IN THE LINE OF FIRE

"Joystiq" has published and interwiev to Major Nelson, who talks about Guitar Hero downloads Halo 3 and other stuff.

From the post: "... We had an opportunity to chat with Microsoft mascot-in-training Major Nelson, early yesterday morning as the internet began its incredible, violent reaction against the pricing of the Guitar Hero downloadable tracks on Xbox 360. Major Nelson listened to a few sample comments from Joystiq readers, and he had a lot to say. (He also gives imaginary "bonus points" to the "Horse Armor song" commenter.) ...".

I like this part: "... We've talked Sony, we've talked Microsoft. You own a Wii yet?

MN: Yeah, I have a Wii. I got a Wii probably about two, three months ago ..."

There's nothing wrong with the answer, but ... busted!!! ;)

HOW TO PLAY "BULLET HELL TACTICS"

Kobingo has posted an online help file for "Bullet Hell Tactics" game.

The rules and How to's are useful for any register beta tester, so if you are one, and need some guidance to play the game, just pay a visit to this blog and read on.

More news after the brake ...

"CHAOS": A SIMPLE AND SMART GAME

As announced by Ziggy here, the guys from Borderline Interactive have released a demo version of the game "Chaos" and a video showing off the gameplay:

The game is simple in concept but still presents with elegance a nice and catchy gameplay -I really like this kind of smart games- and of course the physics were implemented accordingly.

Stay tuned to site for the upcoming release of the full version of the game.

"THE PROJECT TYPE IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THIS INSTALLATION"

"You turn on your computer as every normal day, grab your coffee cup, prepare yourself a nice warm coffee as Windows starts, of course with the usual amount of sugar -please, don't exaggerate- and go back to your nice and comfortable desk, your Kingdom, then start C# Express -or any edition of Visual Studio 2005- and decide to create a .NET Framework 3 project from scratch, so you click on "New Project" and select "Window Application (WPF)"; the hard-drive then emits the normal sounds of "working/busy" while the new project is being created, but suddenly the following message pops up: "The project type is not supported by this installation". You say: "WHAT!!!", and with that your great day has turned into a #$%&$@ nightmare ..."

No, the above is not part of the plot of a movie scene, it's life, real life and it's just happened to me. Fortunately, I found this thread on MS forums which presented a quick and easy fix, which -at least in my case- worked.

The fix:

1. Open a VS 2005 Command Prompt,
2. Enter the following command: regsvr32.exe "%vs80comntools%\..\IDE\projectaggregator.dll", and finally
3. Execute %vs80comntools%\..\IDE\VCSExpress /setup (if you are using c# Express), or instead, execute %vs80comntools%\..\IDE\devenv /setup (if you are using VS 2005).

Take due note that "%vs80comntools% ..." is an environment variable, so the above-mentioned command lines should work "as is". However, if it doesn't because the path is not found -maybe some or all of the environmental variables set by the IDE are currently messed up in your system- just replace the "%vs80comntools%" term with your real path to the files' folder and the command should now execute.

Now, try to re-create the project again and it should all now go ok, as if nothing wrong had happened in the first place.

Cheers!

THAT'S ALL FOLKS!

This is pretty much it for today!

I think I have posted a great bunch of news, some from this last weekend, some from today, but still news.

I gotta rest now, and watch for my daily activities (I need to "live", you know? I mean, out from the XNA ring).

Hope you have found the news' posts useful.

'till tomorrow.

SHAWN HARGREAVES ON THREE-POINT LIGHTING

For those of us who sometime happened the get or still get in touch with 3D animation (or photography, or cinematography, ...), hearing "Three-Point Lighting" technique should ring a bell.

It does, doesn't it? But, have you ever wonder why you had to use this visual technique? If you don't know the answer yet and still wonder why, just browse to Shawn's blog to find out.

From Shawn's post: "... Pretty much every movie ever made and every fashion shot ever photographed have depended on this lighting rig. There are many variations:

• To increase the perception of shape without needing too much contrast between light and shadow, tint the key light yellow and the others blue.
• For a moody drama, make the key light much brighter than the fill.
• For a cheerful sit-com, make all three lights equally bright.
• For a scary effect, position the key light low to the ground.
• For a mysterious or fantastic effect, make the back light unusually bright so the character seems to glow around the edges.

But the underlying principle is always the same. Things simply look better when lit this way ...".

Read on!

"TORQUE CONSTRUCTOR" NOW AVAILABLE

Again, news not related to XNA (at least, for now).

GarageGames has released the long awaited "Constructor" for the Torque Game Engine (TGE) and Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA), for free.

To read the full list of features go here, and to download it, here.

[Now that TorqueX is out, maybe integration of this level editor to XNA is on the roadmap ...]

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.

ZIGGY'S LOOKING FOR AN ARTIST

Maybe is not too late: Ziggy is "looking for an artist to help in a small multiplayer game project to showcase and enter into the Dream Build Play contest".

Interested? The reply to the original post.

Bye.

MORE ON OPTIMIZATION: READABILITY

What happens when "true" or "false" is not enough information from a reader viewpoint? You could optimize for readability.

From Eli's post: "... The other day I was working on my GSE game, and I had a class with an Update method. The Update returned a boolean indicating whether or not the class was finished updating. The idea was when the object was finished updating, I could stop worrying about it, and I could remove it from whatever collection was keeping track of it ...".

To get to the "Problem solved" part, just go and read Eli's full post.

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.

AIR LEGENDS: BF109 VS. SPITFIRE

Sharky published a preview of what we should expect for his next build of "Air Legends" game.

From Sharky's post: "... Apologies for the quietness of this blog lately. Rest assured I’ve been working as hard as ever. ...".

No need to apologize, man!

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.

WANT TO WIN A 360?

DotNetSlackers announced a contest with the chance to win 1 of 3 Xbox 360 Core Systems. How? Just writing an article.

From the post: "... DotNetSlackers is proud to present its authors with the chance to win 1 of 3 Xbox 360 Core Systems (worth 299$). Simply write an article for DotNetSlackers, following our Submission Guidelines, and you’ll automatically have a chance to win 1 of 3 XBoxs. It couldn’t be simpler!

Every month, for three months, registered DotNetSlackers users will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite DotNetSlackers article and the winning author gets a brand new Xbox 360! ...".

Hurry up!

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 ...

"DISHWASHER": NEW VIDEO PLUS INTERVIEW

Remember this awesome game: "The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai"?

Two things:

• Ziggy has interviewed James Silva, the author of this game, who answers a question that has been wandering around the XNA community: "Why the name?", and
• A new video of the gameplay is available for our joy:

From Ziggy's post: "... James will be graduating from college soon and is looking for a job around the up-state New York area ..."

Good luck, buddy! ... but with a game like "Dishwasher" I guess you won't need it ... ;)

XBOX 360 NEWS

Microsoft has announced that Instant Messaging is coming to the 360 through Windows Live™ Messenger, among other new features to be distributed within the "XBOX 360 Spring Update".

You may wonder: "ok, but how can one input text to the 360 fast and easy?". The answer is straight ahead by just looking at the following picture:

Please follow this link for a full description of all the new features available within the Spring Update.

Now, if only I had a 360 ...

NEW BLOG: "IMERSIVA.COM"

A new blogger has come to the XNA community, introducing "System Warrior" multiplayer-action game.

You can watch a video preview of the game, here.

Enjoy!