March 2008 Entries
Well, we are in the home stretch of our learning of XNA. We have used the excellent tutorial by Charles Cook that is located on the XNA creators club site. Beginner's Guide to XNA Game Studio Express This all-in-one tutorial is everything you need to get started with XNA Game Studio Express. Follow along with in-depth video tutorials with source code examples to learn how to create 2D and 3D games from scratch. I'm hoping this tutorial can get updated to XNA version 2. My students concentrated on...
It was nice to see that members of the Orlando DotNetNuke User Group were mentioned in the recent newsletter that Shawn Walker puts out. Under the section News Briefs you'll see Summer Training in Orlando Brian Scarbeau and DNNSPIRED owner teaming up for DNN training in June/July.. Also under User Activity you'll see that Will Strohl who goes by hismightiness is one of the top 10 posters on the dotnetnuke.com site. Way to go! User Activity Updated forum and registration stats from DotNetNuke.com:...
There were a couple of hundred Code Campers on Saturday in Heathrow, FL at Seminole Community College. The day was jam packed with 56 sessions and 13 tracks. Kudos to Microsoft MVP Shawn Weisfeld for organizing the event and running around to make sure everything was working correctly. Another kudos to Microsoft DevFish Joe Healy for always trying to hook you up with someone he knows that would be a good network contact for you. I heard that the infamous Microsoft Guru Russ Fustino was there but...
I really like it when students discover things on their own and get excited about their own learning. This week, my students have been modifying an existing XNA Pong game. They have just learned the concepts of putting sprites on the screen, moving sprites, and sprite collision. There were two games they could select and some selected the game Dan Waters put together on his blog and the other was from Bill Reiss. Basically, they had to change game play in the pong game. Some added more paddles, changed...
According to the Washington Post, industry executives fear there won't be enough new defense sector workers to replace those employees as they retire. The problem is that almost 60 percent of U.S. aerospace workers in 2007 were 45 or older could affect national security and even close the door on commercial products that start out as military technology, industry officials said. Another part of the problem is the fierce competition for a limited pool of math and science experts from all corners of...
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Super Mario Brothers is the best-selling video game of all time, with more than 40 million copies sold worldwide. If that's not enough, the games featuring Mario have sold more than 152 million copies since 1983. That includes Super Mario Brothers 1, 2 and 3, Land, World, All-Stars, 64, Sunshine and Galaxy...
On Friday, I attended a workshop that was held at Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. Rollins is an excellent Liberal Arts College which is always highly ranked in the US News Report and is also known for the Crummer MBA School. Over 100 high school teachers in Florida were invited to this event. Dr. Lewis Duncan, President of Rollins College spoke to us about his experiences teaching the Sciences and on some of the problems that he sees with students not interested in the Sciences. After his talk,...
Yes indeed! If you are a member of the Computer Science Teachers Association your school can get this offer. We invite you to try Microsoft® Expression® Web, the next generation of Web development software – at no charge. We’ll also give you a tutorial and curriculum unit - that were designed by a CSTA member - and tested by teachers and students in 10 schools this fall. Microsoft will provide FREE Expression Web software for your entire school to the first 150 US high school teachers who respond...
Thanks to Shawn Weisfeld for helping our group join the prestigious INETA community. Our group looks forward to working with organization. Here is some information about INETA: INETA: THE NEXT STEP IN USER GROUP EVOLUTION INETA provides structured, peer-based organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing worldwide community of Microsoft® .NET user groups. Our mission is to offer assistance and resources to community groups that promote and educate their membership in Microsoft's...
We had a good turnout today for our 2nd user group meeting. There were some new faces and we appreciated those members who came back for our 2nd meeting. Thanks to Mike Webb from DNNSpired.com he reviewed all the modules that his company sells and the ones that his company gives away free as well. Mike gave a live demo and showed us some cool features that his company has added on to the Users Online module and several others as well. Check out his site to see what his company has. Mike is very helpful...
For the past several weeks, my students have learned C# and started to learn XNA by reviewing the tutorial that Microsoft MVP Bill Reiss put together on his site. Today, we reviewed how to put sound into the game. The XNA Creators Club has a good video on this topic. I would highly recommend using the Sound.cs file that Bill uses in his tutorial for you to create your own sounds using XACT. You just need to change the namespace to the project you are working on and then initialize the sound under...