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Preview of the Fancy Bitmap Font Generator 2 (Click to Enlarge)

In order to accommodate for all types of fonts and outputs, and even for the inclusion of the ability to make a sprite-sheet out of separate images (and apply an effect to each sprite for instance), I’ve developed a modular plugin system. It won’t allow for absolutely anything, but I think it’s a compromise between everything you would probably want to be able to do and not making it so complicated that it almost becomes a scripting environment.

So, how will it work? The process of generating a (bitmap font) sprite sheet is made up of a series of steps. First you generate the individual tiles into one large list of small tiles – these can be generated from a system font or loaded from files. Next up, you have the ability to apply FX to each individual tile in turn. The next step is to turn the large list of small icons into a small list of layers for your final image. Typically, you will just have a background layer, and then a layer that sticks all of your tiles together. We’ll include a couple of basic plugins for ‘fixed spacing’ or ’smallest spritesheet’ etc. Next up, you can apply an effect to each of the completed layers which will apply to the layer as a whole. Finally, you can tell the software when / where / how to save the files (these will also be like the other plugin lists in the final version).

As each of the 5 stages loads a list of modules from external DLL files, this means that there is, theoretically, no end to what you can achieve in each of the stages.

If you have any requirements that I might not be aware of for the next version of the software so that it suits your project, I’d love to hear them. It’s best to hear them now while I’m compiling plug-ins than in a month’s time when it’s all wrapped up!

Thanks for checking in.

So, what do we have this week?

We’ve been trying to put together some more interface graphics to help make your user interfaces more friendly and shiny. We’ve tried to keep them reasonably generic, so that you can brand them up with your game’s logo and your own font, but the goal is to give you the chance to get to your first prototype as quickly as possible. The obligatory screenshots follow;

Free High Definition Grunge Theme for your XNA Game (Click to Enlarge)

High Definition Victorian Theme for your XNA Game (Click to Enlarge)

These themes come with a background image (the Victorian Theme has 3 colour variations for the background image), a full screen overlay panel and a half screen overlay panel (for two player games, etc). The panels can easily be scaled down to the desired size if they are too big for what you need them for. Imagery is provided at full 1920×1080p and the full screen overlay should allow for overscan (although, you might want to shrink it an extra 10-15% for the Xbox 360).

Download the themes from our online asset library; Iron Star Media’s Grunge Theme, Iron Star Media’s Victorian Theme

I’d like to finish with a quick shameless plug… If you’ve not already heard the news, our Xbox 360 Shooter Ikaroids has recently been reduced to only 80 Microsoft Points, give it a look!

The free game assets on this site are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This basically means that you can download them, use them in your game(s) and modify them as you like. If you use them in your games, we’d appreciate a small mention somewhere in the credits / on the website (and a free copy of the game would be cool!). Basically, the only thing we don’t want you to do with our assets is sell them as assets to other developers, either individually, or as part of a collection.

Ikaroids - Action Packed Arcade Shooter for only 80MSP

Plans have begun for a sequel to Ikaroids that will bring the space shooter genre into the 21 century. Because of this, we’d love to hear what you think about the first one. Let us know of things that you like and don’t like about the game by leaving us comments around this blog or by getting in touch with us directly.

Read more about Ikaroids or head over to the XBox Live Marketplace now and buy Ikaroids for only 80MSP!

My funky new headphones for audio editing!

I’m hoping to spend a bit of my spare time in the upcoming couple of months properly learning how to sequence some good game music using Garageband and I’m even hoping to start producing my own loops at some point using my MIDI Keyboard. This giveaway marks the beginning of what I’m dubbing of my Musical Scrapbook, with a track in there too from Jackson Matthews.

Without further ado, you can download the tracks directly with these links from our new asset library.

Wordsworth 001 – Happy Synth.mp3

Wordsworth 002 – Space Synth.mp3

Oliacym 001 – Electronic.mp3

It’s hard to categorise this sort of music, so at the moment – we’re just lumping it all together in one big folder. Hopefully as we start to make more, we’ll start to put them into more useful categories and sections. Anyway – I hope that you enjoy!

The free game assets on this site are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This basically means that you can download them, use them in your game(s) and modify them as you like. If you use them in your games, we’d appreciate a small mention somewhere in the credits / on the website (and a free copy of the game would be cool!). Basically, the only thing we don’t want you to do with our assets is sell them as assets to other developers, either individually, or as part of a collection.

Included, among others are:

• Concrete
• Brick wall
• Cork board
• Manhole cover

Enjoy!

Example screen showing how the tiles fit together.

Included in the pack are:

• Bricks (tiles in all directions)
• Grass (tiles horizontally)
• Grass with rocks (horizontal)
• Soil (multidirectional)
• Soil with rocks (multidirectional)
• Snow top (horizontal)
• Snow (multidirectional)
• Brown stone top (horizontal)
• Brown stone (multidirectional)
• Grey stone top (horizontal)
• Grey stone (multidirectional)
• Key sprite
• Coin sprite

Which just about covers it! All sprites are in PNG-24 format and are 256 x 256 each. For the full pack, click here: ism-assets-09-platform-game-tiles.zip

The free game assets on this site are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This basically means that you can download them, use them in your game(s) and modify them as you like. If you use them in your games, we’d appreciate a small mention somewhere in the credits / on the website (and a free copy of the game would be cool!). Basically, the only thing we don’t want you to do with our assets is sell them as assets to other developers.

The compulsory sample image for your perusal;

Included in the pack is a classic set of cards, a modern set of cards and a set of cards with space in the middle for custom artwork. Each set is available in 3 formats – individual card files (high resolution), sprite sheets (high resolution – you will need to resize them down to the correct size for your project) and as sprite fonts (so you can SpriteBatch.DrawString(…) them in your project).

When you are ready to take the plunge, download the pack here; ism-assets-08-playing-cards.zip

We have based the images of the royal cards on what we believe to be Public Domain imagery that is commonplace on most card decks available in the UK. Many websites imply that these are in the Public Domain, but we’ve not confirmed this to be true. If are to use these images in your commercial project, I would suggest that you confirm that the likenesses we used are Public Domain and can be used in your project.

The free game assets on this site are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This basically means that you can download them, use them in your game(s) and modify them as you like. If you use them in your games, we’d appreciate a small mention somewhere in the credits / on the website (and a free copy of the game would be cool!). Basically, the only thing we don’t want you to do with our assets is sell them as assets to other developers.

Fancy Bitmap Font Generator Screenshot (Click to Enlarge)

To read more about this free utility, please head over to the Iron Star Media Fancy Bitmap Font Generator page.