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.

MANAGING UNITS

Machaira has published a couple of examples, being one of them a class that manages units in a RTS game.

From the post: "... In response to a post on the Creators Club Online forums, I whipped up a quick sample of a class that manages RTS (or any genre) units. Check it out here. If I get a chance, I'll spruce it up a little since the current version is totally barebones (what do you expect for a half-hours, if that, worth of work) ...".

Well, I guess it's all for today ...

GET A BETTER SERVICE

Uhmm ... typo, sorry, my mistake: "A Better GetService" by Rhysyngsun.

From the post: "... so recently there's been a lot of major discussion on the XNA forums about GameComponents. Now, I love the idea of having integrated components that automatically get get updated and also drawn in the case of DrawableGameComponent, however, when it comes to accessing the Game class's Services. I also have at issue being able to access said Services in a class that is not a GameComponent. I understand the XNA's team for making the services the way they are, however I don't want to have to derive from GameComponent and add it to the GameComponentCollection every time I want to check to have access to the ContentManager or whatever. For the most part, input components are the only issue that I have with the way Services are set up ...".

Read on!

NEW XNA CONTENT BY FRANCESCO FORNO

Francesco has uploaded the latest versions of "XMLPipeline" and "FontRenderer" assemblies, both used by his GUIManager sample.

From Francesco's post: "... The FontRenderer is the same you find on the Creators web site, however since I slightly modified it you need my DLL for the GUIManager to work. The source code of the modified sample is public: just drop me an email.

To learn how to use the XMLPipeline and FontRender components, just look at the GUIManagerSample, or post a comment to this post ...".

Cheers!

MANAGING GUI ELEMENTS

Francesco Forno has posted a sample solution showing how to handle GUI elements.

From Francesco's post: "... The sample at last! I managed to put together a small sample solution which shows how to use the GUIManager library. All required DLLs are included in the sample, but it's unlikely that I'll keep it updated, so always refer to the main download link (GUIManager, on your left) to get the latest library version ...".

Cheers!

RHYSYNGSUN WANTS TO BE ENCOURAGED ...

... to post mini-tutos and code snippets, all related to XNA, of course, since he has been working hard to implement an octree functionality, multiple viewports, input management, etc.

From Rhysyngsun's post: "... I have a few more ideas for mini-tutorials that I may post here. Some are just quick code snippets, but others are a bit more detailed. Leave some comments to encourage me ...".

So c'mon, want to get some tutos? Then give the guy the encouraging comments he is asking for ...

A RAY TRACER IN C# 3.0

Recently, some members in the XNA Creators' forums have been asking for an example on ray-tracing. Well, Check LukeH's blog, then.

This guy has posted an interesting project based on the third version of the .NET Framework, which implements a ray tracer by using some of the new features of this framework, like LINQ and lambdas.

From LukeH's post: "... Although we often demo C#3.0 using databases and XML to show off LINQ - it turns out that the new language features really are also great for applications which have little to do with querying. Ray tracing, for example, is certainly not one of the prototypical scenario for query and transformation of data. Nonetheless, I found quite a few places in the code where C#3.0 and LINQ to Objects really improved the code - making it easier to express what the program was doing ...".

Not related to XNA, I admit, but nice screenshot, uh?!

[Again, imagine XNA, XAML, DX10 and .NET Framewor 3.5 ...]

FLUIX: CREATE UI ELEMENTS WITH FLASH FOR XNA

Fluix lets you create user interface elements for your XNA-based project in Flash.

The second release is out and includes:

• FSCommand implemented,
• texture alpha being broken in some cases fixed,
• lines support, including bevels,
• gradients supported,
• fix reported bug on not finding helper applications,
• basic version of Sound object working,
• fonts/text working with some caveats, and
• various string manipulation functions implemented.

Worth testing, don't you think?

[Now, I'd like to see the same with XAML. Can you picture that? XNA, XAML and DX10 ...]

TRIGGERS AND OR SCRIPTING SYSTEM?

Until you answer that question for your particular game project, you could check this article on The Code Project.

From the article: "... You know what I miss about the pre .Net days? Script! I liked creating a little script file to do little tasks for me, or to test a small piece of code without having to create a new project or solution. I like having one nice little file to deal with and clean up after, not a solution folder, a project folder and the resulting bin and obj folders. I long for those days, which is why I created Dot Net Script ...".

Pros and cons? Of course, but still worth reading since it uses C# as the scripting language.

FRANCESCO'S GUIMANAGER

Francesco Forno started to publish some of his work based on XNA, being "GUIManager" class the first available for download.

From Francesco's post: "... The "example content" folder inside the ZIP contains a sample GUI texture (which contains GUI elements) and a sample ElemDef XML, which tells the GUIManager where inside the texture he can find the elements. Both these must be included in your project. In the same folder you will also find a template with which your should be able to write a valid XML to pass to the PopulateFromXML method ...".

Later.

SOME CODE SNIPPETS, EXAMPLES AND TOOLS

Dean Lunz published a set of samples, code snippets and projects, all related to XNA.

Among the above-mention resources, you will find:

• Kabombulator: a rts game where the goal is to both defend your base as well as send out troops to destroy your enemies base,
• xGameConsoleXNA: a easy to use in game console system,
• TextFileContentProcessors: allows the use of text files as game assets using content pipeline, and
• XNAContentCode: generates so as to reference game assets directly without using strings.

For the complete list of projects and tools, please visit Dean's blog.

TUTORIAL: LAMP LIGHTING

Rick Hoskinson published a post about shaders used for "faceted" lamps, or lamps without curved surfaces.

From Rick's post: "... Early on, I decided I wanted to blur the line between realism and style for this title. Obviously, any game featuring ghosts and river spirits doesn't really necessitate rigid adherence to the laws of physical light, but for the lamps I wanted something both neat-looking and recognizable. I began my research by looking at about 200-300 pictures of Toro Nagashi festivals, and hanging Chochin (paper lanterns). This process took about 2 or 3 hours to find enough subject matter, at which point I brought out the graph paper and started to sketch down notes ...".

Read on ...

TUTORIAL: SIMPLE PARTICLE SYSTEM

John Sedlak has published a nice 3-page tutorial about setting a basic particle system in XNA, with source code included.

From John's tuto: "... This tutorial describes a simple way to render particles using simple rendering techniques, and a custom vertex format in a 3D world ...".

Read on!

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!

"G": STANDS FOR "G"ENEROSITY

Remember this previous post about the game named "G"?

After playing the game I was really curious about the way these guys had implemented that tractor beam fx ("graviton ray" as they call it), so I decided to make use of their public invitation to get the source code so I contacted them a couple of days ago.

The result: they contacted me back, provided a link to a zip file and gave me the rights to access the server in order to download it.

Thus, having downloaded the zip file, I feel the obligation of publicly thanking them for sharing the source code of the game.

Great game, great code, great "G"enerosity!

Now, back to the Ultracave ...

MOUSE2D GAME COMPONENT FROM TEHONE.COM

TehOne.com has published a mouse component for XNA.

From TehOne's post: "Here is my Mouse2D DrawableGameComponent. I started out just wanting to be able to put a custom Mouse pointer/cursor on the screen instead of the windows mouse. From there the code just seemed to keep evolving more and more. After I got my custom pointer on the screen, I wanted to then place a Texture2D where it clicked (this was mostly for debugging etc, but I think turned out to be useful for other things). I could see this feature being used in map editors maybe, or something where you want to give the user the ability to design what they see on the screen."

You can download the source code and or a demo game, and check the online documentation ... and please, don't forget to read the license.

"As always, I would really appreciate some feeback on this. I'm sure people can make use of this code (especially beginers). And I'm even more sure that it can be improved with input from others (especially those with more experience then me)."

Let's give the guy some feedback.

XNA & WINFORM

Ziggy has published a tutorial (sample included) that shows how to combine the XNA Framework with WinForm's elements.

From Ziggy's post: "In this example I have created a simple application that creates an XNA Device object and renders a triangle on the screen. This sample supports screen resizing and uses a scroll bar to rotate the triangle around in a circle."

Nice one!

[For those that want to dig into this subject, don't forget to check this post by Shawn Hargreaves on the matter].

"GETTING STARTED"

We have a new member that a couple of days ago decided to join the ring of XNA bloggers: "TehOne.com".

Eric has kicked off with a couple of posts with source code:

• Enabling-Disabling GameComponents when a game is Activated-Deactivated, and
• Framerate GameComponent.

C'mon, let's all say hello to Eric and welcome!

CODEANXIETY: THE RETURN

Kukyona is back with a cute gift: a terrain experiment with shaders!

From the bolg's post: "While I was in my computer-less vacation I had plenty of time to rethink and come up with new ideas from my terrain component and also some ideas for games I'd like to work on.  Since a few ideas that I'd like to try out would mean backtracking and taking a new path with my terrain component... I've decided rather than just letting the current code go to waste I ought to release it, as is.  I believe there's a lot in there that can put to good use, and as with the last bit of source code I release, I have to apologize for the poor commenting."

The source code is available here.

UPDATE: 'COLLISION DETECTION FOR 3D MODELS'

Lately, for a little while, things had gone a bit quite in Sharky's blog.

Well, silence is now gone and a new update of the source code of the three-part tutorial is available here.

What's new: optimizations, basically. For instance, you can pass the ModelMesh’s original BoundingSphere to run a proximity test, in order to avoid checks on every frame for the rest of bounding spheres.

Nice Sharky!