XNA Game Dev Blog #1

I started playing with XNA today.
After looking at the layout of how the XNA framework works I decided to give a shot at
making a small game using it. That game being a simple space ship shooter style game.
I started off by drawing some basic sprites, which took up more time than I expected.
However this did give me some content to work with during development:
I started off with my player class, allowing it to load its own content which will come handy
later on when I come round to upgrades for the player. After the player was done with basic
movement up/down/left/right and bounded to within the screen, and the little flames to appear
when Up is pressed, I moved onto the background. The background consists of 3 layers, a
background stars layer, foreground stars layer, and planet/satellite layer (all in that order).
The reason for 3 layers is so I can make the player have a sense of depth within the
environment; as the background stars layer moves down slow, foreground a little faster, and
then the planets/satellites that scroll past the fastest.
Right now the planets/satellites scroll past as soon as one comes off of the screen, I’ll later
implement a timing system show they show up at random intervals.
I’m going to touch up on the movement so that the background shifts slightly on the X axis as
the players moves to the side of the screen, rather than it constantly scrolling along the Y
axis. Then to put in some enemy ships and lasers.
Here’s a screenshot of the current development though: