Tough Hairballs

I've always wanted to create my own game.

And not in the way I used to: thumbing through 3-2-1-Contact Magazine for the code they printed in the back. Typing in lines upon lines of Basic into the TRS-80 my dad brought home from work. Then modifying, breaking, fixing, breaking, modifying, etc. until I had a snake game or a trivia game that would call out my brother by name when he played it.

So I started creating a game a bit ago using XNA Game Studio 2.0. Installing everything and getting it all set up was the easy part. I went to http://creators.xna.com/, followed the instructions and had my blank project deploying to my Xbox 360 in no time.

Coming up with what I wanted to create was pretty easy, too. I decided on "Magic Hairball". Much like a Magic 8-Ball that advises you on the wisest course of action, Magic Hairball would do the same, except a cat would gack up your answer.

So I sat down, used some of the code samples, learned to animate with a sprite sheet...and you know what? Writing code to show different parts of the sprite sheet was easy. Drawing an animation that looks good is freaking HARD. Hats off to animators, they make it look easy.

To add to the difficulty, I decided when I started that I was not going to use the big programs/resources from Microsoft that were available to me internally. So I was using Visual C# 2005 Express Edition (free, and works amazingly well), XNA Game Studio 2.0, MSDN documentation, and samples. I really didn't want to use Paint, so I began using ArtRage. ArtRage is $25 and a really good painting program for the money. You can't select things and move them around, but I like the texture I got from the paint and you can do layers.

So I have drawn and redrawn and making a cat look like they're coughing up a hairball is really tough. But, at last - success!

I give you the star of Magic Hairball...
(click the image to see the animation play)

Comments

[Noel]

Wow. That cat is awesome. I totally wnat it to tell my future.

[CrapMonkey]

Magic Hairball a good idea. I wish my cat's hairballs had valuable advice for me as of late. (BTW - 3-2-1 Contact rocked - especially the Bloodhound Gang. Wherever there's trouble, they're there on the double).