Posts by jchristiansen

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help. I will pass this on to my friend and post again if we discover where the problem is.

I used the GamePad object and it worked great for me, really easy to work with

Hi guys,

I have just released a game I spent about 2 years developing (on a fairly old system), and I just had a tester report that there is a serious performance problem on his system (much newer and faster). Has anyone had a similar problem? My game is extremely simplistic and uses very few graphics, it even runs great on the Xbox 360 (which has vastly weaker performance than any PC I have tested on)... So I am fairly confident this is not caused by a bug. I suspect it is something specific to the particular Windows system this guy is running.

My system is:

Dell Studio XPS 8100
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 650@3.20GHz 3.20GHz
4.00 GB RAM (3.87 GB usable)
64-bit OS
NVidia GeForce 310

Windows 7 Home Premium SP1

His system is:

intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4500U @ 1.80GHz 2.40 GHz
8 GB of RAM (7.89 GB usable)
64-bit operating system based processor
Nvidia GEFORCE 745M graphics chip

Windows 8.1

I really hope there is an answer to this... Thanks for your help everyone!

-Joel Christiansen

Cool, I will give that a try! I think that should work just fine for my purposes. Much appreciated macca02.

Ok, so maybe Binary Data isn't the best solution for what I am trying to do... The way I originally had this set up was an INI object that would create and update the file "SaveGame01.ini" in the directory C:\Disastr_Blastr. This works perfectly (as long as C:\Disastr_Blastr exists) but I would like to avoid forcing the user to create this specific directory. As a side benefit of converting to binary, it would also be nice if the save data were not easy to modify with a text editor... But the main point of what I am trying to accomplish with binary data is to allow players to simply double click the .exe and play the game without having to worry about where their save data is getting stored. Is this achievable?

Hi everyone,

I have been working through the guide document on using Binary data, and reading a lot of the forum posts, and I think I have it halfway working... I am trying to use an INI file that contains all the level unlocks and scores for my game, and include it as a Binary Data element. As far as reading/writing to the temporary binary file, so far so good--everything is cool until I exit and restart the application. Upon exiting and restarting, the game is no longer able to locate the save data from the previous session! I am using these actions:

Extract Binary File: Apppath$ + "SaveGame01.ini"

Set current file to: BinFileTempName$(Apppath$ + "SaveGame01.ini" )

(Saving to/Loading from INI...)

Release binary File: BinFileTempName$(Apppath$ + "SaveGame01.ini" )

The actual path where the file exists is [C:\Disastr_Blastr\SaveGame01.ini]... I tried using this in the Extract and Release actions (as Danny does in the .pdf guide) and it did not work, nothing was saved or loaded unless I created the directory C:\Disastr_Blastr--in this case the game would generate a normal INI.

Does anyone know what the problem is? How can I get my .exe to recover existing Binary Data after exiting and restarting the application? Thanks!

It has been right around 2 years since I embarked on the long and difficult journey of creating an original Xbox 360 game with Clickteam Fusion, and I wanted to drop in and let you guys know I have just received approval to release Disastr_Blastr on XBLIG. I first started working with Clickteam Fusion almost 6 years ago, and in that time have made a few small educational apps many a successful prototype, but this is the first time I have ever built a full game project for commercial release. Thanks to everyone in the community here who offered help and encouragement along the path, it means a lot guys! Also, I am sure there is at least one other designer out there reading this who still has an Xbox 360 game in development... To that person I would like to say, keep going--you can do it. I was pretty concerned about making it through the approval process, but I found there is still an active and dedicated community of XNA creators out there making some exceptional games. The best advice I can offer on the approval process is this: put your game in play test first (don't jump right into peer approval), and then start reviewing as many other games as you can. And give the most detailed, thoughtful reviews you can. My experience was that no one really paid any attention to my game until I started spending some time helping others (and basically acting like part of the community), and once I did that the other creators were extremely helpful and I was able to clear peer approval with relatively few snags. So good luck guys, stay strong, keep designing, and look for Disastr_Blastr on XBLIG Friday 2.6.2015!!!

You can check out some video of the game here: Please login to see this link.

And visit the official Disastr_Blastr facebook page here: Please login to see this link.

Hi guys, I am working on getting a 2-year game project of mine through peer approval for release on XBOX 360, and I have run into a problem I don't know how to address. I know others have successfully published their Clickteam Fusion games on the 360, and I am hoping someone here can help me along.

The problem has to do with load times, and having the loading of levels lie in a thread (so it doesn't lock up the Guide). There is about a (15) second load the first time the player enters a level, after that loading is basically instant... So it appears the bottleneck is just this initial load. My game doesn't have a lot of heavy graphics or sound elements, but I do have a lot of global objects in there--I suspect this may be (at least partially the cause of the long initial load time). This I feel I may be able to handle by making the global objects local and carefully removing things that are not needed from each level, rather than just destroying them at Start of Frame. The threading problem really concerns me though. How would I go about setting it up so that the player can press the guide button and the game will respond even during loading? Thanks for your help guys.

Just one more question about .mp3s if I may: I have some really nice seamless looping songs that sound great on the PC, however on the Xbox360 there is a slight gap (maybe half a second) when the song loops. Is there a workaround for this? Thanks!

Just one more question about .mp3s if I may: I have some really nice seamless looping songs that sound great on the PC, however on the Xbox360 there is a slight gap (maybe half a second) when the song loops. Is there a workaround for this? Thanks!

Thanks Francois! I was finally able to work this out... It was a simple problem with how I set up the sound playback events, totally my fault!

Hi everyone,

I have been adding some songs (.mp3) to my Xbox360 game, and noticed a significant drop in frame rate when the music is playing back... Does anyone have suggestions about optimizing the song files or playback events to help with this problem?

The song file I am using is:
1:39 in length
1.5MB
128kbps

Thanks!

-Joel

Thanks very much for the tip, I will look into that

Hello,

I have a looping song (.mp3) that plays nicely at a constant volume until another sound effect (.wav) is played... When this happens the song volume drops slightly, then slowly increases over a few seconds until it is playing at the original level again. I have tried messing with channels and doing whatever I can to force the music to always be the same volume, and I have read a lot here on the forums about controlling the volume of sounds, but I haven't come up with an answer yet. Does anyone know of a way to play a sample once, loop it, and force its volume to remain constant even when other sounds are played? Thanks!

That would be awesome Francois! I am sure this will be a great help to all of us working on XNA projects

Thanks Danny, that is encouraging. I am really hoping I can get this to work, it would likely mean a big performance boost for my game

Hi everyone,

I would like to replace some of the Spread Value/Fastloop events in my Xbox 360 game with the new ForEach loop added to Fusion 2.5, but when I tried doing this the game crashed upon loading it up on the Xbox. I am attaching a screenshot of the error message in Visual Studio to this post...

I already submitted a bug report on this issue, I am just wondering if anyone else has had this problem and if there are any workarounds that will allow me to take advantage of ForEach loops on Xbox. Thanks!

It works! I have no idea why this hasn't worked up until now, but it just mysteriously started working. Such a great feeling to finally see something happen after being stuck on this for several days. Ok, on to eventing the rest of the game saving/loading system!

Hi everyone,

I have spent the last couple of days trying to get figure this out, and haven't had any luck yet--I hope someone out there has the answer!

I am working on saving/loading game info using the INI object, and I am able to get this to work no problem on the PC... but when I try it on the Xbox nothing happens! I have added my INI file to the binary data for my game, and set up events to make sure that the player is signed in and that only the GamePad that initially presses Start at the game title screen has any control over the game. Here are the INI actions I am trying to use:

+Start of Frame
-INI: Set current file to "C:\Disastr_Blastr\SaveGame01.ini"
-INI: Set value 88 to "Level1_1Complete" in group "LevelsCompleted"

+Right shoulder of GamePad "GamePadID" is pressed (Alterable Value "GamePadID" is either 1, 2, 4 or 8 depending on which GamePad the player used to initially press Start)
-Set counter to GroupItemValue ("Ini", "LevelsCompleted", "Level1_1Complete")

So with this setup, when I launch the game in Windows and press the right shoulder button I will see the number 88 appear on the counter, but on the Xbox the counter always shows zero. Does anyone know what I am missing here? This has been one of the toughest problems I have come across yet--thanks to everyone for your help.

Thanks for responding Francois, I just posted it--Bug #344.

I suspect there may be some workarounds for this issue, it seems that others have been able to use INI successfully with their XBOX projects, but right now this is really kicking my butt! I think I have tried every possible combination of events, with no success. Usually when I am this stumped by something it is because I am missing a really obvious answer. I will keep playing around with it and post again if I find a way to make this work.