VB.NET Game Programming Tutorial (XNA) - PART 4e: Menu System (Visual Basic .NET)

TUTORIAL 4e - In this segment we will be creating our first game menu that we can navigate through via key inputs. We will also be creating a graphical template base that we can use with future menus and game dialogs.

In this intermediate Visual Basic .NET game programming series we'll be exploring many of the exciting game development features that XNA 4.0 provides. We'll jump right into setting up project for a Super Nintendo styled RPG game.

PROJECT TOPIC SHORTCUTS:

SOURCE CODE:

Tip Jar:

:-)

[polvogames]

Man, your projects are awesome, I only can do it now because I´ve watched your videos lots of times. And in the future I want to learn XNA too. I hope you keep posting your videos, and I feel very happy about this message.
This game is still very slow, I am very bad at programming but I think we share the same dream, to become game makers.
Thank you, really.

[AardaerimusDAritonyss]

Thanks, Dud3! :-D I'll try to keep at it!

[AardaerimusDAritonyss]

I think that your work was really amazing, especially since it was done with GDI! :-D

XNA will definitely improve the performance to an incredible degree, so it's worth learning. The good news is that's not too hard to migrate your code over once you learn it. I can already see that you have great potential to make awesome games. Keep it up! :-)

[devindwight]

I feel terrible, now that I finally got the video up and running I jumped the gun and saw the class MenuGFX that you're talking about lol. But YES! That's exactly what I was trying to do :D I enjoy figuring things out so take your time getting some source available :) I feel like I'm taking baby steps with my project, but am trying to *fully* understand the principles that you're providing.

[AardaerimusDAritonyss]

I actually have a nice class for this, that Kalamus developed and I expanded slightly. I made a video on its design, but I did a really bad job on it because it was a lot of repetitive work and I was tired and making a lot of mistakes, so I chopped it out of the tutorial. lol

Once you have the class you can frame it around any dialog or menu fairly easily.

All it does is draw each corner, and then a small piece of the edge that can stretch with the dialog. I'll try to get the source up ASAP.

[devindwight]

Yes weird indeed, I just went over it again today and everything seems to be running smoothly. Maybe my internet just didn't want me to learn about game menus :P What I am trying to learn to do is put a nice looking border around my titlescreen menu using the menu image you have in your source. I would assume you stretch a rectangle of the menu image around my menu options and add a slight opacity to it using the same concept you used to put a opaque box around your debug screen?

[AardaerimusDAritonyss]

That's definitely weird! I'm not seeing the skip. What part am I showing when it skips?

[RSRadiowithWolf]

I am seriously enjoying your Videos Aardaerimus! But I think there's a problem with this video right around 2:40ish. The video stops playing and skips to part 4f in your tutorial :(((( I've tried watching it in two different browsers, Chrome and IE, any ideas on how I can follow your tutorial?