Thursday, April 19, 2007

SETTING UP "GUIMANAGER"

Check out Aaron's blog for his first tutorial, which covers setting up his GUIManager class.

From Aaron's post: "... The simplest way to begin is to use the GUI_Testbed project as a starting template. I simply created a new source file containing a class called Tutorial1, and set that as the startup Game object in Program.cs. You could also just use the existing GUI_Testbed.cs if you don't feel like starting from scratch ...".

More news after the break ...

TIPS: "SOFTWARE EFFICIENCY AND OPTIMIZATION - PART 3"

Thomas has published the latest installment of the series on software efficiency and optimization.

From the post: "... I'm trying to decide where to take this blog from here. I could continue focusing on software engineering as it applies to games. Or I could start taking in-depth looks at particular game algorithms and how to implement them for XNA — for example, I could show how I used the minimax algorithm with alpha-beta pruning for finding the best move in my Othello game, and how to implement it in XNA; or show how to implement the A* algorithm for pathfinding. Or I could start showcasing my Dream-Build-Play entry and how various parts are implemented. If you have any thoughts or preferences, please leave a comment ...".

To get to the above-mentioned part of the post -actually the final part- you'll need to read a bit more than usual ... trust me ... so you'd better hurry up and start reading right now!

MORE ON "FOREACH" LOOPS

Eli's second part of the series is available now.

From Eli's post: "... For you impatient readers, here's my results: As I just found out, this holds true on the Xbox360 as well. Read on to find out how I came to this conclusion, and maybe learn something about (deep breath) The XNA Framework Remote Performance Monitor for Xbox 360 ...".

So, want to find out? Read on ...

XNA & THREADING

Joseph Molnar, whose blog is entitled "The Pensive Gamer", has published a series of interesting articles on XNA and threading:
  1. XNA Game Loop And Threading,
  2. XNA Threading - The Problems, and
  3. XNA Threading - Locks.
A must read.