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Saturday, February 04, 2012
Wake up in the morning feeling all C Sharpy
Grab my laptop by my bed, I'm going to code this pretty
Brush my teeth and my hair much later I'm sure
Cause when I'm coding an idea I ain't looking to score I'm talking curly braces have to close, close
Writing comments all in prose, prose.
Errors blowing up my codes, codes Music popping, coding my favorite ideas
Pulling up, reading the tweets
Starting to get a little bit Lispy No slop, make it top
Coding, blow that keyboard up
Today I'm going write
Till I see no sunlight
Fric, frack, errors back
But the coding just won’t stop no Coad-oh oh oh
Coad-oh oh oh
Saturday, December 31, 2011
 It’s the end of the year and like everyone else I’m reading the “best of” lists being posted all around the interwebs. Here’s a collection I’ve gathered of all the “best of” lists for XBLIGs.
XNADevelopment – Best XBLIGs of 2011 If you have your own, let me know and I’ll get you added to my collection. There’s quite a few gems I missed that I’m seeing on those lists so I’m looking forward to doing some gaming as I ring in the New Year! Happy New Year everyone!
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Been a busy week for me, wish it was full of XNA stuff and that is why I’m busy (and that the notes are late…again) but not the case. I’m just going to have to figure out a better way of integrating the XNA Notes into some of the stuff going on lately or maybe change my life situation so these things aren’t going on. I’m working on figuring it out both ways. But you don’t come here to read about my personal stuff, you come to see what the XNA community has been up to! So without further ado, here’s what I saw happening this week in the XNA community! Time Critical XNA News: - June 14th is fast approaching and is the drop dead date for your Dream Build Play submissions! Let my voice of experience guide you, DO NOT WAY TO JUNE 14th TO SUBMIT YOUR GAME! Seriously, every year we have people toeing right up to that date and you have a very, very good chance of missing the deadline because something always inevitably happens when 1,000s of submissions are sent to the server at the same time. Plan to submit days early to make sure your game gets processed and accept BEFORE June 14th.
XNA Team: - Shawn Hargreaves posts about Geometry aliasing
XNA MVPs: - Glenn “Mykre” Wilson shares a large set of useful links - 3D Buzz Blend Fundamentals Drop 1
XNA Developers: - Robert Boyd’s Call of Cthulu makes a cameo on Supernatural!
- Kris Steele shares Fun Infused Fridays 10
- Castle X by Alexandre Lobao released as open source on Code Plex
- David Amador shares using PerfHud with XNA
- Michael Neel shares the grand and glorious life of IncaBlocks via the Xbox LIVE Indie Game Database
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): - Armless Octopus stays up on the community better than most sites out there. Here’s what they wrote about this past week
- The Last Pod Fighter review: Better than that pod racer movie
- Decay - Part 4 wins the Tentacle Award for XBLIG Game of the Month - April 2011
- Animals explode in the new trailer for Fluffy: Operation Overkill
- Tic Part 1 Takes to the Skies in the Official Trailer
- Get to know your XNA MVPs Part 4 - George Clingerman <- That guys sounds like a pretty cool guy!
- Writings of Mass Deduction and Steven Hurdle continues the incredible pace of buying an Xbox LIVE Indie Game every day and then reviewing and recommending that purchase to the rest of the world. Steven doesn’t review just anything, he only reviews games that he enjoyed buying and wants others to buy. Can’t imagine any better recommendation than that! These are the games he purchased and reviews this last week...
- Day 185: Boom Block
- Day 186: Epic Dungeon
- Any Xbox LIVE Indie Games you’re curious about?
- Day 187: Square Off
- Reminder: special re-review later today, big review tomorrow
- Day 187.5 Arkedo Series -03 Pixel! (re-review of Day 77)
- Day 188 - Shield the Beat
- Day 189: Mirror
- Day 190: Magical Cube
- Day 191: Rainbow Ball into Adventure
- and Steven continues his relentless positive exposure of Xbox LIVE Indie Games by changing people’s minds one by one over on Kotaku...
- Vintage Video Games TV
- Minions Review
- Quad Smash coming soon to XBLIG and PC
- EuroGamers reviews Mr. Gravity
- GameMarx reviews the Last Pod Fighter
- Co-Optimus announces new Xbox LIVE Indie Game Section
- The VideoGamerRob reviews Laser Cat
- n00b Alert interviews Michael Ventnor of Red Crest Studios
- DealSpwn posts the Xbox LIVE Indie Game of the Week!
- ExtraGuy reviews Mr. Gravity
- N4G - GamingTruth reviews Blocks that Matter
- Silver Dollar Games in a very, very, VERY rare moment talks a bit about why they have made the games they have
XNA Development: - Channel 9 asks “If I were graphically challenged were could I get resources I could use in my XNA games?” and reminds us all of the great content in the App Hub samples.
- A large collection of SoftImage XSI videos and tutorials
- Sgt. Conker shares a series of articles most XNA Developers should find extremely useful
- High End Performance Optimizations on the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7
- Windows Phone 7 Unleashed Hackathon at TechEd
Windows Phone 7: - diagramtic starts a new blog covering developing with XNA for Windows Phone 7
- Jo De Greef shares a wonderful series of tutorials for creating your own Angry Birds clone for Windows Phone 7 in XNA
Friday, May 13, 2011
This has been a fantastic week of XNA activity and news. Standing ovation the the XNA Team for the interaction they’ve been having with the community as well as the new features they’ve been rolling out for Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers. Simply outstanding and I can’t wait to see what might be coming next. It’s also been a fun week to watch people’s Dream Build Play projects inch ever closer to completion. With the submission deadline coming up in June this is the crunch time for many developers. Keep your eye on your favorite game developers twitter accounts with the late nights that are sure to come, I’m sure there will be some amazing things that will be tweeted. Now on to what I caught happening in the XNA Community… Time Critical XNA News: - Windows Phone 7 Unleased Hackathon in Atlanta, Georgia May 16th. Windows Phone 7, XNA and Silverlight experts help you build, scale and publish your Windows Phone 7 game
- Richard Williams (DVMGames) shares the lates multi-language games currently in peer review. These games need your help. It’s extremely difficult to get multi-language games released so if you can peer review in another language, please check them out and help where you can!
XNA Team: - Shawn Hargreaves writes about Antialiasing Alpha-cutouts
- XNA Team Blog
- Xbox LIVE Indie Games: New Control your game release feature
- Dream Build Play registration ends May 17th
- The XNA Team hosted a fantastic #devchat on Twitter, you can read back through the discussions, learn about various Xbox LIVE Indie Game Developers that introduced themselves and what they’re working on. Meet a variety of members of the XNA Team and go through a series of question and answers. Questions were asked of the community and then of the team. It was a lot of fun and looking forward to another one!
XNA MVPs: - Mike McLaughlin shares an XNA Content Pipeline Extensions sample
- XNA MVP Chris Williams is going to be at the TechEd Hackathon answering your questions
- Catalin Zima shares a new update and some stats for Chickens Can Dream (good idea to check out those number if you’re a WP7 game developer, very informative!)
XNA Developers: - Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games writes a fantastic article about guiding gamer expectations
- Ben Kane shares his thoughts on the new feature allowing Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers to set their own release dates
- Eric Cosky shared adding ImageMagic to StarNinjas Content Pipeline
- Elisée Maurer shares his codeplex project Nuclear Winter, which is is a set of XNA libraries for developing 2D games based on SVG files edited with InkScape.
- Johann Denux share an article on game state management using co-operative multi-tasking and wrote a complete application to demo the concepts
- XNA UK conducting a twitter poll to see if there’s a need for a central location for art and game assets
- Danimal writes about Acquiring Music for Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- Richard Williams (@DVMGames) shares his notes from the #devchat if you missed it
- Frog the Door Games writes about adding a rumble component to Your Game
- Kris Steele of FunInfusedGames continues to share his always humorous and informative posts
- Too many sound effects causes slowdowns for Windows Phone 7 games
- Hypership Out of Control WP7 postmortem
- Fun Infused Friday #8 (and later today keep your eye out for #9!)
- @x35mm shares a link he found on 11 tips for making a fun platformer
- @QBitWare shares a tool he found on CodePlex that helps import models from XNA into Silverlight
- Kris Steele shares a theory on why the last XNA Notes may have been late
- Philippe Da Silva shares a video of IGF being used to make a HUD!
- @x35mm shares a video of his game + XNA MVP Catalin Zima’s Mass Effect dialog sample he released for XNA (always fun seeing samples used in actual games!)
- JohnK announces SunBurn Game Engine Audio system now drag and drop and more!
- Edward Powell writes about Modifying the vertices of a ModelMesh at runtime in XNA 4.0
- Alfred Thompson shares Programming with C# and XNA Jump Start
- Michael Earls shares a link to bfxr and online version of the popular sound effect creator sfxr
- Astroboid write about an XNA AI Finite State Machine
- Josh Wallace writes a code example on scrolling a 2D background (which is based off my tutorial, so cool!)
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): - You’ve used IMDB before for learning about movies, the actors and the people involved, James Johnston (@MadNinjaSkillz) has created a similar site Xbox LIVE Indie Game Database. Many Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers and their teams have already signed up and posted their information. Head on over, check it out, provide feedback and get signed up yourself!
- Armless Octopus is taking the lead on XNA news and coverage.
- Writings of Mass Deduction continues his steady pace of finding an awesome Xbox LIVE Indie game worthy of purchase each day. He can only keep doing this because you guys keep making great games! Also if you have favorite XBLIGs to recommend, he’s always looking for suggestions send some his way. Steven has been doing this for SIX MONTHS now! AWESOME.
- GameMarx says they’ve taken a step back but they still remain a fantastic resource for news and reviews of XBLIGs.
- XboxIndies.com remains top dog in looking for the latest in XBox LIVE Indie Game reviews, you’ll want to keep this site bookmarked and visit it often. Michael Neel is continually adding new enhancement to the Pivot control too which is a fantastic way to explore Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- Edge gives a great Sequence review
- VVGTv.com
- Is impressed at the jaw dropping visuals of Tic coming soon to Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- One Giant Leap for Xbox LIVE Indie Game Developers (and one great looking picture of me!)
- The Thoughtful Gamers interview Xona Games
- Clearance Bin Review gives the Xbox LIVE Indie Game Spotlight to Starzzle
- Crush Frag Destroy does their latest Xbox LIVE Indie Dome for May 2nd - May 8th
- BBQ Games is giving back to the world. Many of their games give a percentage of their sales to various charities, you can read a little more about that here
- DJ Arcas of FortressCraft makes an appearance Just Press Starts podcast series The Third Chair
- Geek Republic reviews Bouncing Avatars
- XBLA Ratings continues to announce newly released (and updated) Xbox LIVE Indie Games as well as conduct interviews with developers in the communities. Here’s a great one with James Silva I missed from back in April
- DIY posts their most recent Best of the Xbox Indies
- 8BitHorse asks 10 questions of Steven Flores of Dragon Divide (developer of Alpha Squad for Xbox LIVE Indie Games)
- Digital Spy covers Cthulu Saves the World coming to Steam!
- Elysia is a game to keep your eye on for Dream Build Play, read back through their posts and see what they’ve shared!
- GiantBomb covers the new release date feature for Xbox LIVE Indie Game Developers
XNA Development: - Microsoft Present XNA Workshop at Digital Overload!
- XNA RPG - Learning XNA while building an RPG
- XNA Game Development - Introducing Debugging
- Digital Rune Software write about Input Handling in XNA Part 1
Windows Phone 7: - Josh Elster shares his post on World Design considerations in Mobile Touch Games
- Looks like a new forum has started up talking about the best gaming to be had on Windows Phone 7
- James Kelly shares his experience of making a Windows Phone 7 game
- An online 3 day training course on XNA for Windows Phone 7, if you’re the kind of person that needs some instruction this could be a fantastic resource!
Friday, May 06, 2011
It’s not often I let my personal life creep into affecting the things I’m involved in and doing. I usually let my hobbies kind of get me through the tough parts. And while I’ve been having fun distracting myself with playing games and coding this week, I’ll admit my eye wasn’t on the community like it normally is. I apologize for the late posting of the notes and for how light and sparse they are. I’m sure there was more going on in the XNA community (and if you were missed in this weeks notes, shoot me an email and I’ll either add you or get you into next weeks!). Even still, with just a glance here and there, I was still impressed with the size of the list of items that was collected. The XNA Community is fully of busy bees and here’s what I noticed. Time Critical XNA News: - Dream.Build.Play Developer Twitter Chat on May 11th
XNA Team: - Shawn Hargreaves keeps his steady pass of churning out amazingly useful posts week after week. This week he covered…
XNA MVPs: - Michael McLaughlin writes about
- Fake Anti Virus Software PSA: Win 7 Internet Security 2011 – Unregistred Version
- XNA and VB: The Preparations Continue
- Ever wonder what it takes to become an XNA MVP? The question was asked and answered on the XNA forums (I didn’t even have to chime in!)
XNA Developers: - Aaron Foley (@slyprid) shares a DrawableGameComponent that handles all the light/shadows with baking for your use!
- Marcin Najder shares Simplifying XNA game development using Async CTP or F# asynchronous workflow
- Philippe Da Silva shares How to Structure your Game with IGF
- Eric Cosky writes up some notes on using PIX to figure out graphic glitches in your game
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): - Kotaku shares it’s favorites and talks up Xbox LIVE Indie Games (it was good to see the positivity in the comments too!)
- Justin Johnson of Syndicate X posts Whirlygig: Getting Close!
- Red Button Games announces All Your Creeps
- Armless Octopus
- GameMarx
- Writings of Mass Deduction
XNA Development: - In the UK and interested in meeting up with XNA developers? Checkout the newly re-designed XNA UK website and find out what it’s all about.
- Editor Development - Content Pipeline Options
Game Development: - Interview with Arrowhead Game Studios (creator of Magicka, an XNA Game on Steam)
Friday, April 29, 2011
This week has been an interesting one. Lots of ups and downs in the XNA Community and lots of things that we’re not sure yet if it’s an up or down. One of the biggest changes that happened was that the Top Downloads list on Xbox.com and on the Xbox dashboard is now calculated differently for Xbox LIVE Indie Games. It’s still not clear what impact this is going to have (although I know it feels pretty clear to some of you in the community!) but this lead to some interesting things. One, we got to see Xbox LIVE Indie Games mixed into the master best selling list with Xbox LIVE Arcade and retail titles. The screenshots of that will be in my mind (and on my hard drive) forever. That was pretty awesome to see and I’m looking forward to a day where that is the reality of things. Two (and I think this point got lost in the panic of whether this was a good thing or not), the XNA Team DID SOMETHING. Not only did they do something, but they communicated with the community about it afterwards and they’re still talking to us. That is unbelievably fantastic and I’m standing up and giving them a slow clap right now. Nicely done, let’s see some more of that and I guarantee you this community will respond by making more and more awesome content and games for all your platforms. Now on to what’s been happening in the XNA community… Time Critical XNA News: - Dream.Build.Play Developer Twitter Chat on May 11th
- Richard Williams (@DVMGames) shares the multi-language games in Peer Review and playtest this week. If you can review games in other languages, please help out!
XNA Team: - Shawn Hargreaves hits us with some more sampling posts.
- Supersampling
- Multisampling
- XNA Team Blog -Updates to the Top Downloads Channel on Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- Charles Cox shares a presentation he’s been working on for the TED full-spectrum talk contest - Predicting the Future with Text Adventures
XNA MVPs: - This past week got you down MVPs? Well here’s a thank you post from the community to the XNA MVPs
- Charles Humphrey & Martin Caine share that The XNA UK User Group now has a Facebook Page
XNA Developers: - Sebastian Gray (@DSebJ) shares object instancing and player weapons fire components with SunBurn
- Aaron T. Foley (@slyprid) has been incredibly busy this past week on Transmute doing performance enhancements
- Andy Mount needs your help creating performance testing software for XNA games, NPerformant - Volunteers Needed!
- Philippe Da Silva shares the IGF v0.5 Menu System progress with a blog post and a video
- Ian Mitchell shares an XNA RPG Conversation Engine he created
- @haxpor posts “How to use a customized font in an XNA Game”
- Adrian-Florin Visan (@iloveshaders) shares “Using state objects in XNA”
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG) - Nathan Fouts of Mommy’s Best Games talks about the Gun Stack system in their upcoming title Serious Sam Double D
- Ska Studios shares new Vampire Smile Solos and ZP2KX tunes
- GameMarx
- Starzzle - Game Marx Game of the Week
- Udder Chaos
- Undead Empire
- Prismatic Solid
- Zombie Poker Defense
- Infantry Steel
- Monsters Probably Stole
- Matthew Doucette shares that Decimation X was picked as one of the top 10 Xbox LIVE Indie Games by CVB
- E.C. Dryere shares a mini-trailer for Ring Runner, his upcoming indie title
- Johannes Hubert of SpynDoctorGames announces that Your Doodles are Bugged! is now available on Steam. This means yet another XNA title has made that migration! Congratulations!
- Armless Octopus
- Xbox LIVE Indie Game new release roundup for April 19th-April 26th
- NLL 11 review: Cherry Picking the Competition
- Serious Sam Double D upgrades to hex-wielding
- Contest: Win NLL 11 for Xbox
- New Xbox LIVE Indie Games sales intervals allow indie games to dominate Xbox Live “best selling” lists
- Starzzle review: Snacking on Stars
- Armless Octocast Espisode 49: Armless Octopublishing
- What do you want to play on the next Armless Octopus Community game night?
- Going Loud Studios announces Lair of the Evildoer with their official trailer
- VVGTV covers Frostydowns upcoming title Dig! Build! Defend!
- Steven Hurdle of Writings of Mass Deduction
- Day 164: Your Doodles are Bugged
- Day 165: Murphid
- Day 166: Infinity Danger
- Day 167: Spacecraft
- Day 168: Inertia
- Day 169: Aesop’s Garden
- Interview with “Angry Newton” Mr. Gravity
- Day 170: NINJA Bros.
- Kris Steele of Fun Infused Games reminds everyone to check out his awesome interview on Writings of Mass Deduction
XNA Development: - Channel 9 - XNA Game Development: Creating Player Animation
- XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 10 - UI Elements and Menus
- Channel 9 - XNA RPG - Learning XNA while building an RPG, a 26 part tutorial
Windows Phone 7: - ElementCy releases Manic for WP7
- Eric Cosky asks for feedback on their new video of their upcoming WP7 game Star Ninja
Friday, April 22, 2011
This has been kind of a crappy week for me. Kids are all puking like crazy so I’m up most nights taking care of them. Fun times being a day! (I have 4 kids in case you didn’t know!). And while my kids have been puking, the community has been busy puking too. Puking up a ton of awesomeness! Yeah…probably not the best analogy but I’m tired.
I did want to take the time to point out one thing that resonated loudly with me this week. You’ll see some interviews with Kris Steele by Steven Hurdle. In that interview, Steven brings up a good point. Are we using the wrong hash tags on twitter? Typically when we tweet about our games or Xbox LIVE Indie Games in general, we tend to use the #xna and #xblig hashtags with occasionally the #xbox hashtag thrown in for good measure. But what are the gamers using? Are we really just advertising the games to the people that already know about them? That’s something definitely worth thinking about. And if someone knows the answer to “what hashtags do Xbox 360 gamers from casual to hardcore use?” please let me and the rest of the Xbox LIVE Indie Game community know!
And now on to the what’s happening in the XNA community!
Time Critical XNA News:
- Multi-language games currently in peer review (if you speek another language and are a peer reviewer, these games may need your help!)
XNA Team:
- Shawn Hargreaves is on another blog posting spree, guess MIX must be over!
- How to re-sample a signal without aliasing
- Why sampling a signal causes aliasing
- Antialiasing
- XNA Team Blog - Update on Indie Games Ratings
- Nick Gravelyn shares an article he wrote a long time ago on the life of an XNA Game
XNA MVPs:
- Mike (@mikebmcl) shares a tool he remembers @PumpkinGames wrote to help XNA developers see the effects of color blindness
XNA Developers:
- DrMistry of MStar Games - XNA - not just for games, not just for Xbox/WP7
- Richard Williams (@DVMGames) shares an interesting article talking about games and colorblind players.
- Luke Quinn shares a very quick and basic keyboard textbox using XNA
- International Game Developers Association of South Africa - Developer Spotlight Justin Southey, developer of The Most Addicting Sheep Game
- JohnK (@bobthecbuider) posts SunBurn Dev Journal: Reflections and Clipping Planes
- Kris Steele has been posting his “Fun Infused Friday” which unfortunately I keep missing since I also post my XNA Notes on Friday...so go check them out!
- Fun Infused Friday 5
- Fun Infused Friday 6
- He’s also been running a poll to see what feature people would like to see implemented for Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- And answers the question “Is WP7 development harder than XBLIG?”
- Philippe Da Silva posts a Menu implementation video for IGFv0.5
- Eric Cosky posts Farseer inactive object optimizations and other minor features
- Jo De Greef starts a series of tutorials on creating a physics based Windows Phony 7 XNA game
- Michael Crump writes about building a better MessageBox for Windows Phone 7 with the help of XNA
- David Gouveia (@dalgou) shares creating a basic synth in XNA 4.0 - Part III
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG):
- Help spread the word of XNA/XBLIG (and Armless Octopus in this case) by up-voting any Xbox LIVE Indie Game articles you find on Digg, Reddit, etc.
- Ska Studios - Good Morning Gato #57
- Armless Octopus - Get to know your XNA MVPs Part 2 - John Defenbaugh
- VVGTV VVGindiecast Ep. 3
- Writings of Mass Deduction
- Day 159 Avaglide
- Day 160 Seizonrenda
- Day 161 Timeslip
- Day 162 Sol Survivor
- Day 163 Dysnomia
- Kris Steele of Fun Infused Games Interview - Part 1
- Kris Steele of Fun Infused Games Interview - Part 2
- Kris Steele of Fun Infused Games Interview – Part 3
- GameMarx
- Tug of Four
- Flotilla
- Delta Energy 2.0
- Project Gert Moonbreaker
- Maids with Balloons
- The Most Addicting Sheep Game
- AFallenApple shows off Devious Knights an upcoming XBLIG title
- Clearance Bin Review - XBLIG Spotlight Oozi: Earth Adventure Episode 1
- Gamergeddon - Xbox Indie Game Roundup - April 19th
- Darkstarmatryx review Bouncing Avatars
- SuitzEthis shares the Kinectic Kube S - Shock Trailer
- Justin Johnson updates us on the progress of his game Whirlygig
- The XNA UK User Group (@XNAUK) has recently undergone a complete website redesign courtesy of Martin Caine (@martincaine):
XNA Development:
- Space Invaders in C# with XNA - Tutorial Part 1
- Minecraft: The Story of Mojang 20 minute short. Make what you love.
- UK XNA Developers, list of UK developers who love and use the XNA framework. If you’re not listed, get signed up and share what you’ve been working on!
- PAX Dev - a min conference that happens before PAX Prime that’s just for developers. No gamers, no press. Just developers talking to developers. Sounds interesting...
- ESRB Using New Automated System to rated digitally distributed control games - Is this going to change anything for Xbox LIVE Indie Games and their developers?
- XNA for Silverlight Developers part 9 - Navigation and Structure
- Channel 9 - XNA Game Development: The Game Loop
Windows Phone 7:
- Sgt. Conker - Recommendations on Resuming
- VeraShackle posts - Battle of Tafalgar for Windows Phone 7, Fake shadows but real name labels
- John Elster of Liquid Electron posts about Gesture Input in his WP7 XNA game Infestation
- Another tester enlisted in the ranks of the XNA UK FREE XAP test service they’re running
Friday, April 15, 2011
MIX 11 happened this past week and I’m still trying to find and catch up on all the announcements changes that came from that. It looks like we can now use XNA on the web via Silverlight (and am I reading that we can do 3d?). We can now use Silverlight in our XNA projects with Windows Phone 7 (yay for having an easy way to make UI’s in XNA now!). And I’m still searching around to see if there were any other big news. The Silverlight + XNA news is pretty big because that opens up a lot of new game development avenues that weren’t available to XNA developers before. Social networking in our game? Yeah, I’ll take some of that. Despite all the excitement coming out of MIX 11 it really didn’t grab center stage in the community because there we so many other exciting things happening. Here’s what I noticed… Time Critical XNA News: - The XNA Team announces Gamefest 2011: Save the Dates!
XNA Team: - Shawn Hargreaves post about code being a 4 letter word
XNA MVPs: - Chris Williams will be speaking at DEVLINK 2011 giving a talk on building a game for Windows Phone 7 with XNA 4.0
- John Defenbaugh uploads some more awesome videos from his game Kilflame, this time with improved particles and animations
- Michael McLaughlin (@mikebmcl) posts on WP7 Games: Recommendations on Resuming
XNA Developers: - Sgt. Conker gives a wonderful welcome to the new XNA MVPs (pictures included! although the one picture is probably too much awesome for anyone to handle...)
- Jwatte shares with us the state of COLLADA, FBX and open source
- DrMistry of MStarGames has found another way to procrastinate, get your thyroid to act up and help out! Hopefully he’ll have a full recovery after treatment and be back to his usual active and productive self. Get well soon!
- @TehGrumpyDude reminds us all (by tweeting about it!) that he’s got a port of AGG Lite for XNA called Agg.XNA, a 2D vector SW rasterizer library
- Martin Caine shares about his first XNA UK User Group meeting
- Aaron Foley (@slyprid) continue work on Transmute which now fully supports full tile swatch rotations
- Duckocide shares Copernicus One progress video #25
- JForceGame shares a time-lapse drawing of the Unstoppable Hookshot Gun
- Matthew Doucette of Xona Games puts us all in a trance with a Score Rush run
- Richard Williams (@DVMGames) reminds all multi-language peer reviewers to check out the multi-language games currently in peer review and help out where you can!
- Philippe Da Silva announces that IGF v.0.4 was released and is available for download now!
- John Kabus (@bobthecbuilder) announces the latest SunBurn release
- Simon (Darkside) J (@DDReaper) shares a Mix11 Online Cheat sheet for all the Mix11 sessions (great way to see what was announced!)
- UberGeekGames shares his find for all XNA performance nuts
- Is XBLIG worthy of your time and effort? Dustin Tigner shares why for him, that answer is YES!
- Scott Drew (@JustSuds) shares a video of his Dungeons3D game he’s working on for Dream Build Play
- Mike Ooliphant (@NostaticSoft) posts about Randomization in Games - Managing Player Expectations
- Andy Mount blog, “So when do you see the light at the end of the tunnel again?”
- @x35mm shares an interesting article he found on Content vs. Gameplay in games
- Ben Kane asks “Do Indies Crunch?”
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): - Ska Studios coming of the release of Dishwasher: Vampire Smile decides to do what every indie studio does after working hard for years and releasing a hit. Never take a break.
- Good Morning Gato #56
- High Quality Ska Studios Music now available for download. Pay what you want!
- Drew Viggo Bermark reviews Retro-cade: Data Stream Y2K600
- GameMarx
- Cell - GameMarx Game of the Week
- Insane Bash
- Shield the Beat
- PewPewPewPewPewPewPewPewPew
- Shifters
- Congrats to FortressCraft on a successful release. At one point it was the third game in the (US) xbox.com best selling list according to fairly reliable sources. Always good to see XBLIG being successful.
- Indie Lair reviews Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess
- Kevin Prier (@TheOnlyProphet) reviews TriLinea ReAct
- The VideoGamerRob Blog reviews Infinity Danger
- Armless Octopus
- Duodecad
- Shield the Beat
- Armless Octocast Episode 47
- Writings of Mass Deduction (@massdeduction )
- Day 152: Treasure Treasure
- Day 153: Castle Pain
- Day 154: Olu
- Day 155: Moe Mekuri
- DIY Games posts the Weekly Xbox Indies
XNA Development: - The XNA Tower Defense series continues to chug along with Tutorial 15: Adding Health Bars
- Rob Miles posts about MIX 11 XNA Madness
- XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 9 - Navigation and Structure
- This went up on Channel 9 March 30th, but it was new to me. XNA Game Development: Designing the Game
- Digital Rune posts Car Physics for 3D Games
- XNA Game Development Diary - how hard is it to make money?
- 2011 US Imagine Cup finals- Final day presentations
- XNA for the Web - Silverlight 5 announced at MIX 11 with some pretty cool XNA features!
- Silverlight + XNA working together on WP7 announced at MIX11. This makes all sorts of interesting game ideas come to mind...
- Kinect for Windows SDK beta announced from Microsoft Research
Windows Phone 7: - Meet Bandon Watson, the Man behind Microsoft’s Windows Phone Developer Push
- ElementCy let’s us know that Manic...IT’S COMING and soon for WP7
- Windows Team Blog, “Be what’s next with Mango Developer Tools and Platform”
- One of the coolest WP7 Ads I’ve seen
Friday, April 08, 2011
What a crazy week! Big game releases from the XNA Community, podcasts, reviews, interviews, new educational content being posted and all sorts of upcoming titles that I’m excited about. If there was ever a week that I missed stuff, this was the week. Seemed like every time I glanced at twitter or checked my RSS feeds there was some interesting and new XNA thing going on. No need for me to try and convince you, just like at the size of this weeks XNA Notes!
Time Critical XNA News: - Making Windows Phone 7 games or apps? Then don’t miss out on the Microsoft Spring Cleaning Project
- Deadline to sign up for Dream Build Play is fast approaching. Make sure you get signed up so you can submit your entry in June!
- If you saw people tweeting with the hashtag #ims211 this past week, this is what it’s about. (and what an amazing response from the game development community!) Make sure to introduce yourself and say Hi!
XNA Team: - XNA Team Blog announces new game development page and tutorials on the App Hub
- Shawn Hargreaves in another flurry of multiple posts in a week hit on several different topics
- What’s with all the hating on Comic Sans
- Keyboard Macros
- Visitor and multiple dispatch via C# ‘dynamic’
- Nick Gravelyn has been busy with the work on Pixel Man 2 (which should be in playtest again this weekend, hint, hint to all your Xbox LIVE Indie Game playtesters...)
XNA MVPs: - I’m either missing what the XNA MVPs are doing (which is my guess)…or we’re not doing anything! So yeah, if you’re an XNA MVP make sure to let me know what you’re doing and where your blog/site is so this section has a bit more content.
XNA Developers: - James Johnston (@MadNinjaSkillz, creator of ezmuze) shares some tricks/techniques for making your life easier with the GamePad in XNA
- @theBigDaddio shows off his new title screen for his Windows Phone 7 XNA game (and it’s using the framework from the Windows Phone 7 book I wrote!)
- @mrhelmut of The Daily XNA is still looking for suggestions and feedback on just what the site should be and how it should look. Drop them a line, leave some comments, tweet them!
- Kris Steele of FunInfused Games shares a better three level parallax star field using XNA
- Jason Mitchell shares information about working with the basics of the IntermediateSerializer (and by shares more, I mean reminds everyone to be reading Shawn Hargreaves blog!)
- Philippe Da Silva shares making a Simple GUI and Menu system using IGF
- Simon (Darkside) Jackson shares SunBurn Snippets
- mavarok shares a brief run through of an XNA game he made using graphics from Lost Planet (man I love Lost Planet’s graphics!)
- Jesse Chounard has been giving Demina a few updates (along with some help from others in the community, thanks RobotVsEverything and oddy). I’ve been using this in my game and it’s working wonderfully!
- Eric Cosky shares some recent Farseer optimizations
- Andrew Mount writes, can you hear that? It’s the sound of a great game
- @mechaghost (Elbert Perez) developed the game for the new beginners guide on WP7 and XNA
- Allen Pestaluky shares how to change the windows mouse cursor in XNA
- Dimi Grigoriadis shares his collection of XNA resources and tutorials he’s found useful in learning XNA
- Mathias shares Open Source Project for Animated COLLADA models in XNA 4
- Spyn Doctor shares and gives an example of how to use the Global Scoreboard component to share more than just high scores
- Andrew Russel and ExEn are chugging merrily along and he’s currently seeking funding for an OS X port. If he keeps this up, soon you’ll be able to port your XNA game easily to EVERY PLATFORM IN THE WORLD.
- berben11 posts about Using Late Binding in XNA 4.0 and the importance of interfaces
- The XNA UK UserGroup held their monthly meeting this week with Charles Humphrey and Edward Powell giving interesting talks covering re-usable HUD elements and Windows Phone Particle systems. The meetings are held on the first Wednesday of each month in Kenilworth just outside Coventry.
- Edward Powell (@verashackle) has some pretty awesome posts about creating battleship in XNA for Windows Phone 7
- Johannes Hubert (@SpynDoctorGames) reports that Episode 4 of GamePro’s Indie watch is continuing to cover Xbox LIVE Indie Games on the German Dashboard!
Xbox LIVE Indie Games: - For a wonderful feed of Xbox LIVE Indie Games reviews and news and a fantastic pivot table for exploring Xbox LIVE Indie Games, don’t forget XboxIndies
- Just Press Start - Episode 52a XBLIG Developer Round Table
- Writings of Mass Deduction
- Xbox LIVE Indie Games Summer Uprising. Should it happen? How should it be run? Share your thoughts and opinions in this thread.
- Vintage Video Games TV is running “The Art of Indie Contest: A Tribute to Xbox LIVE Indie Games”
- Indie Lair reviews Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess
- zer0sumGames shares some footage from their XNA Spaceship RPG
- Barker’s Crest Studio gets everyone excited with their newest game The Avatar Legends
- That Gamer Hub reviews Shield The Beat
- GameMarx checksout
- Hoardz
- and ...some game, it’s got a title and it’s something like In the Ear Do You Mat...maybe
- and more…
- Armless Octopus covers..
- Sequence, the RPG-rhythm game mash-up
- Rotor
- and more…
- The Official Xbox Magazine posts the 50 Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games list
- Andrew Mount takes a time out to play a little Infinity Danger and write a hilarious review in the process
- Hedge Wizard coming soon to Xbox LIVE Indie games and is adorably cute
- VideoGamer.com posts a round up of Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- Here’s a review of the Windows Phone 7 version RC AirSim, one of the best selling games for Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- AchievementLocked interviews Mathieu Briau about Shield the Beat
- Bunker Buster coming soon to Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- Did you know Chime was originally written in XNA?
- Drew “Viggo” Bergmark reviews Avatar Adventures Online
- FunInfused Games shares their latest video on Volchaos coming soon to Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- Indie Lair reports on the recent XBLIG dashboard promotions
- Perhaps you’ve been asleep and missed the buzz? Ska Studios has released their second Xbox LIVE Arcade title, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile and people are loving on it everywhere! Congratulations James and the rest of the crew at Ska Studios!
- EuroGamer reports on PewPewPewPewPewPewPewPewPew , Xbox LIVE Indie Games voice controlled shooter
- 8 Bit Horse covered I Accidentally ...In Space!
- Steven Hurdle of Writings of Mass Deductions covers the story of one Xbox LIVE Indie Game developer that doesn’t want you to buy his game
- Raymond Matthews (@DarkstarMatryx) reviews Pioneerz
- XboxHornet is running several contests on their BBQ Games facebook page
- Zeboyd Games shares Barker’s Crest new game The Avatar Legends
- Ben Kane shares video of his upcoming twin-stick action RPG, Project Splice
XNA Development: - Latest Multilanguage Games in Peer Review (if you’re a peer reviewer who can review in other languages, the guys on this list need your help!)
- Microsoft released a new and cheaper XDK!
- Channel 9 - XNA Game Development - Playing Sounds
- DigialRuneSoftware posts several videos recently
- DigitalRune Physics v1.2 adds support for 3D ragdoll physics
- 3D XNA Vehicle Physics
- 3D XNA Character Controller
- Channel 9 - XNA Game Development Intro (starring the man, Charles Cox!)
Friday, April 01, 2011
Today is April Fool's day...and apparently I fooled quite a few people with my post earlier today! Sorry if you were outraged, concerned (or maybe you were happy and elated?) but I am not losing my MVP status. I'm still an XNA MVP and hope to remain one for as long as XNA is around. I really love the technology and this community! Something that was NOT an April fool's joke however, there are now two new XNA MVPs (well only two knew that I'm aware of, if there's more, please make yourself known!). Congratulations to Michael McLaughlin and John Defenbaugh for this recent award, you guys truly deserve the honor. Thanks for everything the both of you have done for the community this past year. With all the announcements done, let's get on to what I noticed going on in the XNA community this past week.
XNA Team: - The XNA Team announces that Gamefest 2011 is open to all
- Shawn Hargreaves and Charles Cox talk XNA Game Studio on Channel 9
- Shawn Hargreaves goes on a posting spree and shares a slew of technical terms that SHOULD exist and few extra posts thrown in. His last 7 posts are all new from last week!
XNA MVPs: - Newly awarded XNA MVP Michael McLaughlin prepares himself for XNA and VB
- George Clingerman defends XBLIG
- http://www.dealspwn.com/microsoft-mvp-defends-xblig/
- and I apparently write more convincingly than I realized and trick a large portion of the community into thinking I lost my MVP status. April Fools! I’m still an MVP and plan on being one for a long, long time
XNA Developers: - Tom Miller wants to know, just what DID you think of his book?
- The Daily XNA is trying a new format, let @mrhelmut know what you think and be sure to offer suggestions!
- Aaron T. Foley (@slyprid) works on enhancing a project release by Nick. G. for WPF Hosting for XNA 4.0.
- Spyn-Doctor announces his XBLIG Your Doodles Are Bugged will be showing up on Steam!
- DigitalDNA celebrates over 1 millions downloads of their Xbox LIVE Indie games
- Simon (Darkside) J shares his thoughts on the ATTDeveloper webcast Connecting WP7 to the web
- Kris Steele gets into the April Fools spirit and shares The Divide By Zero postmortem. There’s a lesson in there for all of us. Somewhere. I think. Well maybe not, but it’s a fun read!
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): - Destructoid is looking to help promote indie games
- Raymond Matthews continues to post XBLIG reviews on DarkStarMatryx
- Armless Octopus, reviews, podcasts, articles, news. They have it all on Xbox LIVE Indie Games. Subscribe to the feed, hit the site daily.
- MasterBlud of VVGTV releases his music album for the upcoming XBLIG was released and is available here
- DIY releases Best of the Indies - March 29th 2011
- Petition launched to get XBLIG expanded into Austria
- Another 7 days and another 7 awesome Xbox LIVE Indie Games discovered by Steven Hurdle (he’s up to Day 142 now! That’s 142 Xbox LIVE Indie Game recommendations!)
- Dealspwn posts the Xbox LIVE Indie Game of the Week winner
- Just Press Start XBLIG Podcast, Episode 51
- Bonded Reality gets a mention in May’s issue of Xbox Magazine!
- mancide shares the March 2011 Indie Games Spotlight on TrueAchievements.com
- GameMarx announces Microsoft’s Announcement of the “Adopt-An-Indie” program. Another fantastic April Fool’s post!
- Ben Kane does a developer update on his action RPG twin-stick shooter game Project Splice
- Kris Steele of FunInfused Games posts another Fun Infused Friday sharing what they’ve been up to
- XBLIG Shield The Beat wants you to show the love on their Facebook page (you should also check out this game, fantastic!)
- The Dishwasher: Vampire Smiles is being released in 4 days and Ska Studios in awesome indie style has mad a fantastic video Dev Diary.
XNA Development: - Protohacks shares an XNA Debug Terminal
- Microsoft announces XNA is coming to Visual Basic
- Channel 9 posts the WP7 XNA for Silverlight Developers Series
- @MrDaaark shares some information on basic color theory
- Astroboid Games share an XNA Message system for games
[What you see below was an April Fool's Joke! I am still an MVP and was already re-awarded for the year back in January! I'm still laughing at how many people this fooled (although I did feel a little bad when I saw all the nice comments being made) It was kind of like faking your own death, I got to read a so many wonderful things about me and it was really quite touching just how many people reached out to me or got really upset or angry about this news. Thanks for the concern, but I am still an XNA MVP and plan to be for a very long time! Sorry for any confusion and Happy April Fool's Day!]
Really only one note I’m going to bring up today because it’s all that’s been on my mind this past week.
In the MVP world there’s an ebb and flow. New MVPs come and old MVPs go. Microsoft, in recognizing that the old batch of XNA MVPs had gotten a little stale (and probably too whiny and annoying) appears to have brought in a new crop and discontinued some of the old. It was a good 5 years. I had a lot of fun with the community and I’ll probably still be around.
Losing my XNA MVP status has made me take a step back and re-evaluate just why it is I’m so involved like I am. I never thought it was because of the tag that Microsoft gave me, but when I got the email that my XNA MVP status had been discontinued, I have to admit I feel like throwing in the towel. So here I am sitting with a ton of good memories but also looking at a LOT of time that I wasted doing things for others and not for myself. And honestly I’m not sure it was worth it.
I also want to say that I’m really sorry I let the XNA community down. I feel like I kind of failed you as an XNA MVP and maybe it’s a good thing that Microsoft has swapped me out.
Anyway, I don’t want to take away from those new XNA MVP awardees, this is me passing the torch and I want to say best of luck to you guys. Maybe you guys can find the right words to appeal to Microsoft to make the changes I never could. Most of all congratulations for your new award, you guys really deserve it!
Really looking forward to seeing what these new batch of guys do for the community. Good luck everyone and it’s time for me to figure out just what exactly I want to fill the hours of my free time with now. It’s been fun.
Friday, March 25, 2011
This week was a busy one for the XNA Community and one that had a series of ups and downs. You might have noticed by now (or maybe you haven’t and I shouldn’t be pointing this out..) that I tend to only point out the ups. That’s very much on purpose and something I thought long and hard about before I started doing XNA Notes.
It’s too easy to let the bad stuff spread like a virus and seem overwhelming (something to do with human nature and there’s probably a science and psychology behind it). When the bad spreads like that, we tend to forget all the good things that are going on. So since the lows are being covered so well by everyone else, I just record our highs. This is the best of what’s going on in the XNA community. It might be a biased view, but we’ve got to start learning to put our best face forward. I don’t do this to cover it up, but more because I don’t want the good being overshadowed or forgotten. So I’m not fair and un-biased here, this is definitely only one side of the coin and hopefully that works for everyone.
The new dashboard list by Kotaku is an example of a FANTASTIC and positive sign for Xbox LIVE Indie Games. Kotaku is a huge site and the list they chose looks like they put some serious thought into it. I’m really looking forward to the next update of that list and can’t wait to see what they pick next. Also going to be interesting to see what traffic that drives in for people on the list.
Also don’t forget, if you feel I’m missing something really cool going on in this community or if you have suggestions for how I should be doing this differently, let me know either via the comments, twitter or email! My email is posted at the bottom of every page on my tutorial site, so I’m pretty easy to contact!
So here it is, here’s the spotlight on what awesome things are happening in this community.
Time Critical XNA News:
- Eric Cosky has put up a poll - Does your XNA work pay the bills for you? Don’t forget to head over and share your answer!
- Wifey (that’s my wife!) is trying to raise $900 for the March of Dimes and is over 1/3 of the way there. Help out with any little bit you can and help save future Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers and gamers! (see how I tied that in to XNA news!)
XNA Team:
- Pete Isensee (a name the XNA Community should learn, say hi and welcome him guys!), Principle Program Manager in Xbox Advanced Technology Group talks Dream Build Play, XNA and XBLIGs with GameZone
- XNA Team Blog announces Kotaku’s Favorites on Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- Nick Gravelyn posts about some of the MediaPlayer changes in XNA Game Studio 4.0 for Windows Phone 7
XNA MVPs:
- Chris Williams shares how to use the Advertising SDK with XNA on WP7
- Charles Humphreys posts a video showing 1,000,000 particles in XNA
XNA Developers:
- JohnK (@bobthecbuilder) posts a dev journal about the new tech being worked on for SunBurn
- Mike McLaughlin posts about Sprite Padding using Guides in GIMP
- Aaron T. Foley (@slyprid) continues to improve and enhance Transmute and shares some teaser pics for the upcoming beta release
- Xalterax asks for and then provides a solution for a non-DXT compress SpriteFont
- Philippe Da Silva posts on IGF v0.4, the new Sprite System
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG):
- GameMarx and @ViNull (Michael C. Neel) have been crazy busy as usual, they post so much stuff related to XNA and Xbox LIVE Indie Games you really should just be visiting their site daily
- BitMob does a follow up article on the Indie Games Winter Uprising
- Duckocide shares his progress on CopernicusOne a Dream Build Play 2011 hopeful using the SunBurn Engine
- x35mm shares his XNA RPG progress with a video and a post about his design update
- Deborah Debas releases a new Shield the Beat video, one of the few Xbox LIVE Indie Games I’ve heard about that got rights to play music from popular artists like Franz Ferdinand!
- Milkstone Studios shows off their next game Infinity Danger
- Derek S. has a new mini-review section at the VVGtv forums for Xbox LIVE Indie Game new releases
- XboxHornet has been around for years now and is one that everyone in the XNA community should have bookmarked, tons of reviews, news and interviews there, make sure to keep supporting the sites that have made Xbox LIVE Indie Games great!
- Kris Steele of FunInfused games shares a simple SoundBank class for Windows Phone 7
- Armless Octopus continues to be a fantastic member of the XNA and Xbox LIVE Indie Game community. The site is just filled to the brim with all sorts of gaming news and announcements and Xbox LIVE Indie Games are featured prominently against AAA contenders. Bookmark it, visit it daily and show your appreciation by leaving comments and sending traffic their way.
- Nate Andrews posts the Xbox LIVE Indie Dome where he does a weekly dive through Xbox LIVE Indie Games to find the best so you don’t have to
- FunInfused Games shares a sneak peek video of what potentially might be their next game
- 8BitHorse has two new XBLIG articles come out soon so keep you eye on the site
- MasterBlud (of VVGtv Xbox Reviews) reminds Xbox LIVE Indie Game Developers that he does trailers and soundtracks if you’re interested, contact him!
- If you’re a podcast listener and want to hear more XNA or XBLIG news, contact Dave Voyles of Armless Octopus and let him know just what it is you’re interested in.
- Ska Studios readies for the Dishwasher Vampire Smile release on Xbox LIVE Arcade. If you want to know what to shoot for as an Xbox LIVE Indie Game Developer. This is it.
- IndieTrials is a new review site focusing on reviewing Xbox LIVE Indie Game trials. Defintiely something XBLIG developers need to be thinking about when making their games. Just how good IS your trial experience?
XNA Development:
- Sgt. Conker reports on the App Hub fixes rolled out by Microsoft
- Christopher Hamilton shares Microsoft XNA 4.0 Part 2 - Game Basics
- New tutorials being written by Polar Games for the beginner and intermediate developers
- ExEn is now fully funded and once released will allow XNA developers to make games for iPhone, Android and Silverlight
- Steven Boland posts about XNA and Unit Testing
- Been wondering about how to get your XNA games on iPhone, Super Boise might be able to help with that!
- March Tech Student of the Month - Kenneth Harding, creator of SketchBox 360 for XBLIG
- DigitalRune posts about Multithreading in XNA using the DigitalRune library
- XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 8 - Music and Sound Effects
- Christian Sada of Aeternus Studios talks about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game review process and passing it
Friday, March 18, 2011
Even with a lot of the XNA community working on Dream Build Play entries ( I swear I’m going to finish mine this year!) people are still finding time to do side projects and be amazingly active in the XNA and XBLIG community. With my one eye on my code and one eye on the community, here’s what I noticed these over achievers doing this past week! Time Critical XNA News: - Xbox LIVE Indie Games sales data will be delayed March 17-20th due to some schedule maintenance
- GameMarx is releasing a series of videos to help raise donations for victims of the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. Help out if you can!
XNA MVPs: - Catalin Zima shares his thoughts on the MVP summit and my book!
- Glenn Wilson (@mykre) helps the XNA team announce some new educational content that you don’t want to miss if you’re porting your app or game to Windows Phone 7
- George (that’s me!) shares his MVP Summit 2011 summary and XBLIG thoughts
XNA Developers: - @SmallCaveGames shares a Code of Ethics for Xbox LIVE Indie Game Developers
- Derek S adds more Xbox LIVE Indie Game studios to his master list of XBLIG links
- Making games and want to help kids? Then share your story with GameFace: America!
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): - XonaGames shares some video footage of their booth from GDC 2011
- Joystiq on Mommy’s Best Games Serious Sam Double D
- Magiko Gaming started a blog on the XBLIG dashboard daily Top 10 games in the US. Good way to go back in time and look at the history of which games were in the the Top 10.
- Where are they going now? XBLIG developers at a crossroads..
- BinaryTweed’s Clover: A Curious Tail is Xbox LIVE’s Deal of the Week!
- Looking for an Xbox LIVE Indie Game to buy? Writings of Mass Deduction has over 125 suggestions at this point!
- SkaStudios shares Vampire Smile Achievements AND their PAX East 2011 Both Setup video
- MasterBlud and VVGTV starts a new community for XBLIG developers and gamers to join
- Raymond Matthews (@DrakstarMatryx) covers Mommy’s Best Games getting Serious
XNA Development: - Dave Henry (@mort8088) posts the 4th tutorial in his series
- XNA 4.0 SpriteBatch extended
- Tutorial 5 - Creating a manual blank texture
- XNA 4.0 Tutorial 6 - Spritesheet Object
- Jason Mitchell shares a tutorial on setting the alpha value for spritebatch in XNA 4.0
- XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 7 - Collision Detection
- Markus Ewald (@Cygon4) shares the full Ninject 2.0 binding for XNA and Sunburn
- Michael B. McLaughlin shares an AccelerometerInput XNA GameComponent he created (which I’m probably going to snag for a game I’m working on...)
- Extra Credit tackles the building of a good tutorial. Must watch for all Indie game devs (thanks for pointing it out Evan Johnson!)
- ExEn is fully funded at this point so definitely something for XBLIG developers to keep an eye on as they consider releasing their games on other platforms
- Channel 9 and Greg Duncan post Mixing the Game State Management and Platformer XNA Recipes
- Sgt. Conker has noticed Mike McLaughlin has been crazy productive and has done a recap of his recent posts
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
I've been wanting to write this post summarizing my thoughts about the MVP summit but have been dragging my feet since it's a very difficult one to write. However seeing Andy (http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/77625.aspx) and Catalin (http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/) and Chris (http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/03/07/144229.aspx) post about it has encouraged me to finally take the plunge. I'm going to have to write carefully though because I'm going to be dancing around a ton of NDA mine fields as well as having to walk the tight-rope of not sending the wrong message or having people read too much into what I'm saying. I want to note that most of what I'm about to say is just based on my observations, they're not thoughts that Microsoft has asked me to pass along and they're not things I heard Microsoft say. It's just me sharing what I think after going to the MVP summit. Let's start off with a short imaginary question and answer session. - Has the App Hub forums and XBLIG management been rather poor by Microsoft? Yes.
- Do I think we're going to see changes to that overnight? No.
- Will it continue to look bad from the outside? Somewhat.
Confusing right? Well that's kind of how things are right now. Lots of confusion. XNA is doing AWESOME. Like, really, really awesome. As a result of that awesomeness, XNA is on three major platforms: Xbox 360, WP7 and PC. This means that internally Microsoft is really excited and invested in the technology. That's fantastic for XNA and really should show you the future the framework has. It's here to stay. So why are Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers feeling so much pain? The ironic thing is that pain is being caused by the success of XNA. When XNA was just a small thing, there was more freedom and more focus. It was just us and them. We were an only child. Now our family has grown and everyone has and wants some time with XNA. This gets XNA pulled in all directions and as it moves onto new platforms, it plays catch up trying to get those platforms up to speed to where Xbox LIVE Indie Games has grown. Forums, documentation, educational content. They all need to be there because Xbox LIVE Indie Games has all of that and more. Along with the catch up in features/documentation/awesomeness there's the catch up that the people on the team have to play. New platforms and new areas of development mean new players and those new guys don't have the history of being around from the beginning. This leads to a lack of understanding at times just how important some things are because they seem so small and insignificant (Rich Text defaulting for new forum profiles would be one things that jumps to mind). If you're not aware that the forums have become more than just a basic Q&A, if you're not aware that they're a central hub to a very active community, then you don't understand why that small change should be prioritized over something else. New people have to get caught up and figure out how to make a framework and central forum site work for everyone it's now serving. So yeah, a lot of our pain this last year has been simply that XNA is doing well and XBLIG is doing well so the focus was shifted to catch other things up. It hurts when a parent seems to not have any time for you and they're spending some much time with your new baby brother. Growing pains. All families and in our case our product family experience it to some degree. I think as WP7 matures we'll see the team figuring out how to give everyone the right amount of attention. While we're talking about some of our growing pains, it is also important to note (although not really an excuse) that the Xbox LIVE Arcade developers complain about many of the same things that we do. If you paid attention to talks and information coming out of GDC 2011, most of the the XBLA guys were saying things that sounded eerily similar to what the XBLIG developers are saying (Scott Nichols from GayGamer.net noticed http://twitter.com/#!/NaviFairyGG/status/43540379206811650). Does this mean we should just accept the status quo since we're being treated exactly the same? No way. However it DOES show that the way we're being treated is no indication of the stability and future of the platform, it's just Microsoft dropping the communication ball on two playing fields. We're not alone and we're not even being treated worse. Not great, but also in a weird way a very good sign. Now on to a few tidbits I think I CAN share from the summit (I'm really crossing my fingers I'm not stepping over some NDA line I shouldn't be). First, I discovered that the XBLIG user base is bigger than I personally had originally estimated. I won't give the exact numbers (although we did beg Microsoft to release some of these numbers so maybe someday?) but it was much larger than my original guestimates and I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe some of you guys had the right number when you were guessing, but I know that mine was much too low. And even MORE importantly the number of users/shoppers is growing at a steady pace as well. Our market is growing! That was fantastic news and really something that I had to share. On to the community manager discussion. It was mentioned. I was mentioned. I blushed. Nothing more to report there than the blush in my cheeks was a light crimson color. If I ever see a job description posted for that position I have a resume waiting in the wings. I can't deny that I think that would be my dream job... ...so after I finished blushing, the MVPs did make it very, very clear that the communication has to improve. Community manager or not the single biggest pain point with the Xbox LIVE Indie Game community has been a lack of communication. I have seen dramatic improvement in the team responding to MVPs and I'm even seeing more communication from them on the forums so I'm hoping that's a long term change. I really think they understood the issue, the problem remains how to open that communication channel in a way that was sustainable. I think they'll get it figured out and hopefully that's sooner rather than later. During the summit, you may have seen me tweeting about how I was "that guy" (http://twitter.com/#!/clingermangw/status/42740432471470081). You also may have noticed that Andy and Catalin both mentioned me in their summit write ups. I may have come on a bit strong while I was there...went a little out of character for myself. I've been agitated for a while with the way things have been and I've been listening to you guys and hearing you guys be agitated. I'm also watching some really awesome indie game developers looking elsewhere and leaving the platform. Some of them we might not have been able to keep even with changes, but others are only leaving because of perceptions and lack of communication from Microsoft. And that pisses me off. And I let Microsoft know that I was pissed off. You made your list and I took that list and verbalized it. I verbalized the hell out of it. [It was actually mentioned that I'm a lot nicer on the forums and in email than I am in person...I felt bad about that, but I couldn't stay silent]. Hopefully it did something guys, I really did try hard to get the message across. Along with my agitation, I also brought some pride. I mentioned several things in person to the team that I was particularly proud of. From people in the community that are doing an awesome job, to the re-launch of XboxIndies that was going on that week and even gamers like Steven Hurdle (http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/) who have purchased one XBLIG every day for over 100 days now. The community is freaking rocking it and I made sure to highlight that.  So in conclusion, I'd just like to say hang in there (you know, like that picture of the cat).
If you've been worried about investing in Xbox LIVE Indie Games because you think it's on shaky ground. It's not. Dream Build Play being about the Xbox 360 should have helped a little to point that out. The team is really scrambling around trying to figure things out and make improvements all around. There’s quite a few new gals and guys and it's going to take them time to catch up and there are a lot of constantly shifting priorities. We all have one toy, one team and we're fighting for time with it. It's also time for the community to continue spreading our wings and going out on our own more often. The Indie Game Winter Uprising was a fantastic example of that. We took things into our own hands and it got noticed and Microsoft got behind it. They do every time we stand up and do something (look at how many Microsoft employees tweeted, wrote about the re-launch of XboxIndies.com or the support I've gotten from them for my weekly XNA Notes). XNA is here to stay, it's time for us to stop being scared of that and figure out how to make our own games the successes they should be. There's definitely a list of things that need to be fixed, things that should be improved and I think we should definitely keep vocal about that with Microsoft. Keep it short, focused and prioritized. There's also a lot of things we can do ourselves while we're waiting on them to fix and change things. Lots of ways we can compensate for particular weaknesses in the channel. The kind of stuff that we can step up and do ourselves. Do it on our own, you know, the way Indies always do. And I'm really looking forward to watching us do just that.
Friday, March 11, 2011
With GDC 2011 wrapping up there were a LOT of great interviews and posts with and about XNA and XBLIG and some of our more notorious developers. Definitely worth spending many, many hours watching, listening and reading all those. Very inspiring! Also, don’t forget to get signed up for Dream Build Play! And just as an early warning reminder do NOT, I repeat do NOT wait to submit your game the last day. There are major issues submitting the last day every year and you do not want all your hard work to be hanging on whether your entry actually went through in that last day. Plan on submitting a few days if not a week before. I’m serious, you’ll thank yourself later!
Now on to what’s happening in the XNA community!
Time Critical XNA News:
- PAX East Meet Up (really wish I was going!)
- Want to stay panicked about the countdown to Dream Build Play? Mike McLaughlin shares his DBP countdown clock
XNA Team:
- Nick Gravelyn
- Only needs less than 600 new users in his unique marketing plan for Pixel Man 2
- And hares his ad revenue numbers with his XNA WP7 games
XNA MVPs:
- Andy “The ZMan” Dunn posts his 15,000th App Hub forum post and shares a few thoughts on the MVP summit
- Chris Williams shares his thoughts on the MVP summit
XNA Developers:
- Nathan Fouts of Mommy’s Best games
- Wraps up GDC
- And shares the wonderful screenshots from Serious Sam. (I’m so jealous people at PAX East willl be playing a demo of this game!)
- James Silva of Ska Studios announces
- Michael McLaughlin writes an extremely useful set of tips for XNA WP7 developers
- Robert Boyd “the one man XBLIG improving machine” posts his 9 tips for marketing an Xbox LIVE Indie Gam
- Phillipe Da Silva releases new IGF Pong Sample preview
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG):
- Gamergeddon posts XBox Indie Game Roundup for March 6th
- Dealspwn interviews FortressCraft developer Projector Games
- Writings of Mass Destruction continues the Xbox LIVE Indie Game a day campaign, here’s his take on FishCraft (be sure to check out his other posts!)
- Tom Ogburn shares his GDC notes on the XBLIG panel jotted quickly while attending the panel
- Dave Voyles of Armless Octopus has crazy good coverage on XNA and Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers at GDC 2011. Interviews and articles all extremely well done!
- GameMarx Episode 12
- B.U.T.T.O.N now on Steam!
- German Xbox Dashboard gets review program from GamePro
- XboxIndies.com (one of the best XNA sites out there at this point!) continues to add review sites to it’s main review feed. (And don’t forget to play with that awesome XBLIG pivot control!)
- Kris Steele of FunInfused Games shares early footage of his game World of Chalk
- Raymond Matthews of Darkstarmatryx reviews FunInfused Games Abduction Action
- TheVideoGamerRob reviews Zombie Football Carnage
- XBLIG Square Off Making the Jump to WP7
- Mommy’s Best Games making the news round with their Serious Sam announcement
- Most quoted and linked XBLIG article of the week with the least amount of actual facts and reporting. Shared only because it makes me sad that this is the best coverage we get. (Hey reporters, there’s LOT and LOTS of XBLIG and XNA experts you can contact if you need to check up on facts or wonder why on questions like, Why can’t XBLIGs have Nazis? There’s actually a real answer for that..)
XNA Development:
- Mort8088 has been in an XNA tutorial writing frenzy releasing 4 XNA 4.0 entry level tutorials this week!
- Interesting discussion on what it means to be a community (you do have to sign up to be a member of the XNA UK forums to read it...)
- Slyprid continues his incredible pace on Transmute and shares screens of his new Animation Builder
- Philippe Da Silva wants to know who is using IGF for their games. If it’s you, drop him a note letting him know!
- New Sunburn Video Tutorials released
- Loading and rendering animated collada models using XNA 4.0
- XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 6 Accelerometer Input
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