. I will accept XNA 3.x or XNA 4.0 games. My computer does support the HiDef profile for XNA 4.0 so you are free to use that.

Good luck!

[DivideByZero]

Funnily enough, the game I've started working on a couple of days ago is based around tiles.
So I may be able to submit something for this one

[Kilorn]

I'd love to be able to have the time to get a submission for this challenge, so we'll see how the next few weeks go for me. Another great challenge, Jamie!

[ShadowsEdge19]

Does my Blockable game count? I've just got to make some extra levels and maybe throw in some more features like a timer and highscore table perhaps.

[SixOfEleven]

I would prefer to see an entry that was made specifically for the challenge so I'd say no. If you want to enter it I'd judge it with the others which can be helpful for constructive feedback on your game.

[.Aaron]

Nice challenge idea, I'm in.

[Robin19]

I'm in, but I have doubts I'll finish in time.

[bonyjoe]

I'll give it a blast, see what I can do in a small amount of time

[MrMorg]

I followed your tile map tutorial SixofEleven, but when it comes time to run the game, I get an exception error. It says the index is out of range on the spriteBatch.Draw method. Do you know how I can fix this? My code is identical to yours.

[Kilorn]

Please open a new topic in the XNA section and paste your code. We'll take a look at it and see if we can help you get it working properly.

[SixOfEleven]

Anybody got any progress on their projects that you'd like to post? Would love to see what you are all doing with this rather open challenge.

[ShadowsEdge19]

I know I'm not submitting an entry as such I've been working on my High Score system, and aside from some issues I'm working through on that side of things with the High Score board the main game is working fine, albeit with a limited supply of available levels (3 at most).

[bonyjoe]

I've not had much time to work on it, made a quick tile engine that reads in text files, uses regex to split the file up and parse all numbers to Bytes. Then it accesses a dictionary to populate the map with the correct tiles.

I also did a bit of work adding lighting but it seems to be having a weird effect with the tiles, though it may just be the normals I have used.

[Kilorn]

I wish I had time to do something. With 2 projects going right now and a full time job, I'm afraid my time is all spoken for at this point. I'm looking forward to seeing the projects of those that do enter, though.

[.Aaron]

SixOfEleven, on 26 July 2011 - 08:52 AM, said:

Anybody got any progress on their projects that you'd like to post? Would love to see what you are all doing with this rather open challenge.

When you put it like that, I wish I would have took the time to come up with something a bit more original. I ended up just going the classic tilemap-based rpg route. The idea for the game had been in my head for a while, so it was sorta the first thing that came to mind when I thought 'something with tiles'. I'm not too far in yet since -like the broken record of this topic- the past week was rather busy, but I've got a lot more time for these last two weeks, so it should go good from here on out.

Anyway, as for the game-play I'm just about to start work on the battle system, which is more of an FF-Tactics style(though severely simplified, if that) kind of thing then the usual turn based rpg battle structure. Correctly re-routing a character if the most direct path towards the slot they're trying to move to is blocked by any type of wall or other collision point is slowing me down though.