XNA GS 3.1 & XBOX LIVE "INDIE" GAMES

Excellent news! XNA Game Studio 3.1 is almost here! ... "almost" = the download link will be available any time soon :)

A few things to note regarding the release:

• In order to test 3.1 games on the XBox360, the XNA GS Connect must be updated, as explained by Michael Klucher,
• 3.1-based Games cannot be submitted for playtesting a/o peer review until 23rd, July,
• And from that date on, 3.1-based games won't reach the market until the Marketplace gets updated, and
• You can convert 3.0 projects to 3.1, following this walkthrough.

But this ain't all ... XBox Live Community Games is in the process of being renamed to XBox Live "Indie" Games!!! This is an additional nice surprise.

But wait! There is more ... during the week of the E3, the XNA Team announced that a new feature is comming to the Marketplace: User Ratings!

Wow! Interesting times will come for us XNA'ers, don't you think? Great news, indeed.

Enjoy,
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

ZIGGYWARE: CONTEST RESULTS & DONATIONS

You may already know this by now, but results are in for Ziggyware's "Spring 2009 XNA Article Contest":

• First Place: Perlin Noise on the GPU (by Patrick McCarthy),
• Second Place: Grid-Based Isometric Rendering (by Martin Actor), and
• Third Place: GPU Terrain Rendering with LOD (by Sergey Akopkokhyants).

Congratulations for the winners!

Ok, those are the results but why there's a "donations" word in the title of this post? Well ... Ziggyware needs you!

Once in a while, our friend Ziggy call for donations to support his site. In Ziggy's words:

It has been two years since I have had a donation drive to support Ziggyware. I would like to thank all who have donated in the past, helping to keep Ziggyware alive and well. I am currently looking into expanding the site's features and support future XNA contests with great prizes.

Question: how can we donate? Ziggy?

You can donate via Paypal as well as by purchasing by clicking an Amazon product link on this site and then purchasing the product you desire.

So c'mon! Do your good action for the day, be an outstanding XNA'er and support this great XNA Community site!

Watch this space,
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.

KARVONITE: AGILE PERSISTENCE FRAMEWORK

For those who don't know it yet, Karvonite is a project hosted in the MSDN Code Gallery, available under the term and conditions of the Microsoft Public License.

But, what is Karvonite? From the homepage's overview:

Karvonite is an object persistence framework for the .NET platform. Karvonite's goal is to relieve the developer from all serialization related programming tasks in a non-invasive way. It can save you from writing a lot of boring and thus error-prone code for moving the in-memory objects to and from the data storage. The Karvonite API is very simple and provides a gradual learning curve with a very low entry point.

Despite the fact that .NET serialization and XML files are ideal for storing data easily and effectively, in several cases they are not a viable replacement for a data engine. In contrast, not all applications require the horsepower and the excessive functionality and optimization of an enterprise database or a SQL engine; databases are a skill unto themselves and the learning curve is not as fast as expected.

Benefits? Read on ...

Transparently save/load .NET objects,

Non-invasive (no interfaces, base classes or special attributes required.),

Automatically handles object graphs and references (shared and circular),

Easy to use and deploy, and

Supports .NET Framework 3.5, XNA 3.0 (Windows, XBox360, Zune) and .NET Compact Framework 3.5.

To use this solution you will need two main components: a tool called "Persistence Model Designer" and the framework assembly named "Karvonite.dll", having both a relatively fast learning curve.

The authors of Karvonite are open to comments and suggestions, and really want to refine the solution to meet all XNA requirements. So, if your are an XNA'er go ahead and let them know the features you'd want to see in future versions of Karvonite.

Service Pack 2 for the April CTP has been released today, thus if you want to try this persistence framework go and get it here.

For further news and notifications of future releases, you can also subscribe to Karvonite's blog.

Enjoy!
~Pete

> Link to Spanish version.