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!

"XNARACINGGAME.COM" IS NOW ONLINE

As announced by Benjamin Nitchke, the new site for the just-released "Racing Game" starter kit is now up and running.

From the announcement: "... The download file is 130 MB in size and will eat up almost 290 MB of your hard disk space extracted. It is also only available in the .vsi format and can't be used in anything but XNA Game Studio Express or Visual C# Express. The main reason for this incredible size is the Textures directory, with uses mainly uncompressed .TGA files ...".

Let's race!

XNAGPUPARTICLES V1.1

There's a new version of the XNAGPUParticles application at Artificial-Studios.co.uk, with adjustments to the way the vertex texture system works among other things.

From Mike's post: "... it takes a texture and picks out pixel colours from the texture and maps it onto a large vertex buffer which then is used as the input to my Vetex Texture particle system ...".

Nice!

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.

TIP: AUTOFORMATTING MULTIPLE LINES OF TEXT

Rhysingsun has posted a code snippet for autoformatting multiple lines of text when using the new XNA's fonts system.

From the post: "... I've been putting off my GUI because I didn't want to redesign once the XNA team's font support came out, here's the first trick I created, to help myself with my GUI: autoformatting multiple lines of text. If you look into the documentation it says that the new text functionality will go the a new line with the text if the '\n' character is found. However, this makes for some static game design. What if I want the text block to be wider? ...".

Watch this space!

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?

"PROFESSIONAL XNA GAME PROGRAMMING" BOOK

Andy ("TheZMan") has written a good review of Benjamin Nitschke's book "Professional XNA Game Programming".

From Andy's post: "... The postman left a nice gift for me this morning, a copy of Ben's book. I've had a grand total of about 30 minutes to look at it so don't consider this a full review.... Firstly you can get the code for the book included versions of XNA Racer and XNA Shooter from the Wrox website. The XNA Racer and XNA Shooter sites are not up yet but Rocket Commander has been up for quite a while. I have no idea if the Racer game is identical to what was supposed to show up on the creators club site or a different version, but looks like the book version is available first ...".

Although, Benny didn't include in the book's readme file some of the XNA-news blogs that have been working hard to keep you up-to-date in the XNA world ... snif! snif! ... :( ... I still believe this is a great book, so go and buy it ... ;)

NEW VIDEO: "BULLET HELL TACTICS"

Kobingo has announced that the demo of the "Bullet Hell Tactics" game is almost complete, and along with the announcement comes a new video of its gameplay:

Enjoy!

NEW VIDEO: "TEH GAME"

Epsicode has posted a new video of his game: "Teh Game".

Enjoy!

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.

SHARKY'S "AIR LEGENDS" AND XNA GSE "REFRESH"

Lawrence has announced that you'll do fine with the latest release of his game -"Sharky's Air Legends"- and the "refresh" update for XNA GSE v1.

From Lawrence's post: "... So I won’t be needing to rush out a new release to be compatible. You’ll be fine with the last one ...".

YAY!!!

A SIMPLE POST-PROCESSING BLOOM/BLUR EFFECT

Jamezila from skasoftware.com has submitted a handy tutorial on post processing bloom/blur effects to Ziggyware, which includes source code and a zip file to downlaod.

Read on!

ADDING "HYSTERESIS" TO YOUR DECISION MAKING CODE

Shawn has posted and interesting tutorial on how to handle discrete decision making from the changes in the values of continuos analog input: just by adding "hysteresis".

From Shawn's post: "... The problem is, game simulations tend to produce a lot of small and basically random fluctuations from one frame to the next. When these values are used to control a discrete decision, and when the input value is close to the decision threshold, the results can look pretty silly ...".

There's an interesting discussion going on there, so I suggest you read the post.

Bye!

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!

"WHICH VISUAL STUDIO VERSION WILL YOU USE?"

JoeN's asking "Which Visual Studio version will you use?".

From Joe's post: "... As we finish up the refresh release to XNA Game Studio Express, we are looking at the next major version and some decisions that need to be made. I wanted to get some impressions from people around a particular topic that I am currently looking at.

As many of you know, Visual Studio is releasing a new version at the end of this year (codenamed Orcas). One of the major features we are planning to add in the next major version of XNA Game Studio Express is the ability to create games in all SKUs of Visual Studio (Express, Standard, Pro, etc). With Orcas coming, the next obvious question is which release of Visual Studio should/can we support ...".

Also, there's a thread on the Creator's site on this regard.

This is an important step in the future of XNA GSE, so c'mon and share your thoughts!

NEED SOME IMAGES OF 360 CONTROLLER BUTTONS?

If so, then just visit Mykres Space site and download the files with these images:

Quite useful!

QUO VADIS CONFERENCE 2007

Head onto Benjamin Nitschke's blog to see some photos from this year's "Quo Vadis" Conference in Berlin, where Benny's showed off some of the XNA-based games he made (like the formerly called "XNA Racer" and GDC's "Dungeon Quest").

From Benny's post: "... There was not much interaction with the audience because most people had no questions, but I talked my way through it and I heard some positive feedback about XNA later ...".

Shy audience, ugh?