Not so long ago I started to get interested in getting back into game development. I used to develop a bit for DirectX back in my Delphi days, but never made real progress apart from being able to make an pretty basic isometric (think of Simcity, Transport Tycoon etc) engine.
So I picked up the XNA Framework and got my hands on Visual Studio 2010 and started coding away.
I must say XNA is pretty easy to use, especially for people starting with C#/.NET, unlike DirectX programming which is a tough concept to get a grip on. As an RPG nerd, and more specifically, a J-RPG nerd, I happily started coding away on an RPG map editor.
Because I didn’t have a clue on how to add an XNA Game Window to a Windows Form, I started with a silly but somewhat effective attempt with making an editor in Windows Form objects only. The only comeback was that it was pretty slow and more importantly, didn’t really support multiple layers:
Guess it was time to master how to show an XNA form inside a Windows form. With the help of this article on the App Hub I finally managed to do so and happily started coding again but this time doing it the proper way, and ended up with:
This fine piece of work supports multiple layers (about as many as unlimited), has an eraser and fill tool and a debugger to see if your layout is collision-detection proof. It still needs some tweaks here and there, but this could be the start of something much bigger, maybe a full game!:)
