XNATUTORIAL.COM: WEEKLY UPDATE

The guys from XNAtutorial.com have published their Weekly Update summary of XNA announcements, workarounds, source code, reads and so on.

Quite helpful contribution, don't you think?

Enjoy!

UPDATE: SHARKY'S 'AIR LEGENDS'

Lawrence has released a new build of the 'Air Legends' game.

Among the new features we will find music, collision detection optimization, and a fix to the screenshot-saving functionality.

Also, now everything is packed and delivered in a single installation file (created using "Wix").

So, where shall I download the build from? Impatient, ugh? Just go to this page and grab it form there.

See ya.

RPG ZERO: GETTING BETTER AND BETTER

Gamey Little Hacker had promissed to post comments related to development of 'RPG Zero'. Remember?

Well, according to this new post things are going better and better as you can see in this awesome video:

Ok, no skeleton-based animations yet. Who cares? The eye-candy is there, the gameplay seems really catchy and it is data-driven.

So GLH, just keep up the good work!

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!

BENJAMIN NITSCHKE'S NEW BLOG

Benny's back! Yeap, it's true ... he has given his blog a new look plus he plans to post more often.

From his blog: "Well, I was posting less and less on this blog and this gonna change now. From now on I will try to post often, maybe even daily. The blog posts will not be as long as before, I will just talk about what's on my mind each day. Initially this blog was started as a little diary for me and I will return to that initial idea."

In addition to his projects, Benjamin plans to comment on FxCop stuff, CgFX, using Collada in XNA, and so on.

Welcome back!

GAMEY LITTLE HACKER'S 'RPG ZERO'

On previous posts I commented that GLH had published some handy source code and tips for data-driven games, in particular, RPG ones.

Well, GLH is back with an awesome demo video of a starting RPG project:

From GLH's site: "When I started writing about game programming here last month, I really did want to practice a little altruism and share some stuff with the community. I'm afraid the vanity levels on this project however, make it wholly unsuitable to share as good practice. The sheer self indulgence in the code should warn people away. I really can't in good conscience recommend anyone learn anything from this... the scripting language is an own rolled, interpreted, prefix notated, reflection driven nightmare for pete's sake!

I would like to share though. So if anyone is interested in watching, I'll post the goings on in my RPG land."

So, what do you think? Should we be interested?

C'mon! Pay a visit to this site and let GLH know that you are interested ... I did ... ;)

GAME MAKER STUDIO .NET

A new framework built on top of XNA has arrived: 'Game Maker Studio .NET'.

You can check the author's blog, visit the forums, view some screenshots, browse the Wiki and of course, download the latest version of the framework.

From GMS .NET's site: "Through working with RMXP building scripts and seeing the limits of the engine I left RMXP to build a new editor and engine. I had an idea for a good system for building 2d games or at least 2d RPG games. So I asked around and found people willing to help with the project. But sadly they have all left one way or another. That forced me to rethink the development since I was depending on some of these people for different parts of development. I changed the direction of the project and went away from ruby as my programming language and away from developing an in-house graphics package and maybe from a graphics package all together. When this process was working itself out I found the XNA framework the brain child from MS for a simple and easy way to develop games. Well in truth it does make life a lot simpler in terms of lower level control but lacks a great deal of higher level control and content control. The idea struck. Build an editor to layer over the XNA framework. But the hard part was how to do it away that lets the user and community develop the product’s future. So I designed a shell in which new elements can be added to a project and thus changing the editor the engines and the game. Thus through community development this product can be changed to model the needs of the community. It was at this point that Game Maker Studio .Net was born and The Game Wizard died."
Enjoy!

'BULLET HELL TACTICS' BETA 1 ANNOUNCED

Remember this awesome game?

Well, the author's has announced that beta 1 is planned for next March, so stay tunned to his site.

NEW NAME TO XNA MAGIC: 'BLADE3D'

At last! The new name for XNA Magic framework has been announced: Blade3D.

So don't forget to update your favorites with the new link.

Congrats to the winner!

CHECK OUT ZIGGYWARE'S WEBLINKS

Hi, everybody! After a couple of days off I'm back on track with my "coding stamina" up high again ... :)

Checking Ziggyware's rss feed I've found plenty of news posted this last "long" weekend.

Also, pay a visit to Ziggy's Weblinks -which are grouped by categories- where you'll find lots of links to interesting sites related to XNA.

Later ...

XNATUTORIAL.COM: WEEKLY UPDATE

The guys from XNAtutorial.com have published their Weekly Update summary of XNA announcements, workarounds, source code, reads and so on.

Very interesting and handy as usual.

Enjoy!

DREAM.BUILD.PLAY: "WARM-UP CHALLENGE"

From DPS's site: "Welcome to the Warm-Up Challenge in the Dream-Build-Play competition. It is the precursor to the main event in Dream-Build-Play, which will begin upon completion of the Warm-Up Challenge. This challenge not only sharpens your skills but you can also win cool prizes and bragging rights! ..."

The challenge: to create a videogame based on the 'Spacewar Starter Kit' before the end of this month.

The prize: "... The contest starts now with our Warm-Up Challenge. We’re awarding $500 (USD) to the top five entries! ..."

You will find more information on the site.

So, c'mon, let's go for it! ... there are 4 remaining places for you ... ;)

'VISUAL3D.NET' VS. 'XNA MAGIC'

As we wait for news and updates related to the Dream.Build.Play contest, there are a couple of sites worth checking (imho).

On one corner we have Visual3D.NET. A public CTP had been announced, but last time I visited the forums, someone asked, but no news were added.

On the other corner we have XNA MAGIC. Two things: i) the "Naming Competition" is over, so the new name for this framework (and the winner of the Pro license) may be announced soon, and ii) information about the beta 1 can be found on the "Beta One Development Roadmap" page.

Both look very promising but none has revealed the price for commercial licenses, thought ... :(

ACCEPTABLE TEXTURE SIZES?

First things first: Sharky has released the latest build of Air Legends, so go, download and test it for stability.

Having said that, on the post that announces the build there's an interesting question (read Sharky's third comment) about the do's and dont's of chosing proper texture sizes for videogames.

It'd be nice to count on thoughts & suggestions -by more experienced user than me in the field- in order to answer it, accordingly.

So if you feel like sharing your experiences either from your technical background or "code-warrior" tales, just pay a visit to Sharky's blog, browse to the above-mentioned post and drop your comments.

Later.

MORE ON 'FIRST PERSON SHOOTER CAMERAS'

Continuing with this latest series of "reminders", a week ago or so Eli (etayrien) posted this handy tutorial about FPS cameras.

Well, if you found it useful -like I did, and you want to go deeper in the field you'd then better go and check Eli's recent comments on the use of "quaternions".

From Eli's comment: "... I would use a quaternion based camera in two situations:

a) if the camera needs to orient in an arbitrary direction: ie any combination of roll, pitch, and yaw. Otherwise you can get gimbal lock. You'll have to web search for more information on what that is; I don't have the math background to explain it properly :)

b) quaternions also have the handy ability to interpolate between different orientations.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/microsoft.xna.framework.quaternion.slerp.aspx

This can be very useful for third person cameras ..."

BTW, read between lines: "... but like you guessed, we've been really busy ..."

... something is being cooked ... something is being cooked ... ;)

NEED OBFUSCATOR FOR .NET?

Do you remember the second part of the series "Deploying Games To The 360 Without Sharing Source Code" -related to obfuscation of .NET assemblies?

Well, if you're not interested in the subject just skip this post. Otherwise, read on ...

I have searched the Internet for some obfuscators and this is what I've found so far:

• BitHelmet
• Eazfuscator.NET
• .NET Reactor
• {smartassembly}
• CliSecure
• CodeVeil
• dotNet Protector
• Dotfuscator for .NET
• Salamander .NET Obfuscator
• Skater .NET Obfuscator
• Spices.Obfuscator
• Xenocode

Some of the vendors' sites do include comparison charts but unfortunately I couldn't find "user-made" comparison charts. Thus, like usual we all end up in a "try the demo-before-you-buy" scenario to get the one that properly fills our needs for code protection.

BTW, the list above is meant to be as a "dynamic" reference, so if I happened to miss one obfuscator -sorry about that, just let me know and I add it to the list a.s.a.p.

Also, if you know well one/some of these apps -because you use or used it/them- and want to share your thoughts you're welcome to post your comments.

Hope this helps!

DREAM.BUILD.PLAY: REGISTER NOW!

As we wait for more details on the DBP contest, there's at least one task that may be currently accomplished: your registration.

After registering, you will get one important piece of info right away: the Final Entry Deadline.

I did register, meaning, I know which is the final entry deadline ... Want to know? ... I won't tell ya, so go and register ... ;)

XNA TEAM ASKS: "GDC '07 - WILL YOU BE THERE?"

The XNA Team wants to meet "the people that use XNA Game Studio Express" at the Game Developers Conference, which will be held this year in San Francisco (March 5-9, 2007).

What is more, given the success of the XNA Game Studio Express launch party (open-house) the Team is considering hosting another informal event in San Francisco.

So, will you be there?

FIRST PERSON SHOOTER CAMERAS

There's a new tutorial at Cornflower Blue's blog which explains in detail how to create a FPS camera with XNA.

From etayrien's post: "... We've been busy lately, which should put smiles on all your faces. I like my job, so I can't give any specifics, but we've got some stuff coming up we think you'll be excited about. ".

Told ya!!! ... something is being really cooked by the XNA Team ... does anybody know anything else about that "some stuff coming up"? What could it be? Hummmm ....

... well, cannot wait ... ;)

TIP: DEPLOYING GAMES TO THE 360 WITHOUT SHARING SOURCE CODE - PART II

In line with what he had explained for the matter, Stephen Styrchak has added some important information regarding obfuscation in general, and for the 360 platform in particular.

From Microsoft's forums: "Whether you want to obfuscate or not is completely up to your own discretion. It seems like a lot of people share the false impression that being able to decompile/disassemble binaries is a new thing that is possible with managed assemblies. It is not. It is just as easy to run a decompiler/disassembler on native binaries, and that technology has been around for decades.

That being said, yes, it will certainly work for assemblies compiled for the Xbox 360. Obfuscation is a post-compilation step that takes an assembly as input, and generates a new (obfuscated) assembly as output. The obfuscated assembly is functionally equivalent, but the instructions and functions have been rearranged in a way that makes it harder for humans to understand.

An obfuscated assembly is no different than an unobfuscated assembly in that it makes no difference to the JIT compiler and runtime if an assembly is obfuscated or not (which is why it will work on the Xbox 360). Similarly, assemblies for the 360 are not special assemblies; they are produced by the same C# compiler as the Windows assemblies -- so no special obfuscator is required to use on them.

Note that obfuscation just makes it harder to read disassembled assemblies, not impossible to read. With a more sophisticated disassembler, I believe you could effectively undo most of the obfuscation. You'll have to check with your obfuscation tool vendor to understand just how "secret" they can make your code. From my understanding of obfuscation, the efficacity also depends on the complexity of the software you are trying to obfuscate. That is, an algorithm in a single function will probably remain almost completely unchanged. However, an algorithm that requires dozens or more functions would be very well hidden. The trick is in hiding what functions are being called an what data is being passed around. The instructions doing the work (loops, branches, etc) are otherwise the same.

--Stephen"

Cheers!