Do as I say, not as I do ...

Thursday, October 02, 2008

XNA GS CONNECT UPDATE

In preparation to the extreme makeover that the 360's Dashboard will experience later this year, Michael Klucher has announced a new version of XNA Game Studio Connect.

This version will allow us to also run XNA Framework 3.0 games. So, this is a perfect time to start porting our projects to XNA 3.0, don't you think?

Head over Michael's site to know how to get the upgrade, which is a manual process.

'till next time,
~Pete

UNOFFICIAL SAMPLES FOR XNA 3 BETA

Hey folks!

Since the moment the CTP was out I spent some time to update all the samples available on the creators site to that early version of XNA 3.0, for my-own use.

Then, when the beta was published, and taking into account that maybe we will see no big changes to it until the final release, I decided to recreate them -complying with the license terms and conditions- so that I can publish them on the Web for those who eventually need them.

One important note: these files are NOT official so use them at your own risk!!! Otherwise, you can wait till 3.0 final gets released and thus, for the official education files.

The only changes in the code that you will see are those related to the 2D projects that used the WrapAngle method (created in the same class that used it). Instead, MathHelper.WrapAngle(...) is now in place. And ... yes! I almost forgot: each zip file contains a Windows-only project.

Well, here they go (hold on to something):

First Wave:

Second Wave:

Yes! Third Wave:

I think ... This Is The Fourth Wave (?)

Ok. Who Am I? And Why Am I Typing This?

No, Seriously ... (Why The Heck Am I Doing This?)

Phewww! At last, I finished ... man, I stopped counting after the first 20 links.

Well, I'm done, so in case you're using XNA 3.0 beta, I hope you find them useful.

Cheers!
~Pete

BLOGGING AGAIN!

Wow! It's been a while since my last post here. The reason: getting my life back to normal after my visit to Seattle/Vancouver.

A lot has happened since my last post. I'm still creating my own engine with XNA 3.0 (the latter is now out in beta), I submitted my demo game for the DBP compo, and we witnessed how a "ninja cat" approaches.

About my entry, well, it was created in 10 days ... the last 10 days before the submission deadline! I'm proud of the result but not proud at all about the code ... that implementation goes against of all my believes and practices in software design. But, it had to be done on time no matter what if I wanted to enter the compo. Why did I start so late? Well, that's a loooong story (maybe I'll blog about it some other time).

Man! There's a lot of great entries this year that really show off the power of XNA. If you want to take a look at them just go to http://video.msn.com/ and search for videos tagged, say, DBP? ... or "Dream Build Play", thanks Lawrence ;)

My favorites are ... well, I'll let you know after the results are in :-D

Ok, I think that's it for now but stay tuned since more is comming next!

Saturday, August 09, 2008

BACK HOME

Yeap, after two weeks abroad, my wife and I got finally back home.

Visiting Vancouver for the first time has been a great experience for us. The city is great and people seem not to know the word "stress". The only minus, at least for us: everything is expensive there. But, what the heck, we were on vacation ...

Seattle's gamefest: as I said in my previous post, a great experience. The talks were very instructive. Sometimes it was hard to pick the ones to attend, but I'm not omnipresent, right? In this sense, I hardly walked around the city, but at least "I've been in the Space Needle".

Overall, some quality time. I hope to repeat it next year.

Cheers!

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

THE GAMEFEST HAS BEEN GREAT SO FAR

Oh man, I'm really excited of having travelled this far to get to Seattle's Gamefest.

I've been talking with many different people (peers, MSFties, MS partners, exhibitors, etc.), giving and collecting cards like crazy, and played a lot of games. In short, having a really quality time.

In this sense, meeting the guys behind XNA GS have been really nice: Shawn, Eli, Michael, and the rest of the guys. Also cool Xna'ers like Chad Carter, Bill Reiss, and of course, "old" XNA'ers (and ex-MSFTies) like TheZMan (Andy).

Also it has been a great opportunity to discuss some crazy ideas and techniques that I have and of course want to implement in the near future, and believe me when I say that the feedback has been encouraging (thanks Shawn).

The talks have been quite handy. Lots of techniques, upcoming features, relevant information, and of course: the yummy 70% that we "indies" could get if we reach the next phase with our games.

So, guys, tomorrow I'll be returning to Vancouver with my wife and sister, so maybe I can post more comments about the conference.

Opps. Have to go. The next talk is starting.

See ya.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

MY FIRST DAY IN VANCOUVER ...

... Well, actually in Canada.

My wife and I are visiting my sister and brother-in-law who both live in Vancouver, BC. After 30 hours of flights we finally got to Seattle where they were waiting for us. Then we have like 4 more hours to travel by car until we finally got to Vancouver.

All our flights were delayed with the exception of the first one, so we had to wait ... we missed one local flight in the US ... we were rebooked by the company ... more wait ... lost our luggage in one of the connecting flights ... finally found it on destination on the baggage claim, you know ... the usual stuff with long-international flights.

In the end, it was an interesting experience, specially for my wife, since it is the first time she leaves the Southamerican continent. For me, I have travelled around the world so I'm accustomed to deal with delays, connections, baggage, etc. Actually, I kinda missed it.

Next monday, I'm going to Seattle and attend the Gamefest for the first time. I'm really excited.

So guys I hope to meet you there.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

VS 2008 & .NET 3.5 SP 1 BETA RELEASES

I was reading Scott Guthried's blog this morning so I found a great surprise: the first Service Pack beta release for both, Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 is out.

One of the things that amazed me while reading through the new features we'll find in the final release has the following title: "WPF Interoperability with Direct3D".

But why does this means a lot to me -or should mean a lot to us XNA-based game developers?

If you ever attempted to integrate a D3D-based game/application into a WPF-based project, you may know that one of the hard burdens to surpass to get that job done is called "Airspace", a strict rule that prevents both type of applications to co-exist in the same region of the screen, at least without a simple solution.

And I say simple here because to "bend" this rule a little bit to make the user believe that a real integration exists -meaning, as if there was not Airspace at all in the first place- either you had to use a decorator-pattern-based implementation or a solution where you intercept all windows messages in order to "bake" all pixels rendered by D3D into an image that can be later used by any WPF control ... if you want to know more about this rule and or get one of these solutions or both of them just do a simple Internet search with the words "DirectX WPF Airspace" :)

Well, as this is becoming a built-in feature now, it means that we can stop worrying about finding or choosing the optimum way to integrate D3D and WPF, what in turn means that we don't have to constraint our D3D-based projects to WinForms controls anymore and thus we can let our imagination fly to create a rock-solid kicking @$$ game-level editor using WPF and XNA -specially now that GS 3 integrates into VS2008.

Really great news ... although we have to wait a bit more to get our hands on this feature until the final SP is released ... :)

Cheers!
Pete

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

HAVING DRIVER PROBLEMS WITH 64-BIT VISTA?

I have received today a newsletter from CNET.com with a list of programs to watch during this year 2008.

To my surprise one of the programs -called "Magic 64-Bit Vista Wonderland"- claims to solve all driver-incompatibility issues with 64-Bit Vista OS.

My version of Vista is 32-bit, however, I decided to post a link to the program for those of you who need to resolve driver issues. The file is free to download and only 11k! C'mon ...

... Btw, use it at your own risk!

[!ekoj s'loof lirpA na si siht :gninraW]

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

NOT THAT EMPTY ...

There's a great series of articles regarding game development with XNA being posted at this blog: "Running on Empty".

So far, 16 out of 25 articles have been posted covering a lot of aspects of game development both, in theory and in practice, not only to get started but also to help you implement advanced features such as "physics".

But the best is yet to come since the remaining articles will cover more advanced topics like "parallel split shadow mapping", deferred shading and "split space ambiet occlusion".

Happy reading!

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

MEET ME AT THE SAVOY

Hi guys!

As you may know the pictures of each of the three winners of The Code Project's VS 2008 Compo (sponsored by Microsoft - Defy All Challenges) are being cyclically shown on the "Defy All Challenges" site.

I guess now it's my turn to appear on the site (finally!): http://www.visualstudio2008.defyallchallenges.com/.

Cheers!

Saturday, February 23, 2008

WHAT'S THE MEANING OF "XNA"?

Interesting question ... if you are taking a long brake with a cup of coffe or a beer on your hand as well as allowing your eyesight to go out the window into deep space (I mean both "windows", your computer's OS and your office/home's one).

A couple of days ago I watched "The Da Vinci Code" on DVD and some "late nights" ago -given that I was sleepless- a rerun of "2001: Space Odyssey" on Cable, so as you can guess I soon remembered the meaning behind "HAL" -the computer of the ship- that some guys used to argue. What is worse and sad, I suddenly started to look for patterns in almost everything: "23, 23, ...".

With the recent announcements that we can create games for Zune, and being mainly influenced by the first-mentioned film above, I started to think over the meaning of the word "XNA", if any.

I know it has been officially claimed that there is no real meaning behind the 3 letters, but WHAT IF those letters resulted from other 3 letters ... (?)

Following this crazy idea I played around a few minutes "shifting" the letters a couple of places back and forward and hereunder you will find what I got:

V W X Y Z
L M N O P
Y Z A B C

I don't have a clue what "VLY" and "YOB" could stand for, but let's take a look at the remaining two arrangements:

WMZ : "Windows Mobile Zune", and my favorite
ZPC : "Zune PC Console".

Now, which platforms will XNA be officially supporting on this mid-to-yearend 2008? ... wait ... processing ... wait ... got it! ... Yeap ... Windows (PC), XBox360 (Console) and Zune (errr ... Zune?) ... XNA sounds way better than WMZ and or ZPC.

Coincidence? Maybe ... :)

Watch this space!

[I know I have lost my mind but you still have a way out ... just avoid the combo of films: "The Da Vinci Code" and "2001". Don't worry, better posts are coming soon. I promise!]

Thursday, February 21, 2008

XNA GS 3: THE LUCKY NUMBER!

Being an old timer, it's incredible to see how fascinating the world of XNA is moving ahead. Since Managed DX first appeared, there also appeared the first steps of a big company to introduce C#, and managed code in general, into the game-development industry.

After all the uncertainty around the future of managed code in games when the doom of MDX 2 was unveiled -specially for all us who had embraced c# and MDX for our game projects, a new word started to being rumored with higher and higher strength: XNA.

Since the first beta of XNA GS was released, this baby has been growing up at a steady and solid pace. In fact, with this recent great announcement, MS has confirmed that is betting a hugh stake on the project and if you ask me, it's a winner bet. Other big companies are trying to copycat the idea, but they aren't moving that fast and that well, plus they're still attached to C++ ... and I love C#!

Being an indie, knowing that in a few months I'll have the possibility to sell my games for the XBox 360 as well as produce games for Zune is really exciting. It's very difficult and expensive to make a game project to reach the "going gold" phase, and MS way may prove to be an affordable means to show off our creations, get a contract with a publisher and why not, directly sell our games with an interesting profit, why not?

I don't know about you, but I was waiting to hear (or read) something like this all these years. Thumbs up for the XNA Team! Way to go ...

Cheers!

Monday, January 14, 2008

KUDOS FOR THE WINNERS!

The winners of The Code Project's "Visual Studio 2008 Competition" have been announced:

Legion : Build your own virtual super computer with Silverlight by Daniel Vaughan, and
Silverlight 1.1 Fun and Games by Sacha Barber.

In addition to the prizes for finalists, these guys will receive $10k and $2k, respectively.

Congrats guys!

Monday, January 07, 2008

MY ARTICLE IS ON THE FINALS!!!

Someone pinch me please since I must be dreaming ... I made it into the finals !!!

I would like to thank all the readers that supported my article "XNA & Beyond: The Path To VS 2008". I really appreciate your comments, your messages and your votes.

Also, thanks a lot to the judges for picking my article and of course, The Code Project team. I cannot express in words how happy I am, but trust me when I say this emotion is huge.

And what can I comment about Visual Studio 2008? Best of the best ... it rules!

Finally, I would like to thank the XNA Team for giving us this incredible framework that is getting better and better as we speak: XNA Game Studio.

Well, I don't know whether I'll get beyond this nomination to the finals, but having reached this far gives me renewed energy to keep on writing articles.

Happy new year 2008 everybody!!! This is a great way for me to start the year :)

Cheers!
Pete

Sunday, December 30, 2007

WELL GUYS, THIS IS IT ...

As we approach this year-end the time for voting for my article is vanishing quickly.

For those who may not know it yet, the article is participating on a contest that ends tomorrow where there are two places left to enter the finals.

As I'm competing with many "heavy-weight" experienced authors I hope that those who haven't voted so far, decide to give me a friendly hand and vote for it.

BTW, I'll be out tomorrow so I want to wish you a Happy New Year 2008!

Cheers!

Pete

Friday, December 28, 2007

HOW TO: XNA-BASED GAME ON A WEBPAGE

For those of you interested in my article ("Xna & Beyond"), I have -what I consider- an interesting update (btw, don't forget to vote for my article since it's on a compo!).

You may remember that I was trying to investigate how to use the Silverlight technology with XNA. The bad news is that v1.1_alpha does not allow to host WinForms controls; the good news is that v2 -the new name for the final release of v1.1- will do!

I didn't want to wait so thinking more on the problem, I remembered how to embed an .NET assembly into a web page. Digging further into the subject I finally succeded. Read the section The "Silverlight" At The End Of The Tunnel for details and also download the new sample code.

A strong word of warning here: the new example code provided in the article is for learning purposes only. So do not recommend -as I don't recommend it- anyone to modify his/her machine's security giving full trust to any assemblies or websites since it could open the door for security risks.

Maybe I should start and hold a project at CodePlex. I don't know ... we shall see ;)

Well, enjoy!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Hi,

I think I'll be busy tomorrow so I'll post it today: I whish you all a Merry Christmas!

~Pete

[Btw, thanks to all who've voted so far ... until yesterday 25 votes and a score of 4.89 out of 5, today up to 26 votes and down to 4.68 ... sigh!]

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

I NEED YOUR HELP, GUYS!

As you may know, a few days ago I submitted an article entitled "XNA & Beyond: The Path To VS 2008" to The Code Project site.

Well, the article has entered TCP's VS 2008 Compo, where 3 out 5 finalists have been already announced and in a couple of weeks the remaining 2 places will be assigned for sure.

Why do I need help? As time goes by, in order to improve my chances to make it into the finals I need more votes, so if you feel like it, can and want to help me, just read the article and cast your extremely high votes ;)

It seems that Silverlight-based articles are the ones that bring more attention to readers and voters, and XNA ones are just left behind. Are we going to allow this? I repeat: Are we going to allow this???!!!!

By the way, thanks a lot to the ZMan, Ziggyware, Gamedevkicks, and the folks on the IRC channel for their support as well as all of you who have already voted for my article.

Cheers!

[Damn! I feel like a politician during an elections campaign ...]

Sunday, December 16, 2007

XNA & BEYOND: THE PATH TO VS 2008

I have uploaded my first article to "The Code Project" site, which shows how to integrate an XNA-based application into VS 2008 (an implementation for WPF is included) ... read it here.

Also in the article I present -what I think is- a simple solution for embedding your XNA games within a WinForms control; a topic that has been heavily discussed in the (XNA Creators) forums these days.

I hope you find it useful.

Cheers!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

PROBLEMS INSTALLING "NET RUMBLE" STARTER KIT

Well, having installed XNA GS 2.0, I then downloaded and install the Net Rumble Starter Kit. The process ended without problems so everything looked ok so far.

For my surprise, when I opened VS 2005 Express and attempted to create a new project based on that kit, I found the kit wasn't shown in the IDE's projects browser.

The template was installed under this folder:

(myOSDriveLetter)/Users/(myUserName)/Documents/Visual Studio 2005/Templates/ProjectTemplates/Visual C#

... but still the IDE didn't notice it at all.

At first I thought it had something to do with the fact that I'm using a non-english version of the IDE and a non-english version of Vista 32-Bit (something similar to what it's commented here: see section 1.2.2), but I cannot set the "International Settings" to "English" since, in my case, everything is in Spanish.

So, what to do? After locating the "SpaceWar" Stater Kit template file, I found that both, PC and 360 versions, where installed under a folder named "XNA Game Studio 2.0".

So, I created a new folder under ".../ProjectsTemplates/Visual C#", then renamed it to "XNA Game Studio 2.0", finally moved the "Net Rumble" template file to that folder, and presto!

Cheers!