https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59900676/BaseCode28.zip

The usual batch of tools are there, but I’ve added a couple new ones to help with the initial slog of getting something running.  GrogLibsProjectMaker (starring Captain Picard) generates a solution that aims at the libraries and tools, and makes directories for content, but I wasn’t able to make it generate the actual game project yet.

The other is a handy tool that spits out a big set of solid textures in your choice of palette (Atari ST, Amiga, EGA, CGA, VGA, NES, SEGA Master System).  I’d like to do real textures but starting with just solid colors usually gets me started (never have time for real texturing).

Since last time for the libs I’ve mostly worked on getting better shadows.  You should in theory have unlimited point light shadows, but I only support a single directional.  There’s usually only one sun anyway.

To make this work I moved to multipass for the shadows, and it greatly complicated the alpha sorting.  Since I don’t have a good way to cache results of the actual shadow depth draws every alpha surface will make every shadow in the level draw again.  So yea… that will get slow.  So don’t use alphas much.

I’ve also ditched Reach (the lower end graphics mode of XNA) so I can focus on >= shader model 3.  I was having too much trouble trying to cram all this functionality down into the measly 80 instructions you get with 2.  This is bad because the games I make will no longer run on old pcs or netbooks and the like, but it saves me a lot of headache.

What can you do with these libs?  In my past stuff all but my first and the october challenge are made with these libs, though they have come a long way since that first black and white only buggy dark game

Here’s an image from a warmup I’ve been doing the past couple days just to make sure everything works:

As for tools, I use Paint.Net for 2D stuff, 3dsmax for objects or characters (if I get time), quake army knife for levels, visual studio 2010 and xna for code, sfxr and audacity for audio, peavey patriot for music if I have time, and maybe bryce if I have time to do a sky (and the camera can see the sky).