COMPONENTS OF TRANSMISSION CYCLES
The components of a transmission cycle of an arthropodborne disease are (1) a vertebrate host which develops a level of infection with the parasite that is infectious to a vector, (2) an arthropod host or vector...
Adding the Finishing Touches
Our Black Hole game is functional in terms of the mechanics of the game working and being fairly well balanced, so now we can spend time addressing the gameplay and “fun factor” of the game. The...
Building the Game
The Black Hole game is based on most of the code we’ve developed in each of the previous hours of the book, and there really is no single previous hour that gets more credit than others since...
Simulating Gravity
Gravity is an interesting phenomenon of physics. Every moment of every day, you are literally falling inward toward the center of the earth. The surface of the earth keeps you from falling farther, but the same force that...
Understanding Why You Want to Use IronPython for Testing
Every testing technique you’ve ever used has some drawback. For example, if you include debug statements in your code, you must ensure that you perform a release build to remove the...
Finite State Gameplay in Theory
Finite state refers to a condition that will have a limited number of possible values. The age of a person is a finite state value range from 0 to around 80, with no exceptions. To...
Creating the GUI Controls
A graphical user interface (GUI) is absolutely essential for a game to be successful, even if that means using nothing more than labels and buttons on the screen that the user can click on.
Sprite Class Improvements
Modifying...
Getting Started with Windows Phone 7
There are two ways we can develop games for Windows Phone 7: Silverlight and XNA Game Studio. Although Silverlight does have basic graphics capabilities, those capabilities are provided to support applications and are not...
Controlling an audio file
Music has the ability to impact the emotions of human beings. Different styles of music produce different feelings. Fast tempo music makes people feel nervous or excited; when the tempo becomes slow, people feel relaxed and...
Creating a progress bar for game content loading and value status
When playing a game, especially for some big games, at the initialization phase, a progress bar will show you the game object loading status and percents. As a time-based...