|
|
 |
Other than actually running and playing your game, the Game Editor gives you almost complete access to everything in the engine. This allows you to build a large portion of your game using a design interface rather than manual coding everything from scratch.
Here are a few of the additional features not discussed in other sections:
EffectsEffects work on a per-layer basis. Each layer can have a range of different effects. Firstly each layer has the option to render in either filtered or nearest neighbour rendering mode for different qualities. Secondly, layers have a blend mode, which describes how they mix with other layers and scenes. Supported blending modes are: additive, multiplicative, alpha, block, subtractive, inverse, min and max. Finally, each layer can render with any number of built-in or custom pixel shader effects such as blur and convolution effects.
Post Processing EffectsKitae will provide simple interfaces for post processing effects and there will be a number of built-in effects which can be used out of the box. Post processing effects can be applied to create overall screen pixel deformations such as blur, convolution and desaturation.
ControllersControllers are an integral part of the Kitae engine. Controllers are used to 'control' the actions of actors within the system. Each actor can have any number of controllers assigned to it. Controllers can perform just about any action and are called every time the actor needs to update.
|
|
|
|
I'm very happy to announce the development of Kitae. A new rapid development 2D engine for XNA that enables 2D game developers to build games for both Windows and the XBox 360. The engine is currently under heavy development and will be released within the next 3-4 months.
If you are interested in 2D game development and particularly XNA game develepment. We are looking for beta testers for the Kitae application which will go into beta phase within the next month or so. If you would like to test the application you can submit a request to test over at the also newly introduced Members section of the site.
Check out Kitae over at the the new Kitae Section.
About KitaeKitae is a rich, rapid development 2D in 3D game engine for use with the Microsoft XNA platform. Kitae provides a rich application development toolset that suplements Visual Studio or Game Studio Express, allowing you to concentrate on the design and logic of your games without having to worry about the grunt work. Kitae is feature rich, allowing you to create just about any game you can imagine with relative ease. Kitae is not a Game Maker and is not designed to remove programming from the equation. Kitae is a powerful asset management system and middleware engine that facilitates modern 2D game development for both Windows and XBox 360.
Screen Shots
 
Rob Hutchinson (Null City Dev and Admin)
|
|
|
|
I'm currently working quite hard on the particle engine at the moment. So I'm not going to write a lot here today, I just wanted to drop this video on the blog:
This fireworks particle effect was created entirely at design time using the Game Editor. Unfortunately the video codec obscures the nice detail of the effect, but you get the picture. The effect is simply a particle emitter which emits a spark particle. On despawn of the particle, another particle effect is spawned to create the explosion. There is absolutely no user code behind this effect what-so-ever. Nifty! Next I'll put up a blizzard effect.
One more thing, I'm currently re-thinking the pricing stategy for Kitae. Kitae may end up free for development use. More on that soon.
Update:So you can actually see what this is meant to look like before the codec filtered out all the details, here's a piccy:
|
|
|
|
I realise it's been a while since I've posted, I've been very busy with various projects, including Kitae. Fear not, much development time has been sunk into Kitae over the last few months and it appears to be coming together very nicely (barring some nasty PC laptop graphics card issues).
Anyway I wanted to share the latest feature of Kitae: Scene Transitions. Kitae now sports 30 unique transitions out-of-the-box. All ready to use with a few lines of code! Thanks to the great work done on the WPF-FX project, I've managed to convert the transition shader effects to XNA and build them as re-usable content into the engine. We've got swirl effects, circle tranistions, disolves, pixelations, saturations, water effects, blur effects, you name it, it's probably there.
Here's a video of the transition example which I'm planning to release with the engine:
Sorry for the poor framerate on the video, YouTube seems to have made a bit of a mess of it. Fear not, it runs at a nice 60FPS solid @ high resolution.
Thanks to Eifion Bedford for the fantastic photos, his work can be found here.
Additional information on Kitae's transitions feature can be found in the Kitae Transitions section.
Alpha TestingKitae will be entering Alpha Test phase hopefully in the next week. For anyone that is interested in testing, please read the FAQ.
|
|
|
|
|