News for Latin America:
Community Quest 2009 is a treasure hunt game for Microsoft’s technical community, through the content portal of videos, webcasts and and on-site events in Latin America.
The portal is called Community Mediacenter, or CMC located at http://www.LatamCMC.com.
‘Till next time,
~Pete 
> Link to Spanish version.
The winners of this year’s DBP compo have been recently announced:
From the announcement:
Dean Dodrill of the United States earned the grand prize of $40,000 for “Dust: An Elysian Tail” a side-scrolling, action role-playing game in which the player controls Dust, a man searching for himself. Set in the beautiful yet mysterious world of Falana, this game chronicles Dust’s journey to liberate an oppressed village and rediscover his past. Meticulously hand-animated and painted, “Dust: An Elysian Tail” welcomes exploration, action, and above all else, mastery of a fighting system that rewards skilled gamers.
Panya Inversin and his team from the United States took home second place and $20,000 for their stunning 3-D, four-player brawler/space-shooter, “Max Blastronaut”.
Nivel21 Entertainment, led by Mauricio Garcia from Spain, received third place and $10,000 for the challenging puzzle game “Rotor’scope – The Secret of the Endless Energy”.
China’s Hu Ling and his team came in fourth place and received $5,000 for the stylish martial arts action game “HurricaneX2 Evolution”.
Congrats to the winners! (and of course, to all of the six finalists)
You can check the official announcement here and or visit the DBP website. For trailers of all the finalists you can check this site or this other site.
Cheers!
Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
Wow! When I woke up this morning and turned on my desktop computer I found quite pleasant news on the creators’ site: it has been revamped!
The homepage has gone through some changes in its look: the news, the ads, the general info have been all rearranged in a more attractive way! Just check it out.
Plus, there’s some new panels like “Top Movers” … wait! What’s a “top mover? From now on, all you do in XNA CCO will give you reputation, either in a positive or negative way:
Please read this article to get detailed info on how reputation works.
But wait! There’s more:
Nice one, guys!
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
Three new resources are available for premium members on the XNA Creators Club:
Hooray!
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
Many websites are reporting details about the upcoming “Autumn Update” for the XBox 360’s Dashboard.
There are really great features being added in this one like, among others:
For a full list of the new features, you can read this article.
Cannot wait!
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
The "tech" day of CUMUY has already become a monthly Classic in Montevideo, Uruguay.
This time the following topics will be presented:
This is a free-pass event, so: "Don't say that we didn't let you know!".
See ya,
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
For those of you who do not know Windows 7 yet, those who doubt about its virtues and even those who have already installed the Release Candidate and want to find out more, I recommend a lot that you watch a series of videos (in Spanish) about its goodness:
Usually I'm not a developer that installs testing versions of a OS in a production environment, but, when Windows 7 RC version was out and having witnessed that the previous beta version worked with roominess in "aged" notebooks, I decided to walk away from Windows Vista and give Windows 7 a try.
I must confess that, after I took that decision, results have been quite comforting! Windows 7 RC behaves like a charm and performs superiorly to its ancestors.
I have installed its 64-bit version with only 2GB of memory on my PC desktop and it actually flies! (note: on Windows Vista, it is recommended that you have 4GB to achieve an acceptable output).
Not to mention the features of its own that make the UX indeed enjoyable.
Thus, as I said at the beginning, my advice is that you visit "Windows 7x7", watch the series of demo videos, and if you can, decide to finally install and try out Windows 7 RC.
Enjoy,
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
This year, Microsoft has turned it-self into a box of nice surprises since it announced 2 new products that have recently generated some buzz: Zune HD and Project Natal.
Let's start with the Zune HD. This mobile wonder will have a larger screen with both, touch and OLED technology, point-to-zoom functionality, a built-in accelerometer, and touchscreen QWERTY keyboard.
I'm really excited with the news of OLED display: more vivid colors, higher contrast levels and less energy consumption But I'm more excited with the recent confirmation that it will also include a Tegra GPU, which means no more no less than: gfx hardware acceleration!!!
Now the question is: does this mean it will include a mobile version of D3D? No one outside Microsoft knows. Time will tell, but I'd love to see a built-in 3D support in this upcoming line of devices. Don't you?
So, let's hope MSFT hear our prayers and lets us create (and sell) some outstanding 3D XNA-based games for the Zune HD market.
Now, what's "Project Natal"?
Well, during E3 MSFT presented a new device as means of controlling 360's games without using a gamepad nor any other standard input controller. Just a stereoscopic camera, your body and your voice.
Don't you believe me? Then watch this video:
Fantastic! On the PC business, OS & touchable screens will accompany this trend and to some extent all standard controllers will tremble, in special the old mouse and the traditional keyboard hardware.
In a way, it's like taking the first steps to enter the tech-era of the film "Minority Report". Which is great! The challenge: as usual, learning-curve easiness vs. heavily-established users' customs.
This will indeed require a lot of fresh creativity to ease the transition in the UX towards a real gain in motion richness and more intuitive control.
Can you imagine playing an FPS game with just your body & voice? It won't be easy but eventually we all will, hard-core and casual gamers.
I guess at first it will be kinda blind search until developers find "a pattern" accepted by most gamers, not to mention the efforts and futuristic gadgets to bring back the always welcome force feedback in Natal'ed games. But I also guess it will be great to combine sports and games: "Do some fitness as you play".
Ok, enough small talk. Let's concentrate on the rumors around this incredible device.
As soon as the first images, videos and live demos of "Project Natal" were shown during Microsoft's conference on the past E3, many sites started to speculate on the release of a successor console from 2010 and on with an upgraded internal hardware.
This rumor was reinforced when a change in the hardware of the XBox 360 Arcade edition console was finally confirmed (an increase of the built-in memory module from 256 to 512MB).
Hold your horses! Some sites have been spreading the word that MSFT execs have confirmed mainly two things:
So, let's cut with this speculation trend and wait for it either in solo or bundled offers ... One thing to note though, this recent post on TeamXBox's twitter:
...in addition to built-in Natal tech, a key feature of the next Xbox would be full HD stereoscopic 3D visuals similar to 3D movie theatres.
HD stereoscopic 3D visuals ... Wow! But wait, "... of the next Xbox would be ...". Ok guys, please make up your minds ... humm ... 
No release dates (nor prices) have been officially announced for both products, the Zune HD and the "Project Natal", but a few sites claim that Amazon is listing the Zune HD for September 2009.
Regarding Project Natal's release date, no word or hint, unless the latin word "Natal" not only was chosen because it means (related to) "Birth", but also taking into account its additional meaning: Christmas! Wouldn't be great to receive such a present this December'09? I'm really shooting at random here, but I really hope so ...
Cheers!
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
Excellent news! XNA Game Studio 3.1 is almost here! ... "almost" = the download link will be available any time soon :)
A few things to note regarding the release:
But this ain't all ... XBox Live Community Games is in the process of being renamed to XBox Live "Indie" Games!!! This is an additional nice surprise.
But wait! There is more ... during the week of the E3, the XNA Team announced that a new feature is comming to the Marketplace: User Ratings!
Wow! Interesting times will come for us XNA'ers, don't you think? Great news, indeed.
Enjoy,
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
You may already know this by now, but results are in for Ziggyware's "Spring 2009 XNA Article Contest":
Congratulations for the winners!
Ok, those are the results but why there's a "donations" word in the title of this post? Well ... Ziggyware needs you!
Once in a while, our friend Ziggy call for donations to support his site. In Ziggy's words:
It has been two years since I have had a donation drive to support Ziggyware. I would like to thank all who have donated in the past, helping to keep Ziggyware alive and well. I am currently looking into expanding the site's features and support future XNA contests with great prizes.
Question: how can we donate? Ziggy?
You can donate via Paypal as well as by purchasing by clicking an Amazon product link on this site and then purchasing the product you desire.
So c'mon! Do your good action for the day, be an outstanding XNA'er and support this great XNA Community site!
Watch this space,
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
For those who don't know it yet, Karvonite is a project hosted in the MSDN Code Gallery, available under the term and conditions of the Microsoft Public License.
But, what is Karvonite? From the homepage's overview:
Karvonite is an object persistence framework for the .NET platform. Karvonite's goal is to relieve the developer from all serialization related programming tasks in a non-invasive way. It can save you from writing a lot of boring and thus error-prone code for moving the in-memory objects to and from the data storage. The Karvonite API is very simple and provides a gradual learning curve with a very low entry point.Despite the fact that .NET serialization and XML files are ideal for storing data easily and effectively, in several cases they are not a viable replacement for a data engine. In contrast, not all applications require the horsepower and the excessive functionality and optimization of an enterprise database or a SQL engine; databases are a skill unto themselves and the learning curve is not as fast as expected.
Benefits? Read on ...
- Transparently save/load .NET objects,
- Non-invasive (no interfaces, base classes or special attributes required.),
- Automatically handles object graphs and references (shared and circular),
- Easy to use and deploy, and
- Supports .NET Framework 3.5, XNA 3.0 (Windows, XBox360, Zune) and .NET Compact Framework 3.5.
To use this solution you will need two main components: a tool called "Persistence Model Designer" and the framework assembly named "Karvonite.dll", having both a relatively fast learning curve.
The authors of Karvonite are open to comments and suggestions, and really want to refine the solution to meet all XNA requirements. So, if your are an XNA'er go ahead and let them know the features you'd want to see in future versions of Karvonite.
Service Pack 2 for the April CTP has been released today, thus if you want to try this persistence framework go and get it here.
For further news and notifications of future releases, you can also subscribe to Karvonite's blog.
Enjoy!
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
After being very busy last month I can finally "take a breath" and write some posts again. Things are not back to normal yet to be honest, but I guess it's time to resume my usual blogging activities.
What is "run 09"? It's a one-day IT event to be held tomorrow in Uruguay, where three topics will be covered during the whole day in different talks and keynotes, focusing mainly on what awaits on 2010 and beyond.
The topics are:
To get a detail view of the event, the speakers and or register, click here.
See ya,
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
CUMUY, which stands for "Comunidad de Usuarios de TecnologÃa Microsoft del Uruguay", is a very well-known organization (in Uruguay) supported mainly by MSFT users passionate for spreading the word about the benefits of using Microsoft's technologies.
Although MSFT has no official participation in the organization, it allows us to use its local facilities to carry out a series of monthly presentations covering different technologies and areas.
This month, on April 22nd at 06:30pm (to be exact) it's the turn for the following three great presentations:
The talks will be presented in order by:
The talk about XNA GS will not cover coding at all. Instead, it will present to all attendees the XNA GS architecture, the benefits of using it, available target platforms, current business models, some relevant references on the web and show off some cool and awesome XBox 360 games now available on both, the XBLCG and the XBLA channels.
The coding part will be introduced on a second talk on late June. So, basically this time I will comment on what's available now and about what's coming next on version 3.1 (complying with the NDA, of course).
Thus, if you happen to be near Montevideo at that time and want to attend the talks, just register here (event id: 1032413561).
See you there,
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
The latest Creators Club Comuniqué is out, and with it there's a link to a fantastic Windows Vista Desktop Gadget that ...
"... shows games as they become available on the Xbox LIVE Community Games Channel on Xbox LIVE Marketplace ...".
After you download the gadget, it will list the five latest games that have recently hit the XBLCG channel marketplace:
But wait! There's more ... as soon as you hover your mouse on top of any of the games listed, a pop-up window appears showing more detailed info about the game, like: creator, genre and a brief textual description.
What if you want to find more about any of the games listed? Well, you just click on the name of the game and a new page is opened in your web browser with all the information available for that particular game on the XBox LIVE marketplace!
The gadget allows you to configure the feed, by either market or creator, as well as to set its refresh rate in minutes.
With this great desktop gadget now you can get up-to-date information of all the recent content changes on the XBLCG channel, effortlessly!
Enjoy!
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
The Spring '09 edition of XNA article contest at Ziggyware is here!
This year, among the usual prizes for the top-three articles, our friend Ziggy -thanks to the sponsors of the contest- is giving away licenses of the recently released Sunburn Lighting and Rendering Engine -from Synapse Gaming, a technology tailored for XNA Game Studio.
The contest has already started and the deadline is May 1st, 2009. So go ahead, start your engines, be creative and submit your articles!
Don't forget to read the rules of the contest.
Let's write on!
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
The cat is out of the bag, finally!
A new version of XNA Game Studio (3.1) has been announced -along with other relevant info like the next DBP compo- during this year's GDC.
No date has been published yet for its release, but in the meantime you can read the first quick notes about the new features that will be included in 3.1.
I guess in the next few days/weeks we'll see more official words with details on each topic.
In this sense, Shawn has recently blogged about one of these features: automatic serialization of content binaries (XNB). So, check it out!
See ya!
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
There's no official word out yet but, according to the links posted on the site Next Best Geek, the first beta version of the upcoming Silverlight 3 (Runtime, SDK and Tools) has been released by MSFT.
I have yet no idea what new features are available in this beta but I cannot wait to see what's in it.
Downloading ...
~Pete
> Link to Spanish version.
Well guys, latest times have been really fun and useful.
The MVP summit was awesome: met a lot of people, had lots of fun and a big yes here: got relevant info of what`s comming next.
In the meantime, you can watch some nice pictures taken during one of the days in the Summit and or the latest XNA Round-Up.
Till next time,
~Pete
-> Link to Spanish version.
My PC game "The Riegel Battle" (created with XNA GS) has been today awarded first prize in the category "Best 3D Videogame Promise" during the third annual domestic videogame contest in Uruguay.
Even though it wasn't awarded first prize for the whole compo, as a local supporter of XNA, it was a great honor for me to be among the winners.
Along with the organizers, the contest was sponsored by the US Embassy in Uruguay, so ambassador F. Baxter was present today in the closing ceremony to congratulate the winners.
Chaim Gingold (one of the designers of the game Spore) was one of the judges, and it was also present today in the above-mentioned ceremony, not only as a judge but to speak about the design concepts behind Spore's character editor (a great talk, btw).
Here's a video of my entry:
As soon as I get the links to the official pictures of today's ceremony I'll publish them here.
Cheers!
Pete
