THRUST INPUT SYSTEM

John comments on the new input core of his engine: "Thrust".

From the post: "... Thrust, unlike Xna5D, has recieved its own project folder for 360 compatible work and I am happy to report that the new input core is running on both Windows and the 360. So how does this new Input services work? I have decided to go much the same route as the new GUIManager by templating the main class, Ebi. When you create a new Ebi (Event Based Input) object, you pass along the type of an object that inherits from ControllerBase. This allows the Ebi object to instance your controller's code and use it ...".

Nice!

VISUAL3D.NET BETA1 IS OUT

RightRiot has announced on Realmware's forums that the first open beta for Visual3D.Net framework has been released.

Finally!

VISUAL3D.NET BETA 1 EVALUATION GUIDELINES

Realmware Corp. has recently released the "Guidelines for Evaluating Visual3D.NET Beta 1".

From the guidelines: "... In order to make your evaluation a positive experience that helps us better Visual3D.NET and ensures you have the information you need work through crucial issues we ask you to adhere to the following guidlines during your evaluation of Visual3D.NET ...".

If you are a betatester, you should have already read them or be reading them right now.

HOW TO COMPRESS AUDIO USING XACT

One of the questions we developers usually ask is "what can I do to reduce the size of my executable and content files?". The answer for audio content has been provided by Mitch, who has published the process you must follow so as to compress audio using the XACT tool.

From the post: "... there is some support for compressing your audio files in the current product, using the XACT tool; it's just not easy to discover. XACT supports ADPCM compression on Windows and XMA compression on the Xbox 360. You can get about 4:1 compression with ADPCM and even better with XMA. So while perhaps not as high as some other encodings, such as WMA, it does offer quite a substantial savings ...".

Let's compress some audio files!

XNA FRAMEWORK FEATURE QUESTION: AUDIO

How important is to you being able to dynamically load ".wav" files into wavebanks with XNA? This is what Mitch is asking. Why? Go on reading ...

From Mitch's post: "... The native XACT APIs have added the support for programmatic wave playback. I.e. at runtime, you can load *.wav files into a Wavebank and play them from there, without needing to create a project and compile the binaries. This is something we're looking at supporting in our next release, but I want to gauge how much interest there is in this feature? Keep in mind that implementing this feature may very well mean we can't do some other feature ...".

So how important is this to you? Hurry up and post your answer here.

ALL SAY HELLO TO "SPRITEFONT" ...

By this time, we're all aware that with the just-released update for the XNA Framework a lot of goodies were given away, like a built-in implementation to handle fonts rendering.

Shawn tell us what the font system is capable of for bitmap fonts, plus unveils a handy tool that helps you create a bitmap-font base which you can then enhace with your favorite graphic tool, like Photoshop, Gimp and such.

From the post: "... TrueType fonts are convenient, but you may sometimes find yourself wanting a more distinctive look for your text. You can create custom typefaces by arranging a set of character images into a single bitmap, separating the areas between each letter with a pure magenta marker color ...".

Read on!

NEW CONTENT FOR "XNA'ERS"

Ok, so you downloaded the refresh update for XNA GSE v1.0, read the readme page and updated the framework on your system, but have you happened to check the new content available at http://creators.xna.com?

I knew it! Don't be a lazybones, pay a visit to the XNA Creators Club Online site and:

• Download the new starter kit: finally! The long-awaited "Racing Game" (formerly called "XNA Racer"),
• Download the new samples: 3D audio, bloom, 2D particles, and many more.
• Read the new articles: data structure and the shader series,
• Watch the new video tutorials: advance audio series, and,
• Download the new utilities: the "Bitmap Font Maker" utility and controller graphics.

Wow!

[Are you an "XNA'ER"? Sounds cool, doesn't it?]

"MONO.XNA": APRIL FOOLS?

Ok, at first that was what I thought: if you check the site, there's no many info available, nor downloads, well it's like a shell with no content and last submission of ??? was done on January, 2007.

However, after some search I happened to find a google group where you can actually check some XNA Framework's assemblies being ported to OpenGL.

As it's seems to be in the first stages of development, does anyone know whether it's a serious project?

WHAT'S NEW IN XNA GSE V1.0 "REFRESH"?

... if that's the question you've been asking your-self lately, then you need to pay a visit to at least the following three sites:

• XNA GSE 1.0 Refresh ReadMe: of course.
• Let's Kill Dave blog: list of "big" things pointed out by Dave.
• The ZBuffer site: Andy publishes a handy list of changes in the API.

Of course, you should also check XNA Creators Club Forums, since there have some questions on issues while installing, updating past code and so on.

Hope it helps.

XNA GSE 1.0 REFRESH RELEASED

Finally!!! The first update for XNA GSE v1 is now out ...

From the XNA Team Blog's post: "... We’ve gone over many of the features outlined in the announcement we made at GDC 2007. One thing we didn’t really cover previously is compatibility. The entire team made a conscious effort to maintain compatibility with this release.

Your game should just recompile in 1.0 Refresh with no changes required. Any game that is compiled should run fine if you have 1.0 Refresh installed.As mentioned, you can continue to use 1.0 on your Windows computer with 1.0 Refresh on the Xbox 360 console.

Games that are built on 1.0 Refresh may run on 1.0; however, if you are using new functions or features in the XNA Framework (such as font functionality), it will not work properly.You can download the XNA Framework 1.0 Refresh for including in your installer as you start to upgrade your games ...".

Donwloading it right now!

XNA GSE UPDATE IS AROUND THE CORNER

There's a new post on the XNA Team Blog: Dave Mitchell comments on the following:

• XNA Creators Club membership extension (4 months "on the house"),
• Community resources, assets, premium content, etc.,
• The update to XNA Game Studio Express 1.0,
• The brand new "Club Packaging" format, and
• Dream-Build-Play compo.

From Dave's post: "... As a gesture of thanks to our incredible community and especially those who have jumped on board the XNA Creators Club train earlier than others, we’ve extended each and every active XNA Creators Club membership that was active on March 5th by an additional 4 months ...".

Read on!

VISUAL STUDIO CODENAME "ORCAS" BETA 1 NOW AVAILABLE

Microsoft has released the first beta build of the next version of Visual Studio product family (known as "Orcas").

The first great thing is that you can donload and betatest a fully functional version of the Team Suite, either by downloading ISO images -not available yet- or the VPC images (for the latter, you will need to download Virtual PC 2007). I had previously downloaded March CTP's VPC images and everything worked ok.

But this time, there's something more, with this release comes the beta builds for the VS Express editions. Although I have not installed VC# Express "Orcas" yet -I'm downloading the installation files as I write this post- it seems we'll be getting an object-relational UML designer tool (probably a lite version of it).

Great news!

[BTW, does anybody know whether the upcoming release of XNA GSE will support "Orcas" VC# express edition?]

IS "SILVERLIGHT" THE NAME OF A COLOR?

Maybe not this time ... it's the new name for the Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E).

Want to know whether XNA GSE will integrate it? Then read David's post on this regard.

From the post: "... How can I use Silverlight with my XNA Framework-based games?" I will directly answer that we have ...".

Curious? I told you to read David's post ... ;)

"TORQUE CONSTRUCTOR" NOW AVAILABLE

Again, news not related to XNA (at least, for now).

GarageGames has released the long awaited "Constructor" for the Torque Game Engine (TGE) and Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA), for free.

To read the full list of features go here, and to download it, here.

[Now that TorqueX is out, maybe integration of this level editor to XNA is on the roadmap ...]

VISUAL3D.NET: BETA 1 ANNOUNCED

Along with the new design for Realmware's site, beta 1 of the long-awaited "Visual3D.Net" framework has been announced.

From the announcement: "... Realmware is happy to announce that Visual3D.NET Beta1 will be released April 30th, 2007. The list of features to be included in Beta1 as well as future releases can be seen on the Visual3D.NET Features page. Please register now to sign up for the Beta ...".

Visual3D.Net vs. Blade3D vs. TorqueX vs. doing all by your-self. Hummm ... so many choices ... which one will you choose?

JAD ENGINE 1.1 RELEASED

For those of you that never heard about Jad engine, it's one of the first shader-prone engines created using MDX that was released to the public for free.

I was following its development since it was originally called "Haddd" engine, so let me tell you that if you want to learn how to develop a robust and powerful engine, then Jad engine is a great knowledge base on the subject.

From the announcement: "... After more than 6 months of work the Jad Engine Team has finally released Jad Engine 1.1. This new version comes with lots of bug fixes, minor improvements (math library, multiple viewports,...) and major new features (virtual file system, scripting,..) ...".

You can download the engine from its hompage in Codeplex.

Cheers!

"THRUST": THE SUCCESSOR OF XNA5D

Remember this post? Well, John Sedlak has announced the successor of his XNA5D engine ... and the name is "Thrust".

From John's post: "... Let me preface this story with a note that this is in no way an April Fools joke. The successor of Xna5D is Thrust and composes of all I have learned thus far. I am also pleased to announce that I have been working on several aspects of it with Matthew Randall. I thank him very much for contributing what he can to the project, even with his very busy schedule. I have decided that the development cycle of Thrust will be much slower compared to Xna5D ...".

So, let's thrust this is no April fools joke ... just kiddin' ... :)

THE END OF KRISC'S "XNA5D"?

Let's hope not.

From John's post: "... I have been getting e-mails and have had some comments about the next release of Xna5D. I am happy to say that it won't be coming, at least not in the way anyone would expect it. I have been taking some time to take a deeper look into the design of the core as well as the design of XNA. I am specifically taking a look at content management, abstraction of services and entities. I have been working closely with a developer on the prior, working on a set of prototype classes that will serve as a complete replacement for any component functionality present in the Game class. I want more layers of functionality while maintaining 100% compatibility so that no one has to rewrite code if they do not want to. The latter, has yet to come to realization, but I have been researching some scripting and dynamic assembly programming so that code can be compiled and ran on the fly as well as loading and running of a complete assembly during game time ...".

Before you panic, then John adds: "... In the next few days I will be bringing a few changes to the site that reflect the new library and will at some point make the announcement about all the goodies ...".

Watch this space!

"INTERVIEW WITH MICROSOFT GAME STUDIO'S SHANE KIM" - PART 2

Do you remember this post? If you don't follow the link and read it but if you do just go ahead and read part 2 published by Gamasutra.

This second part of the interview to Shane Kim and Dave Mitchell covers "... their feelings toward Nintendo as competition, Microsoft's strategy of funding game development in Japan, the upcoming episodic Halo content, Peter Jackson, and more ...".

And yes, XNA GSE is mentioned throughout the interview. Take for instance: "... we've got over eighty universities from eight countries that are teaching, including Japan. In Japan, we've got Iwatani-san, the creator of Pac-Man, extremely excited about getting into the possibilities of Express. As a result, when he retires, he is going to be teaching at Tokyo Polytechnic University, using Game Studio Express to teach game design to future game developers ... ".

The creator of Pac-Man ... impressive, ugh?

Ok, please all repeat after me: "XNA rules!" ... ;)

VISUAL3D.NET PRODUCT DEMO VIDEO

Continuing the news of upcoming amazing frameworks for rapid game creation, a new video showing off the features of Visual3D.Net has been released:

Nice ... now, licenses and prices?