George Clingerman

Learning you are a sub-par developer...

I try to spend a little time every day brushing up on my developer skills. Some days I have more success than others. I might attempt to brush up on my skills by reading a tech book (currently working through "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" by Michael C. Feathers, I'm loving that book!), practicing some new language features (I'm still wrapping my head around lambda expressions and LINQ) or just browsing tech blogs and listening to tech podcasts. I do this partly because our industry changes so rapidly that you HAVE to do this just to stay relevant but mostly because I just like learning new things. I love what I do.

Well, yesterday I stumbled across an older article by Scott Hanselman. It's not the first time I've seen it. I've read through it before. It's called What Great .NET Developers Ought To Know (More .NET Interview Questions). Last time I read through this article, I took it as a challenge. In fact my small little team started meeting to work through these questions so we could try and answer them. The ones we didn't have answers for we were researching. We were able to meet about twice before the pressures of deadlines and heavy workloads caused us to abandon the goal and the meetings just kind of died out. We had barely started on the list.

It's been over a year now since I last read that article and started on that goals (maybe almost 2 years?). I'm a better developer than I was two years ago. I know this. However in just reading that first section of questions, the ones in the "Everyone who writes code" section, I realized I couldn't answer ANY of them off the top of my head.

Sure there were a few I could probably bluff my way through. I might "generally" know an answer, but in an interview type situation if anyone leaned on me to speak a little deeper about my answer it would be pretty apparent that I really didn't know what I was talking about. I don't REALLY know the answers. And that's just for some of the questions. For other questions in that little "Everyone who writes code" section I wouldn't even know where to start answering the question and this is with me dimly remembering that we had almost covered all these beginner questions in those two meetings years ago with my team.

What does that say about me? The post says "Great" .NET developers. Kind of a blow to my ego, but I can deal with that, I'm not great. But then these questions are also suggested as interview questions. So am I not worth hiring as a developer? I mean I couldn't even get through the first section of questions.

I have a Math/Computer Science degree. I went to a fairly well respected private school and it's a pretty tough one academically (we even had Saturday classes!). So I think I'm at least semi-intelligent (maybe? pretty please, at least give me that!). I've also been programming in the work force for just about 10 years now (so I have some experience doing what I do). And it's not something I do just for a day job, I code at home as well for hours every night (so I'm not just a clock puncher). It's something I love to do. I even managed to snag a Microsoft MVP award for a few years (although to be honest that has less to do with you as a developer and more to do with you as a community member!). And like I mentioned, I try to learn something new everyday, I like to think I'm staying current with the industry (so I'm constantly actively trying to better myself!).

Yet I can't answer the questions in the "Everyone who writes code" section of a list of questions for things every Great .NET Developer ought to know and might be interviewed with at their next job....

So what does this mean? Are those questions really representative of things every .NET developer should know off the top of their head or is Hanselman just so awesome he no longer can identify with "GREAT" .NET developers and has instead made a list of questions for What FANTASTICALLY INCREDIBLE GOD LIKE .NET DEVELOPERS Ought to know?

To be honest I'm not sure. I personally think I just learned I'm a sub-par developer. Guess I have some more work to do...

posted @ Thursday, August 27, 2009 10:06 AM | Feedback (5) |

A *BIG* Thank You to…well YOU!

I can’t express enough the appreciation I have for everyone out there. (yes, it’s YOU I’m talking about!) The prayers, thoughts and support has been incredible. It meant a lot. So I just wanted to take some time to say thanks for letting me share and thanks for all the incredible feedback Wifey and I have received over the last month. I also just wanted to give everyone an update of what happened and where we are at now (well, wifey is much faster at updates than I am so she’s already done a few posts so this is old news if you’ve been reading her blog).

We went in for surgery last Wednesday (5/6/2009) for thyroid cancer. We were ready for cancer because that’s what all the tests and the biopsy said. Her thyroid was enlarged (you could see it visibly on her throat) and had a huge mass on it. Our surgeon (man, what a surgeon! I thought her handshake was going to crush my hand but I guess strong hands are a great thing for a surgeon to have!) was still skeptical. She really didn’t want to take the whole thyroid unless absolutely necessary. She was prepared to take it all if she had to, but if there was any chance that it wasn’t cancerous she only wanted to take the half with the mass.

As she began the surgery, she drew her lines for the incision as if she was going to have to take both but she started with just the bad half. After removing it, she had them do a quick test to see if the result came back cancerous. Her plan was if it preliminary (but not conclusive) test results were questionable or a no, she would stop the surgery at that point. However if it was a yes she would continue.

She got a no so we only lost half a thyroid. That was great news but still a little nerve wracking because those were just initial tests and not necessarily 100% accurate. So we were excited but still not ready to celebrate until we had the official all clear.

We then had to wait a day while they did the 100% all conclusive test and it also came back negative. Oh frabjous day callooh, callay! Wifey DOES NOT HAVE CANCER! :)

Pretty dang good new! So now we’re only dealing with one of those two things I mentioned last post. We’re still battling with depression, but we can totally do this. Wifey’s chemicals are pretty out of whack right now (with losing half a thyroid and all), but we’re hopeful they’ll stabilize soon and then we can see even more progress in this struggle with depression.

But no cancer :)

Thanks once again to everyone for…well everything! I love you all :)

posted @ Friday, May 15, 2009 1:58 PM | Feedback (6) |

Suicidal, Cancerous and Radioactive: Three things I love about my wife

I wrote a post a bit ago that was kind of a bummer. If you didn’t like that one, I suggest you move alone right now because this one is going to make that one look like rainbows and unicorns. I’ve already mentioned this has been a rough year, but well, I didn’t go into a lot of details. Now I’m going to because lately I’ve been having to pass on a lot of speaking opportunities and I’ve been dropping the ball on a lot of things that I normally help out with (Code Camp and PAXNAUG just to name a few). Rather then trying to explain to each person individually what’s going on (although I’ve already done that for some of my closer friends), I figured I would just lay it all out there for all of geekdom to enjoy.

My wife has been battling depression for a while. It’s been something we’ve learned to deal with over the years and we had all sort of strategies for getting through the rough spots. Well this year has been a little different, when she felt the oncoming symptoms of another round of depression and we begin to bunker down to get through it, rather then dropping into a little (albeit serious) depression, she nose dived off the 1,000 foot platform and plunged deep and fast into the murky black tar pits of despair. Since then she’s been contemplating suicide on an hourly basis and couldn’t get her mind off thoughts of taking her life.

Kind of a bad place to be and it happened fast. Oddly fast.

We started dealing with it right away however. Psychologist visits two days a week and daily checkins with the psychologist as well. We also met with the psychiatrist and got started on some Zoloft and Ambien (so she could actually fall asleep at night instead of shaking and trembling all night long). Per the psychologists instructions we went through the house and gathered up all the items Wifey had considered using to take her life. Talk about one morbid pile. I then removed the items I could from the house and hid the rest. She’s not even allowed to shave without me watching (not a bad thing though, I’m definitely not going to complain about having to watch my wife shave her legs! Sexy!). We also came up with ways for her to communicate how close to suicide she was feeling without having to use a lot of words. Days where she’s hanging around a 5 or 7 are good days. Days at an 8 or 9 I don’t leave her side much and if we hit a 10 I’m probably busting down a door and calling 911.

It’s been a bit scary, but we’re dealing with it. The Zoloft has finally kicked in so the number of times she’s hanging out a 8 or 9 on the suicide watch scale are rarer. Things are getting better. And we’re hoping this week gets even better. Let me explain what’s special about this week.

You see, the week I went to the MVP summit (which I almost didn’t, but luckily got friends and family help watch for me and I checked in hourly up at the summit with my wife), Wifey came down with strep throat. She had to go into the doctor so he could confirm it and prescribe her some antibiotics.During the visit the doctor noticed visibly that her thyroid was enlarged. A couple of doctor visits and one biopsy later and it was confirmed that she had thyroid cancer. So there’s some hope (I know crazy that cancer gave us some hope!).

The hope is that the thyroid cancer was causing her chemicals to go all out of wack (an official medical term I’m sure) and that’s why she spiked so quickly into suicidal waters. At least that’s what her psychologist, psychiatrist and I are all theorizing. We’ll soon know though because the surgery is this week.

That’s right, on Wednesday my beautiful, suicidal and cancerous wife will go under the knife to have her thyroid removed. It should be a pretty straightforward surgery but it’s definitely still something that’s pretty nerve-wracking (especially for someone already dealing with depression…).

If you’ve been paying attention you’ll notice that I’ve covered two of the three things I love about my wife. Suicidal and cancerous. But radioactive? That’s the last bit of fun that we just recently learned about. Apparently if you’re going to get cancer, thyroid cancer is the way to go. They remove the cancer and then lucky you, you won’t need to go through chemotherapy or anything. In fact, all you have to do is take these iodine pills. These radioactive iodine pills. We’re still not sure about all the details of these pills but from what we’ve been reading online (and depending on state laws) she may have to be placed into isolation for a period of a few days to up to a month. If she’s allowed to come home she’s apparently not supposed to have human contact or even sit on the same couch with anybody for any length of time.

Those are going to be fun times. Especially with 4 young boys all wanting to give their radioactive mother a hug! We’ll know more after the surgery, but I’m expecting this month to get very interesting! We’re still debating over what type of mutation she’s going to grow. She was hoping for something cool like flight or laser beam eyes but I’m convinced it’s going to be some useless or lame mutation like being able to speak with a perfect British accent whenever she wants. No one ever gets the cool mutations anymore!

So things do sound a bit rough, but on the bright side, things could be a lot worse. We have great insurance that has been covering all of the mental health issues we’re battling. We’ve been on top of and dealing with each thing coming our way and really we’re doing ok. It could be a fast growing cancer and it’s not. It could be a cancer that requires chemo and it’s not. The kids have been adjusting but they’re great little men and have always been a help out around the house and they love taking care of mom. They’re really sweet with her and I’ve always taught them  that she’s the queen and we all serve her. We’ve had lots of help from friends and family and the doctors. So really even those things seem like an overwhelming mess, we’ve had the strength and the resources to deal with them.

Anyway, I know I don’t want to keep writing these depressing posts, I really wish I could show everyone that things really are going well for me, I’m actually smiling and happy right now. And Wifey *IS* getting better. She’s really been great. (If you want to check out a couple of my wife’s posts from her perspective read these ones here and here. She’s a great writer and pretty brave just to be sharing.) Even battling with depression she still try's to do nice sweet things for me when she’s having a “clear” moment (thanks again for my comic books the other day!). So yes, definitely not everything is bad and I don’t want everyone feeling sad, but I did want to explain why I might be being a flake in other areas right now. I’m kind of internally focused right now so if you’ve been waiting for a response from me or wanted me to speak or help out with something, I seriously apologize, but you’ve been re-prioritized right now (down in case you hadn’t figured that out…).

I think if anyone else out there is struggling with anything like this, I would just say make sure you’re being proactive. Don’t put off getting treatment. Mental illness is a serious thing and don’t lose a love one because you’re embarrassed by it or you think it will just go away. Tackle these things head on and get the help you need. Lean on friends when you need them. People in your life care about you and let that care and love re-charge you and give you the energy you need to get through it.

But there you have it, that’s what is going on in my life and I love my suicidal, cancerous and radioactive wife.

posted @ Sunday, May 03, 2009 5:23 PM | Feedback (11) |

I've had better years

I've been resisting doing this post. Really I have. With how poorly the world is doing (Economic Crisis 2009!) and all the sad sob stories I'm reading everyday, I really didn't want to be adding to the "woe is me!" noise out there already. But yeah, this has been a pretty crappy year so far. And honestly, I haven't had worse. All is not lost however, so just so it's not *ALL* bad, I will say, it's really not as bad as it could be either. (I at least still have some perspective!).

I mean really, overall I'm doing pretty well. I'm happy and life is treating me pretty good, I'm not really a complainer (ok, maybe I am...), but yeah, lol, this has been one doozy of a year so far. I don't even know where to begin.

We started this year off with getting a nasty round of the norovirus. I personally lost about 6 pounds from wrestling with that hell I wouldn't wish upon anyone. And you truly haven't experienced misery until you have five other family members all puking up stomach acids around you. It was a truly horrible experience. I want to share the details just so I'm not trapped alone with them in my mind...but I won't. I'll be nice to you this time. But oh my gosh the smell.

So yeah, that was the start of the year. It just kept going from there.

This year we've been dealing with depression. It's gotten really bad for wifey again. I feel like I could write a book titled "Married to Depression". There's been just so much I've learned about depression over the years and how to deal with it when you're not the one who actually suffers from it. We're taking all the right steps though and we've been through this before so we're hoping to see the light soon on this one. Unfortunately she's got other stuff going on. Cysts, a dead tooth and wisdom teeth that aren't going to come in. Going to be a lot of dental work this year and in my opinion she already has a great smile! And she has even more going on (poor little Wifey!)

Currently we have a little scare going on. You see while I was up partying it up at the MVP summit she came down with strep throat. The strep wasn't so scary, nothing some antibiotics couldn't handle. However when she went in to get the subscription the doctor noticed she had an enlarged thyroid. A little blood work and an ultrasound later and we're now dealing with concern over a mass in her thyroid. Still waiting for a trip to a specialist to know just how serious that's going to be. Yeah, our minds are on that first thought you all had as well. We'll just have to wait and see though.

On a less serious note, this has been the year for little car fixes. The van needed new brakes and tires so that was a nice little chunk of change. And I've been driving with a broken windshield, a car that overheats anytime I'm stuck in traffic (I carry water in the trunk) and a headlight I have to wiggle before I leave anywhere or I won't have two. Not super serious things, but man all that car stuff has sucked this year. Especially because those things all hit the pocket book. And well, we know the big scary economy deal is going on. Some we'll pay for and some I'll just have to put up with for a while longer.

Work has been pretty rough this year as well. The economy is obviously impacting everyone's place of business (even Microsoft had some layoffs) and mine has had it's up and downs as a result of changes in the economic climate. We've had a lot of changes that have nothing to do with the economy as well. Some of those have required adjustments on my part and almost all have been affecting my stress level. It definitely hasn't been the most relaxing year at work. I'm hopeful though because I think we're turning a corner so I'm still excited about the rest of this year.

Let's see, what else has happened this year...oh, here's a  fun one! So we started noticing our windows in our house were fogging up. It felt like there was really moist air being blown out all of our heater vents. Calling in some heater guys we got the fun news. The heater is out. And not only that it was a really weird heater. It was water based...odd right? Basically it was hooked up to a hot water heater and the heater unit itself worked as a heat exchanged to blow hot air through the house. *AND* that was installed in our ceiling. Yep, a water based heater in the ceiling above our bedroom and not only was it out, but it had been leaking. Leaking for a long time. Replaced the heater (another LARGE chunk of change) and that's when the real fun began. That's when we got to call the home owner's insurance because when the heater guys replaced the heater they noticed we had mold throughout our attic as a result of the leaking. Yep, mold. MOLD. Run for the hills. A homeowners worst nightmare.

So we've had guys in hazmat suits wondering in and out of our house trying to clean up the mold damage (luckily we don't have to pay for that, homeowners insurance will cover that part). Nothing like talking to a guy in a hazmat suit and thinking to yourself, why am *I* living here? Where's my suit? So when my kids start growing extra toes eyes or developing really lame super powers, we'll know it's because I didn't buy them little hazmat suits for their birthdays to protect them from the mold.

We've had various other little house issues along with the heater and mold. The toilet is flooding constantly (and always running), the outside faucet isn't working (did the heater guys break something?), the fence is falling down...the list goes on. Sigh. Quite a bit of work and it all happened this year.

Then yesterday we had one of the most exciting moments of the year. I've been expecting this one since I am the father of four boys, but I was still taken by surprise. Yesterday Owen (my 5 year old) broke his arm. Not a good break either, they're talking like he's probably going to need surgery. Yikes! Wifey wrote all about it here. Definitely a pretty stressful time and I was really impressed with how Wifey handled it all. She's such a great mommy! We're hopeful everything heals ok and no permanent damage was done but we'll just have to see.

So yeah, all in all hasn't been that great of a year. I'm still smiling. I know things really could be worse and there's lots and lots of people worse off than me and I really feel for them. I'm sure things are going to be turning a corner though and there's lots of other things I haven't mentioned in this post that are going great and amazingly well. It's definitely not all bad and I've got a lot going for me.

Either way I just really needed to get that all out.

Wait a minute! What was that I just saw walk across the kitchen counter? An ant? Yep, there's another one. Definitely an ant. Great we have ants. LOL, what a year so far! I'm sure it's just going to get better from here. Hopefully everyone else's years aren't looking like mine. It'd be nice to hear some good stories out there to balance out all these sad ones.

Anyway, that's all I had for now. I'm sure I'll have some more positive posts coming about games, tutorials and fun stuff. Here's hoping your year is a good one! Now where did I put those ant bait traps....

posted @ Tuesday, March 17, 2009 7:01 PM | Feedback (9) |

XNADevelopment.com - The State of Things

I've posted a new tutorial up at XNADevelopment.com. I'll warn you now it's a doozy! If you're up to it, head on over and check out "The State of Things". I think this one has been sitting heavy on my heart for quite a while and when I finally sat down to write it up, everything just started pouring out. This tutorial doesn't just introduce one little way of managing screen state in your game, nope, this tutorial walks you THREE DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS!

(and one of them uses event handlers and polymorphism..yikes!)

And well, I'm tired now. I've been working on this tutorial for three days straight now. The only left to do is for you to head over and check it and please if you do check it out, let me some dang feedback. The good, the bad or the ugly. I really just want to hear what you think. If the tutorials aren't useful, I want to know. If you wish I would change the format, let me know. If they're just at the right level for you, LET ME KNOW!

Oh, and I think I'll add the picture of my comic books to this post. No real reason for it to be there, I took it (well, technically wifey took it) for an example I was making in the tutorial and well I just like it. 

posted @ Monday, March 09, 2009 10:24 PM | Feedback (8) |

Can GIMP do it? Yes it can!

So I've been doing a lot of drawing lately. I've been doing a little bit just about every day. Sometimes with the boys and sometimes just by myself. I'm planning on scanning some of my drawings in and sharing the progress I've been making improving my art, but I haven't gotten around to it yet (hopefully soon!). But with all that time spent drawing with pencil and paper, I haven't been doing a lot to work on improving my digital art. Well today wifey linked me to a great tutorial for creating some super cute ninjas in Illustrator. With cute ninja's like that, I couldn't resist giving it a try.

There was just one little problem. The tutorial was for Adobe Illustrator.

You see, I made a decision a long time ago when I started writing tutorials for my site that I would force myself to always use free tools. I wanted to encourage people just starting out and when you're just starting out, it helps when the tools you use are free. So I create my own sound effects, I beg for free music from friends (thanks Nick!), I use Visual Studio Express (it's free) AND I always do all of my own work in a free digital art program. So although I own and am learning to use Illustrator, it doesn't really fit that whole "free" thing (it's like way on the other end of free, it's in the "expensive" category in fact).

And that brings us to GIMP. I decided to tackle the tutorial just using GIMP and while I love GIMP, it is free and like all free tools it sometimes lacks the features that the professional and expensive tools have. But, staying on course, I still managed to walk through the entire tutorial and produce my own cute little ninja in GIMP! (yep, that's my Ninja you see!) There were a few steps that took a little more work than using Illustrator. And I'm sure there's things I may have been able to do easier or smoother if I knew how to use GIMP a bit better (my lines always look so jagged). Overall however, I think it came out pretty good for a quick bit of work.

I'd recommend giving the tutorial a try yourself in your favorite art program. It's pretty quick and simple, but teaches you some pretty nice little tricks. Link me to the image if you feel brave enough to share. I'd love to see how it turns out!

posted @ Tuesday, January 13, 2009 8:43 PM | Feedback (6) |

A Kingdom to Conquer

Wifey took a little min-vacation this weekend (she works, hard, I like to give her as many weekends off as possible) so I've been home alone with all four boys. So, I did what any normal guy does when he's changing diapers, making breakfast, lunch and dinner and breaking up fights for four boys...I started coding a new game.

I had been standing looking at my bookshelf, trying to decide which of my new books I should start reading, when my eye fell on an old PC game I had purchased quite a while ago. It was called "Conquered Kingdoms" (although a misprint on the front of the box spelled it "Conqured Kingdoms") and it was installed from 3.5" disks. So yeah, it's a pretty old game. (I won't mention some of the 5 1/4" floppy games I have laying around...).  I found a pretty good review of the game on this (enter at your own risk) random site here.

I used to have so much fun playing this game. It's a military strategy game with a fantasy twist. I can't even begin to imagine how many late nights I had working on beating the computer A.I. on the various random maps it could generate.

So as I stood there staring at the box and remember the fun I had, I started thinking. Then I stopped thinking and I yelled, "Boys! Stop fighting!", then I tried to remember what I was thinking about and then I thought to myself, "What in the world am I holding in my hands?" and I looked down and it was this old PC game that I used to play called Conquered Kingdoms (although a misprint on the front of the box spelled it...wait.. :) welcome to my life!).

Realizing the boys weren't going to stop fighting until I turned the water hose on them, my train of thought got back on track. And once it was on track, I really got an urge to see if I could recreate the game play of Conquered Kingdoms. And there went my Saturday. I didn't get a lot done, the boys and I got a bit distracted playing an XBLCG we purchased called Sharky's Air Legends (I highly recommend you check it out). But I did get a good start!

Who knows, maybe I'll get another Saturday urge and I can pick this project up again someday. Until then, I've made it available for download with what I have done (and I'm telling, you, it's really not much), but I figured I'd share anyway. So you can download it from here.

I had a lot of fun just thinking through things and I filled quite a few pages of a notebook designing various parts of it and planning for the future. All in all a pretty good day. I hope everyone else is having a pretty relaxing weekend too.

Any cool projects that you're working on?

posted @ Saturday, January 10, 2009 9:28 PM | Feedback (1) |

2008: A year in review a.ka. I did awesome in 2008 - p.s. this is for you wifey.

Well, wifey called me (and the world) to task, so I figured I should step up. I'll admit, I was being one of the debbie downers reflecting on everything that I didn't get done this past year. So, well here it is, some reflections on things that I did well and accomplished in 2008.

It' all about the family and I made sure I focused on that.

My wife and I had a great year. I mean, a REALLY REALLY REALLY good year. Our relationship has never felt stronger (and well, I feel we've been pretty strong from the start). We haven't been married long, just 8 years (June will be our 9 year wedding anniversary), but man do things feel right. It's been a lot of work, but there's really no one I would rather spend my time with and well I'm proud of all that she and I have accomplished together this past year.

The boys are doing great in school and every day (even the bad days) have been really good. I love watching these guys grow up and the young men they're becoming so early.

It's been a great year for family.

He's my new baby and he's so cute!

Speaking of family, ours grew this past year. My baby is now almost 11 months old. Having our new baby definitely changed my routine at home. But I still managed to do a lot even while dealing with all that comes along with a new baby. He's a cutie too.

I got "The Big V" and I only cried a little

Not only did we have a new baby, but we had our last baby. I volunteered to end our baby making career (it was only fair after Wifey went through birthing four of them). The vasectomy was painful, but I only cried and whined a little. But all my tests have come back clear and I'm officially no longer a baby maker.

What in the world do I know about supervising? I think I know a little now.

I was promoted to the role of supervisor in January of 2008 managing a team of 5 developers. This, more than anything else this year, has really changed my life. I have no freaking clue how to be a supervisor. And the "winging it" definitely takes a toll on someone who likes to do things well.

I come home at night totally exhausted and I feel like I didn't accomplish anything during the day. I hate feeling like that. But after a year of struggling with this new role, I finally feel I'm starting to get my footing. I still have a lot to learn and there was a lot I did wrong this last year, but I can definitely look back over the year and be proud of what my team has accomplished (although I think that's more them and less me). We really rocked it and hopefully I can make sure the world knows how well they did as a team (and hopefully next year I figure out even  more about what in the world I'm supposed to do as supervisor).

I didn't hit any cars (well, except for that one but it doesn't count because I didn't like that guy anyway)

I've been learning to parallel park. I've never lived in a city. I grew up on a farm and parallel parking wasn't a skill we had to refine. We had it on our driver's test, but we didn't have to be very good at it. And I wasn't.

Now that our new office is downtown, this has been something I've been having to learn how to do again. In fact, I spent a lot of time this year forcing myself to be the one to drive to lunch just so I would be placed in a situation where I had no choice but to parallel park.

I still suck at it, but I have managed it several times this past year. And you know what, I'm pretty proud of that.

Oh books, how I love thee!

I read a lot. And not just fantasy and science fiction (I know people usually write science fiction and fantasy, but fantasy always comes first for me!). I read more technical books than I've ever read before in a year and I even threw in some one covering just what in the world a supervisor is supposed to do. It was a great year for reading, and I read a lot, man did I read a lot. I'm pretty proud of that!

Yeah, I drew that.

Drawing. I've been filling sketchbooks with drawings. I've done more serious sketching and drawing this past year then I think I've ever done. I stumbled across an artist I really liked and started just working through his books. I love his style and hopefully someday I'll be able to emulate a similar style without just looking at his pictures. I've been having a lot of fun drawing so much again and I did a really good job improving my technique this past year.

I did write some...

I won't say I did awesome blogging, but you know I did blog, so that's something. I had 40 posts this year so I did average over 2 a month (even if some months I didn't manage to get 2 posts done in a month...). So while not great, definitely an accomplishment, and well I guess I should be proud of that. Nah, I am proud of it. I did good.

I pwnd you!

I beat Castle Crashers and did more gaming in general. I've been making games a lot, but I had kind of forgotten how much fun I had playing them. This year I went through a Team Fortress phase (where I was rocking it as a medic), I made it ALL the way through Castle Crashers (man I love that game) and played a ton of other XBox Live Arcade and XBox Live Community Games. I'm proud of the things I accomplished with gaming and the whole family had a ton of family gaming together this past year. Gaming is the new board game night.

You almost can't see me when I turn sideways

I lost more weight. Over two years ago, I stepped on a scale and watched it hit 209 lbs. I was shocked and in tears. I was a wrestler in high school so I graduated a very light 140 lbs (I'm 6 foot tall). In college, I packed on some weight, but mostly muscle from pole vaulting (I was a letter winner every year in college). So I graduated a respectable and descent 165 lbs from college (much better for a guy my height).

Then somehow over time and inactivity, the weight just kept coming on. Well, after that 209 lb moment, I got serious about losing weight, I set a goal of 175 lbs and I've been working on it steadily ever since. Before thanksgiving this year I was down to 178 lbs. Over the Holiday I've put on a little, but this morning I'm still at a pretty decent 182 lbs.

I'm pretty proud of how I've taken the weight off and kept it off and I think this year is going to be the year I finally hit my target. So yeah, that's something to be proud of this past year, continuing to lose the weight and keep it off. 175 lbs here I come!

I love the XNA Community and I continued to show it.

Since the beginning of 2008, I've posted over 1,000 times for support in the Creator's forum answering game development questions and helping out in that community. My total post count for this new iteration of the forums is 1,344 posts since they launched. That's not too shabby for something I do in my spare time.

I also managed to update all of my tutorials and samples on my site for the 3.0 framework release. I began making videos of all my samples and also took some time to begin releasing Zune and 360 versions of my work as well. I even did my first (and probably only) video tutorial for extending the Microsoft Getting started tutorial. I didn't release as much new content this year, but I'm still pretty proud of the work I did at XNADevelopment.com this year. And getting into Official XBox magazine with some quotes and my picture was an admittedly high point of the year.

I'm also pretty proud of all the work the community has been doing. With the release of XBox Live Community games, the community has had to go through a bit of a transition as new blood came in to the community and personalities changed and shifted. It's been an interesting growth period and I'm proud of the part I've been playing in that.

Microsoft XNA MVP - we meet again

It's official, on January 1st I got the email congratulating me for being given the Microsoft XNA MVP award for my work in 2008. Did I mention I love the XNA community? I just can't believe how much time has gone by since I first got involved with XNA. It's been an incredible experience.

I'm pretty proud of all the work I did this last year to earn the award. From helping out in the forums, running my XNADevelopment.com site, starting and running a user group, answering emails, idling in the IRC to working on my own projects. This is definitely a full time hobby and it's a community I can say I'm proud to be a part of. We have a lot of very intelligent, creative and helpful people in this community from the XNA development team to the various leaders and members of the community and I'm honored to be a part of all of it.

It's been a great year for XNA and I'm really excited to see what's coming out of the community for 2009.

Let me conclude by saying...

So yeah, I did pretty good this year. I definitely had moments when I probably should have done more. Periods of time when I had it in me to do more and I let opportunity pass me by. As a whole however, looking back on it, I did awesome. And I need to remember that, it's crucial to remember that.

And you know what? I'm sure you did to. So reflect on that and get ready for another great year. I promise you'll feel better that you did.

posted @ Friday, January 02, 2009 10:52 AM | Feedback (4) |

Ziggyware XNA Article Contest: Help out the XNA community and win fabulous prizes!

Do you have some idea for an XNA related tutorial or article that's been bouncing around in that brain of yours? Have you just been putting off making that great step by step guide on how to do some awesome XNA-ey thing? Do you just feel like you'll write something and no one will read it so it's not worth your time? Are you currently breathing? If you've answered yes to any of those questions, well Ziggy is here for you. Ziggyware is currently holding an XNA Article contest. Simply write a tutorial or article for the XNA community (focused on XNA developers) and submit it to Ziggyware. The contest started in the middle of October, but you still have until November 30th to get those ideas down and submitted. And did I mention there's amazingly awesome prizes? Would a new 360 give you some motivation? What about 1600 LIVE points? (you're going to use that to buy all the new XBLCG's right?)

Head on over to Ziggyware and check out the rules and the awesome prizes. Also, take a peek at the articles and tutorials that have currently been submitted. You have the motivation now do your part and give back to the community a little. You do love us right? Head on over to Ziggyware and show us just how much!

posted @ Friday, November 14, 2008 1:50 PM | Feedback (0) |

XNADevelopment.com - Need a little polish for your XBLCG? Ever wonder what button was that?

Every game needs a screen to define what button does what in the game. It helps for those moments when the player is scratching their head going, now what button did what again?! So when you're creating your game, you're going to want to take a little time to add that screen into your game. Or if you feel like using my code, you could spend an even smaller amount of time!

Recognizing that I was going to be making this screen often for all of my sample games I release for my site (I'm working hard at trying to get them to follow the Best Practices release by Microsoft for XBLCG). I took some time out and wrote this dynamic "How To Play" screen code. Simply define text for any of the controller buttons and this screen will display that with a line to the appropriate button.

Check out the sample, "What Button was that?" and use it in your games. Play with it, enhance it and let me know what you think!

 Also, before you get going, you should think about what controller buttons you're planning on using and what you're planning on having them do. Then take a trip over to MVP Jon Wattes's site to read up on the expected button actions and try to make sure your games controls are staying consistent with what players expect.

posted @ Monday, November 10, 2008 4:50 PM | Feedback (7) |

XNADevelopment.com - New sample, "Looks Level to Me!"

I've released a new sample at XNADevelopment.com today for creating and loading tiled levels into your game quickly and easily. I originally got the idea from a Bubble Bobble clone that was released to the community quite a while ago. In it, they had defined their levels using using just text. I thought it was a great idea so I began working on my own version of that idea.

Looks Level to Me demonstrates a simple method of creating a text only level editor. Too often when making games you spend so much time creating the supporting editors that you never get around to your game. This was an effort to combat that and give you a simple way of creating tiled levels with just a little work (and if you really wanted to, it wouldn't be that hard to slap on a front end to create the files either...).

The RPG sample picture on the right is using these amazing prototype tiles available from LostGarden. This is definitely a site you should get familiar with as a new game developer. With his free sprites, prototyping challenges and all around game development advice, it's definitely a great place to have bookmarked.

Hopefully this is useful to someone out there, I had a lot of fun making it and I've already found several places where I've used it in my own prototypes. Feel free to leave any comments you might have. I love hearing what people have to say, both the criticisms and the encouragement. I run XNADevelopment.com for the community so it helps me a lot to hear from you guys.

posted @ Sunday, November 09, 2008 10:18 AM | Feedback (1) |

Everyone's day looks like this right?

With XBox Live Community Games (XBLCG) going live soon, I've been thinking a lot about things that are going to help all of us be successful. One of those things is encouraging hobbyist and independent developers looking to get their game out to the public to consider the quality of the game. Flooding XBLCG with a lot of poorly implemented games missing most of the polish that regular XBox Live Arcade (XBLA) titles have will quickly sink our ship.

Microsoft has already made some effort encouraging the community to take this into account and they've release a set of Best Practices for XBLCG. I've been reading, and re-reading those practices these past couple of weeks. I've got quite a few game demos on my site and well, they're all a LONG way from meeting those practices. In fact, my game demos are perfect examples of what we DO NOT want to see flood XBLCG when it releases.

So I decided to try and do something about that. I woke up on Saturday, picked one of my simpler games and began building a framework around it to help encourage and implement those best practices. Just for fun, I kept a running log of what was going on and just how my day was going while I was trying to implement these best practices in my game.

Saturday, October 25th A day in the life of a developer dad....

9:00 AM I decided that I was going to try and move through the Best Practices list provided by Microsoft and add them into my game. I decided to start by bringing up the web page and opening my project "Move The Growing Creature But Do Not Collide".

9:00 (and some seconds) Started to type, interrupted by cries of "I pooped!" Guess it's time to go do the fatherly duty no one talks about...this should have been on the brochure! It's butt wiping time!

9:06 Severe hand washing later, back at it. Oh, have to move, the baby is grabbing my laptop cord...

9:07 Trying to figure out where to start. Running the project and trying to remember just what state it's in...

9:09 Ok, not too bad. The game runs and it's got some elements from the best practices list already. Let's review that "Best Practice" list and review what I'm missing.

9:12 Looks like more than I realized. Decided I might as well start with the first one and work my way down through them. So what's up first?Ok, looking over the Best Practices point by point and putting them into the game. Here we go, "Gamers Expect Games to 'Just Work' on any TV".

• I've set my resolution to 1280x720, so that's done.
• I've built into the base screen class so that when I hit F1, I can see what parts of my
  display are outside the TitleSafeArea.
• Need to review my text and make sure none of it is less than 14 font...

9:15 Before I could start reviewing, the baby started grabbing my laptop monitor...This little guys is persistent! If only new game developers had this kind of persistence we'd have a lot more games popping up out there in the community. I may have to move again or find something else to distract him..and he just grabbed my cell phone. Ok, time to find this little mover and shaker some toys.

9:20 Some toys and one diaper change later, I'm back to looking for small fonts in my project..I think I'm going to add it to my base text class to yell at the developer (me) anytime I use a font that smaller than 14 in size.

I'm working on cleaning up the code so that all of the text drawing is done through the Text object in the base class. Oh and Ninja Turtles Fast Forward is on..I love Saturdays!

Great, here comes the baby again! We'll see if my blanket barricade works.. He's almost crawling! Yeah for Tennyson! The barrier seems to be holding, he thinks it's a funny challenge to try and crawl through this folded blanket. Well, while it's holding, let's get back to the code cleanup.

So am I using the text object everywhere yet?

Ok, Tennyson is fussing, I think it's time to make him a bottle. I'm still working on getting the error message displayed properly when the font is too small so that the best practices are followed.

10:01 Baby eating the bottle. typing with one hand...must get that font message displayed.

10:10 Baby finished with his bottle...back to coding with two hands again. I'm ignoring IMs from well meaning friends with tempting videos to watch. Focus is key. I'm not even done with the first best practice yet!

10:20 Displaying the message about using a small font just fine. Now to finish converting everywhere in the code to only use the Text object. Basically no where in code should I see the "DrawString" method except in the Text class.

10:35 Oh, no, here comes the baby again!..oh my gosh he's crawling!!! He's ACTUALLY CRAWLING! Time to wake Shawna up, this is HUGE! Our little baby is mobile!

10:50 LOL, mass chaos, many pictures and quite a few little crawling runs later and I'm back to working on my game. I just finished up converting the Menu to use the Text object and got done testing it. Looks like it's all good and I've changed the code so that everything uses Text. It looks like the messaging is working too. Yeah for following best practices!

Shawna's up and done taking baby pictures and crawling videos. Time to give her a quick kiss :)

[Here's a video Shawna took of the big moment!]

11:00 Ok, reviewing the first best practice one more time, yep, looks like I've got everything covered. Time to look at the second best practice. "Gamers Expect a Good Trial Mode"

Hmm...so I know the framework has a new method built in for that, I'll need to check that out and figure out how to add a Trial Mode screen for that... Let's get to it :)

Adding in a Trial mode screen. Basically, I'm checking the Guide.IsTrialMode property and if it's true, instead of going to the normal game screen, I'm going to the Trial Mode screen. That should allow me to put whatever part of the gameplay, starting level, etc. I want into the trial.

Oh wait..looks like that can change at any moment. So I'll need to add some code to constantly be checking that...? Not sure of the right way to handle that.

Still not sure if I'm necessarily handling Trial mode correctly, but I have it in there. It seems too that the PC always returns True...so I'll need to fix that for the Zune and the PC. Might be time to write a Guide Helper class and use that...

Adding Keyboard Shortcut to place game in Trial Mode...

Ok, so I can simulate TrialMode at any moment by simply pressing F2 (I'll have to figure out a smart gamepad combo for these admin keys sometime)..I think I'll have to re-visit the Trial Mode Best Practice again, but that's a good start. I definitely have to learn more about this best practice.

12:09  Ok, with my focus on that one done, I'm suddenly realizing I'm super hungry. Time to make doe eyes at Wifey and beg her to go pick up some lunch or something. I'm feeling much too lazy to do any cooking today. Time to work some charm.

Had to get up to check on the 3 boys (the baby is asleep right now, all the crawling wore him out!). They're getting a little feisty (and hungry). I showed off the game a little bit to them. They get so demanding, always want games to be done right away...if only it was that easy! :)

12:15 Wifey's getting around, going to go pick us up some lovely junk food for lunch. Probably McDonald's since that's one of the boys' favorite places. We've been really good lately and haven't been eating out a lot, so I guess it's ok to splurge. Time to find my wallet to give her the cash. I love being a cash only family. Lunch is on me today since I'm feeling so lazy!

Time to refill my coffee too. I love me some caffeine! After that onto Best Practice number three! Gamers Expect a Friendly Menu System

12:20 Nice day out too, going to get the boys outside. Get the windows opened up and air out the house some! Where did I put that coffee cup?

12:30 Shawna's out the door, windows are all open...whoops, still forgot my coffee...ok, got it! Made a quick round of all the kids too. Tennyson is still sleeping peacefully, Owen is practicing spelling things from books on the desktop, Gareth is helping out and Reece is sitting next to me flipping through a book on Colors and saying them out loud.

Let's do a quick spin through the forums just to see what questions have come up. Oh geesh, some new guy wants to make a racing game for the Zune but he doesn't even know how to code. Good, Jim's linked him to the "Help! I'm new FAQ" already. No better way to guarantee you'll never get into game development, then shooting too high. I don't think any of us would ever learn to walk if we just started by trying to run marathon's when we were babies...Why can't people seem to translate that to game development?

Ok, check my texts on my phone since it just chimed.

12:35 Back to Best Practices. So let's read up on this "Gamers Expect a Friendly Menu system" one. Well, I think I had most of that done already. I don't really have a Failure indicator so I'll need to add that at some point when it makes sense... And then the confirmations and errors aren't really displayed right now either. So I'll need to revisit that.

12:45 Sounds like Tennyson is fussing, probably should get him a bottle made and get him up. But looks like I'm ready for best practice number 4. Gamers Expect Consistent Controls.

Going to surf the forums while I feed the baby his bottle...

1:48 Shawna got back with the food, fed the boys, and then we watched an episode of Sanctuary off of SciFi.com while we ate. Pretty good, but I had totally figured out who the killer was as soon as we were into it, so the suspense was kind of lifted. Probably a good thing since I get creeped out easily.

So, here were at Gamers Expect Consistent Controls...well, maybe I'll finish catching up on forum posts first. Looks like I have two pages unread.

1:55 Had to stop and build a quick baby coral with pillows and blankets. Mr. Newly Mobile is just getting into everything! Time to turn some music on too :) Still trying to learn all the songs for RockBand so I think I'll put on the RockBand track list I have.

2:24 Still struggling with how to properly handle the disconnecting of controllers. I mean, you don't want to pause the screen if the controller was never turned on in the first place right? Then there's the Zune and the PC, have to make sure I can handle that too.

Ok, the Game is pausing, now I just need to add in Menu screen overlay for the Pause.

2:50 Lego Star Wars is in full force. The Boys are having a blast, lol, but they're being so noisy it's causing me to lose focus. Time to sip some more coffee and add in a Pixel image to the project.

I've decided that when the game is paused, I want to overlay a grayish, transparent looking screen with the menu on it. Having a single pixel image is useful for those kind of things!

3:00 Adding in the Menu Items for the Pause Screen.

3:15 Now I just need to hook up the events for the default Pause Screen menu events. I'm craving some some new music first. The boys are all done playing video games so I think I'll turn on the stereo and put in Evanescence.

...ah, music makes coding so much better. On to those events.

3:44 Everything's all wired up. I took a little pause and helped Shawna with her blog layout. She doesn't need me much anymore for editing the CSS or HTML. Just more wanted me to look over her changes, nod my head and say, "yeah, that looks like you code that right!". She's one smart cookie.

In adding the Pause screen, I've realized I'm going to have to create a separate inheritance branch and not have the Pause logic in the base screen class. Otherwise the splash screen, title screen and even the Pause screen can be paused. Nothing like recursively pausing the game!

Trying to decide if I should add that separate inheritance branch now, or if I should move on to another best practice. This day is disappearing fast!

3:50 Time to take a quick look through the forum posts to see if anything interesting has popped up.

4:03 Ok, no unread posts. Probably should have posted in the "why did you stick with XNA thread", but I couldn't think of how to phrase it. I'll try and remember to come back to that one later. I also went ahead and broke off a separate branch for screens that should allow pause from screens that shouldn't. It really didn't take too long. Sometimes I'm overly lazy. :)

Shawna just left to go running so I'll need to keep my ears peeled for the little one waking up. I'd also put Reece down for a nap earlier (he was spitting chocolate milk all over the kitchen) so he should be waking up soon too. The older two are just drawing at the table right now.

Well, I think that wraps it up for that best practice. Let's take a gander at the next one.

4:05 Tennyson just woke up, so had to change a diaper and then re-prep the coral. The older boys are getting a little crazy out there drawing at the table too. I'll have to try and calm them down a bit or convince them to go be crazy outside. They get all wound up and start getting out of control, have to direct that energy into something....

4:17 Ok, looks like there's not much I can do for "Be Kind With Audio". Only major one I see is that I need to make sure I'm loading background music properly so that the player can replace it. I think it's time to grab one of Nick's song, throw it into my project and wire up some code to do that right.

Well that was easy, still need to figure out how to build it into my framework properly, but I know how to play songs properly now according to the best practice. Also took some time to add in an Options screen to adjust SoundFX and Music volume.

4:30 Reece is up next to me on the couch now watching what I'm doing. I showed him how the game has background music and a pause menu. He just wants it to be on the 360 already...

Patience!

Ok, next best practice "Gamers Use One XBox 360 Controller." Awesome! It looks like I'm doing this one already. I have a detect screen built in and I'm storing the index of the controller that presses the button first.

Oh, but I need to back out to this screen and if they back out from this screen I need to exit the game. Looks like I still need to add that functionality in to the framework.

5:00 Had to go get Tennyson and feed him a bottle. I managed to get the screens working properly according to the best practices.

Shawna's back from running now, and now it's time for me to look at the next best practice (oh, I skipped the Guild.ShowSignIn...the best practice wasn't too clear on what they meant?)

So on to "Gamer Profiles Matter" but before I do, maybe I should check the forums again. It's so easy to get behind on pages of posts there and I like to read every single one. 

Ok, just read a few threads. I still have about a page left of new posts that I need to go through. None looked like my level of expertise though so it's up to the smart guys to answer them.

5:10 Time to read over "Gamer Profiles Matter" and see what there is that I can do. I don't know much about working with gamer profiles so this should be a fun learning experience.

5:30 Shawna's getting ready to go to Bunco tonight and the boys are all running around in their Star Wars Halloween costumes. They're having a fun with light saber and blaster fights. Lol, they're cracking me up!

I've been working on enhancing the code a bit to make it easier to disable menu items. I got kind of distracted from looking at the Gamer Profiles Matter best practice. Phew, how many more do I have left anyway?

Ouch. Been working on adding polish all day and I still have 5 best practices left to go over!

I'm getting kind of hungry too and I know the boys will be yelling for dinner in just a minute so I'd better start thinking about making some dinner. Tennyson's having a blast just rolling around in the pillow/blanket coral I've got him in. He really wants to crawl over and the the XBox 360...is he already a gamer?

5:40 Time to get up from the computer and try and figure out what to do for dinner. I'll take a look at gamer profiles when I get back.

6:30 I'm sitting here next to Princess Leia on the couch (Wifey's going to a costume party tonight :) ) and trying to decide if I have the energy to tackle the next 5 best practices. I think I might work on polishing up the game play and graphics on my simple little game a bit more as a breather.

I fed Tennyson dinner and he's down for another nap. He'll get up in a bit for his bottle and then will be down for the night. The boys are still running around playing Star Wars in their costumes. It's going to be bed time for Reece, my four year old,  in about 30 minutes.

The house is going to be nice an quiet tonight. Maybe I'll plan on picking up the best practices again at 8 p.m. after everyone's in bed.

6:46 I'm working on converting my old code to use some of the newer classes I've created. I'm also just working on general refactoring and code cleanup as well. .

8:00 Well, bed time came all in a rush. I managed to wrangle all four boys into bed. I just finished restarting my laptop and I am ready to start the night. Oh no, I hear Tennyson crying...I guess it's time for his nightly bottle. Looks like I'll be getting started after I give him a little nightcap...

8:25 One bottle of formula and one episode of Skunk-Fu later, I'm ready to start coding again. I was working on putting the Wall sprites back into the game using the actual Sprite class. Guess I'll finish that up.

9:22 Working on collision detection for the game. I need to add in some collision rectangle displays to the base classes to make troubleshooting a bit easier. Then when I can't figure out why my sprites aren't colliding, I can hit a key to visually show their collision rectangles. Definitely helps with debugging 2D collisions.

9:49 Well I'm tired of coding. I think I'm going to call it a night. There are just too many simple errors slipping into the code now. Time to check in my changes to Subversion and switch gears to something else. I wonder if I have some more Justice League cartoons to watch? All in all, a pretty good day coding.

This is the chronicle of my day, your day looks the same right? Right....

posted @ Friday, November 07, 2008 6:13 PM | Feedback (5) |

1,000 posts and climbing!

It's been a long time coming and most of the other MVPs have already been there and gone (yeah, you Mr. ZMan with your 5,000 posts...), but today, I finally hit 1,000 posts on the XNA forums! I love helping out new people and putting my time in at the Creator's forum is a great way to do that. It's fun but it's definitely an activity that consumes a lot of my time. But watching the community grow makes it feels totally worth it. I love being part of it all and feel like I'm doing my small piece contributing to growing this awesome community.

The Creator's forums are definitely the BEST support forums I have ever seen and I'm  proud to be a part of that. Questions are answered quickly and by some extremely intelligent people (that's not me, I only answer the newbie questions!). The forums themselves have extremely active moderators who basically live on the forums all day long (that would be me). One of the coolest things about the forums is that the XNA framework developers themselves hang out there and help in answering questions (you guys rock!).

If you're interested in game development and looking to get started I would definitely recommend you make it a central hub  as you get going. Starting out with the XNA framework and game development, you're going to have questions and it might feel a bit overwhelming, but the Creator's forums are there just for you. Just head over and take some time to ask any questions you might have. The members there are extremely helpful and polite and will get you on your way quickly. And who knows, maybe you'll be my 1001th forum post!

posted @ Sunday, October 19, 2008 1:05 PM | Feedback (0) |

XBox Live and Creator's Club Online down today...

Just in case you didn't know, XBox Live and the Creator's Club website are both down today. You can read the XNA team blog for more details. But all is not lost, you should have plenty to do in your spare time.

One thing you could do is head over to XNAResources.com. That's right, they're back! And they're starting a new 2D tutorial series that looks like it's going to be an extremely useful set of tutorials for the community. (Welcome back guys! It feels good to be recommending your site again.) It's called the "Star Defense Tutorial Series".

Another pretty cool thing that's been happening is that Reimer Grootjans (he wrote the XNA Recipe book) has been doing a series of fairly advanced 2D tutorials as well. Definitely worth going through if you're looking to improve your game development skills, so head over and check out that series

So get coding, sharpen those skills and be ready when everything goes live to resume life as usual. It's only 24 hours, we can survive that right?

posted @ Monday, September 29, 2008 8:35 AM | Feedback (1) |

XNADevelopment.com - It's a Control Thing!

I've been playing with a lot of different projects lately trying to work on adding more polish to them. One of the things that I've been trying to do is add in controller images (provided by Microsoft off the Creator's website) when appropriate. So instead of just saying, "Press X to jump!", I stick the X button image into the line of text to pretty it up a little.

Well, that was getting old quick because I was having to do so much manual work lining it all up. Basically, I would have to draw the text, "Press", then I would have to draw an image for the "X" and then I would have to manually position and draw the rest of the text, "to jump!".

So I did what any programmer does when they get tired of doing something over and over again. I wrote something to do that all for me. "It's a Control Thing!" is some new sample code I released on XNADevelopment.com to do just that. No more manual positioning for me. Now I can just write some text like this, "Use the [LTRIGGER] to cycle through your items." and [LTRIGGER] will get automatically replaced by the controller image for the left trigger.

Sigh, life is good.

So if you want to take a peek or improve upon my idea, go for it! The source code is there for you to download, tweak and improve upon. Or if you're content with the way it is, just start using it in your projects like I am mine.

Enjoy and as always, let me know what you think. And please, if you make some cool improvements share them!

posted @ Saturday, September 27, 2008 9:52 PM | Feedback (3) |