"PCGZINE 4" NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

This month issue of PGCZine is now available for free download. As always, you have read it right, free download.

The issue includes a full interview with Michal Madej -Chief Designer of the RPG "The Witcher", previews of "Empire Earth III" and "Frontlines: Fuel of War", and more, much more.

So, what are you waiting for?! Download it now!

THE "... SUCK" TRILOGY

Shawn Hargreaves has published a series of three posts declaring war to keyboards, gamepads and those handy little friends: computer mice!

He mentions the awful truth of these peripherals as far as game programming is concerned.

From Shawn's posts: "... Gamepads, like keyboards, are not perfect. They are designed to be cheap, sturdy, and nice to hold: accuracy comes second ...".

You can find the installments here:

• "Keyboards Suck",
• "Gamepads Suck", and
• "Mice Suck".

The posts give useful advice on how to deal with keyboards and gamepads as well as explains how XNA makes our lives easier for reading thumbsticks' absolute positions.

Enjoy!

"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!" ... ;)

TIPS: "SOFTWARE EFFICIENCY AND OPTIMIZATION - PART 2"

The awaited second part of the series is now available on "Advice From the Swamp" blog.

This time Thomas explains the initial How To's for benchmarking your algorithms and methods -and includes two source code samples.

From Thomas post: "... If benchmarking shows your algorithm has problems without implementation optimizations, you are probably better off with a different algorithm. Which isn't to say that these sorts of optimizations aren't still useful. But it's better to do these selectively, once you have your code implemented and have profiled it to find specific problem areas. We'll look at how to use a profiler to find these problem areas next week, in Part 3 ...".

Cannot wait for part 3 ... :)

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?

"XNA WEEKLY ROUNDUP 18-03-07 TO 26-03-07"

Mykres has published his "Weekly Roundup" which covers source codes, projects, games, new blogs/sites, tutorials and game releases from March 18, 2007 to March 26, 2007.

From Mykres' post: "... It has been a relatively quite week in the world of XNA; this must be due to the April Update coming soon. But through the week we have seen some discussions on Performance. I remember with Managed DirectX everyone seemed to be talking about the Perfect Game Loop, but with XNA it seems to be Performance and the Foreach functions, this month cornflower Blue gives us some thoughts on the Foreach loop.

We also got to see the release of some more applications including Sky burner and Realms of Keldar, both of these are games ported from another code base.

This week David Weller gives us an introduction into Source control with the express products, as well as giving some praise to Sharky on his Air Legends Game (Which now includes Multi Player Split Screen). But most of All David tells us that the XNA Teams are Hiring, note that you do not send your information to David please follow the correct path for any applications or Questions.

Also George from XNADevelopment has posted a brief game design spec for his Dream Build Play entry. ...".

Find the whole news update here ...

BLADE3D PRICES HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED!

Along with the latest build of this amazing framework (that is, build 1595), the guys behind its development have finally announced both licenses and prices.

From GameDev.net's announcing post: "... Pricing for Blade3D 1.x will be $99 for non-commercial use, and $249 for commercial use. The open and free Beta 1 of Blade3D can be downloaded from the product website at http://www.blade3d.com ..."

Let's the games begin ...

"SOME CODE IS MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS"

No, it's not Confusio ... it's Shawn Hargreaves striking back on the topic of optimization.

In his latest post, Shawn talks about how to priorize and optimize things when dealing with different kind of programming, plus he opens the x-files of his life and reveals some dirty secrets of his past.

From Shawn's post: "... This is one of the reasons I like having a content pipeline that separates build time data processing from my runtime game code. The more computations I can move from my game into a custom content processor, the less product code I have to write. Processors are internal utilities that only ever have to run on my computer, so I can get away with all kinds of shortcuts that would never be acceptable if I was doing this processing as part of my shipping game code. ...".

I agree. What is more, for those of you who may think that the content processor could turn out to obstruct the creation of a game editor (say, for the PC platform) by using the XNA Framework, I'm afraid that you are forgeting something: "MS Build" console application and the "XNA Content Builder Application" comes to the rescue when you need to import content "on-the-fly" (unless of course you decide to make your own "dynamic" loader).

Cheers!

WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF XNA GAME STUDIO EXPRESS?

Good question.

Michael Klucher explains who are behind "XNA", or in better words, the teams in charge of the respective areas that make up "XNA" as a whole.

From Michael's post: "... To translate that a bit, XNA is a brand that encompasses all of the game development products, initiatives and services for developing games on Microsoft platforms. So you may be wondering "Who's responsible for the development of XNA Game Studio Express?" There are several teams that make up XNA ...".

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NEW XNA BLOG: "ADVICE FROM THE SWAMP"

There's a new blogger in the XNA Community: Thomas Aylesworth (you can also see screenshots and or download his game: "Space Invasion").

And he's opened with a great subject ...one of the topics that Shawn likes most :) ... Software Efficiency and Optimization (Part 1).

As you an see this is the first installment of a series so stay tuned to his blog.

Cheers!

DAVID WELLER SAYS "WE ARE HIRING!"

Dave's latest post informs that there are 5 opening jobs in the "XNA Developer Connection" organization, so if you're interested and think you qualify just follow the links included in his post to submit your resume.

Good luck!

[When will be the day when only C# is requested? ... C++ is still a must ... also, what about "tele-working"? ... ok, let's stop the daydream ... back to the ultracave!]

AN AD-HOC 3D PRIMER

Things have been a bit quiet in the XNA world lately -like a calm before the storm, so I decided to post some useful links for those who want to do the first steps into 3D and thus, need to understand some basic concepts.

First things first, mathematical concepts: undertanding vectors and matrices. You will learn how to operate with both as well as understand some relevant concepts like the difference between dot and cross products. Of course, further separated reads can be found on vectors and matrices.

Assuming that you've got that clear, you can then move onto the next concept: coordinate systems. What's the difference between local and world coordinates? What's tangent space? You'll get a first glimpse to these concepts, dont' worry.

Now enters transformation matrices. So, what's a transformation matrix? You will learn that in order to get the desired and or correct 3D projection, the order how you operate with matrices is the key.

Ok, let's take a larger step here, ... this topic is not particularly referred to 3D only, but it comes very handy when you want to build a game engine and start dealing with parent and children objects moving along together and thus, with matrices concatenation: scene-graph.

Implementing a scenegraph varies on a per-project basis, but if you understand the basic concepts you will do well, even if you don't (want to) call it a scene-graph in your source code or want to avoid its whole implementation but still preserve its functionality.

Well, as you can see, this is just an ad-hoc primer, built by just browsing the web with the help of search engines, so if you don't have money to buy a good book on the subject you will find that Internet is a great place to find the information you need if you're patient while searching.

Have a nice read ...

NVIDIA GDC'07 PRESENTATIONS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

nVidia has released for public access the slides presented during GDC 2007, which cover among other things: rendering tips and tricks, Direct3D 10 topics, and a preview of the features included in the long awaited FX Composer 2.

The slides are available in PDF files and can be found here.

By the way, for those that heard some rumors about FX Composer 2 coming out next month, the slides are clear, and I quote:

• Public Beta, early April 2007
• Final Release, early May 2007

Cheers!

GAMEVIDEOS.COM'S GDC2007 COVERAGE ON XNA

News in line with my previous post: GameVideos.Com has published a series of 3 videos interviewing Shane Kim (Microsoft Game Studios Vice-President) and Dave Mitchell (Microsoft Game Developer Group Director of Marketing).

Part 1 of 3:

Part 2 of 3:

Part 3 of 3:

Enjoy!

"THE YOUTUBE OF GAMES: MICROSOFT GAME STUDIO'S SHANE KIM ON XNA STUDIO EXPRESS"

Gamasutra has published a 3-page article entitled "The YouTube of Games: Microsoft Game Studio's Shane Kim on XNA Studio Express", covering among other topics, the future of XNA GSE.

From the article: "... With the release of XNA Game Studio Express just behind them, Gamasutra met with Microsoft Game Studios' corporate vice president Shane Kim, and Microsoft Game Developer Group director of marketing Dave Mitchell in the heat of the 2007 Game Developers Conference.

In this extensive interview, we discussed the Xbox 360's current placement in the market, the possibility of making harddrives mandatory, the state of Microsoft Game Studios in Japan, future Zune connectivity with the 360, Kim's thoughts about the competition, and the future of XNA Game Studio Express, both commercially and for educational purposes. ...".

Interesting read.

AREN'T "THEY INCREDIBLES"?

If you happened to read some of my previous posts you may have noticed that I'm quite a fan of comics books, superheroes films and animations.

If you did, you may have also noticed that I'm a fan of the animated movie "The Incredibles", but the video you are going to watch is way too much, so relax and ... enjoy??

Having watched this, only one question remains: what's next?

"XNA WEEKLY ROUNDUP 12-03-07 TO 18-03-07"

Mykres has published his "Weekly Roundup" which covers source codes, projects, games, new blogs/sites, tutorials and game releases from March 12, 2007 to March 18, 2007.

From Mykres' post: "... Ok, that's it for this week; remember if you have anything that you would like added please post. Also one more thing if you have any questions on the XNA Framework, Game Studio Express or any other game development question you can drop over to http://creators.xna.com. Or you could jump onto the IRC and talk with us all live, we are currently living on Efnet under the Channel XNA, hope to see you there. ...".

Watch this space!

KYLE SCHOUVILLER ON 2D COLLISION DETECTION

Kyle has posted a nice read with tips useful to face the task of inplementing Collision Detection in Two Dimensions.

From Kyle's post: "... Use the Separating Axis Theorem. Use a space-division scheme, like a Quadtree. Use multiple levels of collision detection to avoid unnecessary testing. Use a common bounding structure for all objects so they can interact generically. Those are things I learned when I did it. ...".

Stay tuned!

DO YOU NEED SOURCE CONTROL WITH XNA GSE?

I guess you do, so go head onto Dave's latest post and read on for details on the options available to ease your versioning needs.

From Dave's post: "... While it's true you could spend a whopping $595 (retail) for the full version of Visual SourceSafe 2005, you might instead look at alternatives. One such product that I heartily recommend (not as a Microsoft employee, but as an individual) is SourceGear's Vault. ..."

Downloading it right now ...

MACHAIRA'S MVP SUMMIT SUMMARY

Machaira has published a day-by-day detailed summary of this year's Microsoft MVP Summit.

From Machaira's post: "... The sessions today were all about DirectX and XNA. Good stuff. The future of XNA is looking incredible is about all I can say. The team is dedicated to making it the best possible tool for game development that they can. They're all great guys too. ...".

Browse to this site to read the full post.