George Clingerman

Happy Free Comic Book Day! I meant to write about this earlier but better let than never. I just can't let today go by without reminding everyone about Free Comic Book Today! Yep, that's right, today at participating comic books shops (which is basically all of them in my area) they will be handing out Free Comic Books. The kids and I have a blast on this day. It's becoming a holiday for us that's about as big as Easter (it's already bigger than Halloween for me since I don't really like candy, but I LOVE comic books). Yesterday we spent some time drawing super heroes (there's one I did for Reece on the left). Today we'll be driving around town hitting up the local comic shops and collecting our FREE COMIC BOOKS!

If you're curious if there's any participating stores in your area, you can check with the free comic book day store locator. Most comic book  stores don't open until just before lunch on Saturdays so you've got plenty of time to get around and ready.

Speaking of that, I'd better start getting the boys ready so we can make it in time. We want to be there when my favorite store opens because my friend's wife (Anne Timmons) will be signing copies of the stories she drew (they talk about her in the last couple of paragraphs in that article). Pretty cool to actually know someone who draws comics for a living.

Hope you enjoy your Free Comic Book day!

The MVP Summit has come and gone for 2008 and once again I was just blown away by the experience. This was my second summit and I came back extremely motivated and inspired to make sure I have a third. Just being around the other MVPs and the people  at Microsoft makes you feel like you should be better at what you do. Just smart and inspiring guys all around.

I personally want to say thanks to the entire XNA development team. You guys are doing a fantastic job and I really felt my time there the entire week was well spent. Hopefully listening to us complain doesn't make you dread the summit too terribly much. You guys are my rock stars! I'll keep trying to do my part to keep the community excited about your product, but to be honest, I'm not sure you really need me. The product speaks for itself and you guys are rocking it out there in the community already. I wonder if I should send this to that email address I was given during the keynote...what was it Ballmer at something?

Meeting the other XNA MVPs who I know through our community involvement was a blast. Great to finally have faces to the forum and IRC nicknames I've known you as for so long. We have a great group of MVPs and I'm looking forward to seeing each of you again next year. Then once again we can swap stories while I drink and drink and drink and drink some more. We might even have a drink or two after that as well.

Before I forget, I need to give a big thanks to Scott Hanselman. He seems to have his fingers in every pie. In this case, he's the reason I made it to  the summit  on time. If he hadn't twittered me on that Monday morning, I would have just mozied on up to Seattle sometime that afternoon. I had totally blanked and didn't realize there was an opening address, a lunch and open sessions on Monday.....so thanks Scott (and Twitter!).

Running late, not remembering which hotel I was staying at (and later not remembering which room I was in or even which floor), suggesting we can solve problems  by just waiting for people to die, drinking way to many whiskey sours, being told secrets we can't share, meeting new friends, "XBox 360 MVPs rule!", mother fetcher, DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS! speeches. All in all a great week and something I'm glad to have been a part of.

I'm back, working on new content for my site and coding on various game projects, but I can't wait to go again. It's going to be a lot of effort and I'm going to have work  hard to keep up the pace so I can earn the right to go again next year but it's all worth it. Am I going to see you there?

The first meeting of the Portland Area XNA User Group was a complete success! We had a great turnout for our first meeting with just over ten people showing up (for as inexperience we are at running a user group, we were THRILLED with this turnout). I apparently love the sound of my own voice and managed to talk about XNA for over an hour. I wasn't really planning on talking that long, it kind of just happened. I didn't see anyone sleeping and I got some great feedback afterwards so hopefully I wasn't too horrible as a speaker. I just really have a lot to say about game development, the XNA framework and what a great community has been built around XNA. Sometimes it's hard to keep quiet about it all.

We had the same great luck getting the hardware setup just like we did in the dry run so that helped out a lot. The laptop and the XBox 360 performed wonderfully and all the samples I showed on each went well. I had planned originally on coding a 2D space shooter during the talk, but I scaled that back some when I realized I had already spent over 30 minutes on just introducing the XNA framework and XNA Game Studio. I did do a quick little demo of getting a sprite drawing on the screen and moving it around with the keyboard. I think just how quickly you can put something like that together using the XNA framework always does a nice job of impressing people.

So with the first meeting under our belt, it's time to move on to the next castle and find our princess! Yep, that's right, time to schedule the second meeting of PAXNAUG! The date is April 23rd and the place and time remain the same. We're still looking for a speaker, so if you're interested drop us (or me) a line. More details for the second meeting will be going up on the PAXNAUG site soon!

Thanks again to our sponsors Coaxis, O'Reilly, Apress and Wrox. We really appreciate all that you've done for us and look forward in continuing to work with you. Also, we're still drumming up more sponsors so if you can provide swag of any kind or help out with the food and snacks please get in touch!

I also want to thank everyone that took the time to come to the meeting. This group is going to continue to grow, so congratulations for getting in on the ground floor! Looking forward to seeing everyone again and watching what kind of progress people are making with XNA and with game development.

Mark April 23rd at 6:30 on your calendars and hope to see you there!

The first meeting of PAXNAUG is tonight! If you need directions or more information about the time, look at the PAXNAUG meeting post. Looks like it's going to be a small turnout, but for as new as we are to running a user group, that's probably a good thing.

We have the pizza ordered and we're making a run for the few other remaining supplies we need right now. We didn't get sponsorship for the first one, so this meeting is on us. We figured we'd aggressively hunt sponsors for the higher number meetings.

The dry run with all the hardware yesterday went well and it looks like we will have wireless access available. We also managed to get the XBox 360 and the laptop talking and projecting onto the screen pretty quickly. Hopefully we have the same good results tonight because it only took 10 minutes to setup yesterday.

Now I just need to finish up a few more things with the code I'm working on for my presentation tonight and I think we'll be ready. If you're in the Portland/Vancouver area, hope to see you there! If not, we'll be announcing the date for the next PAXNAUG meeting tonight so be ready to mark it on your calendar.

....I think I can finish this presentation before 6:30...how hard can it be?

I just finished up the fourth and final part to the Wizard and posted it to my site at XNADevelopment.com. This final installment in the series covers adding the ability to have the Wizard shoot magic fireballs. So creating projectiles and maintaining them it covered in the tutorial.

This has been a fun (but LONG) set of tutorials to write. Let me know what you think of them so I can either continue doing tutorials in this style or adjust them. I'm always happy to hear feedback. Several things I've changed about the tutorials and even about the site layout itself has been from feedback I've received from the community.

Head on over and checkout The Wizard: Part 4 - Making a Sprite Shoot Fireballs and let me know what you think.

Part 3 of the Wizard has just been posted to XNADevelopment.com. This part in the Wizard series covering sprite movement and actions shows how to add the ability for your Wizard sprite to "duck". This introduces you to the concepts of using a sprite sheet and learning to change "frames" for your sprite in game.

I'm making a serious effort to deliver the re-write of the original Wizard code in smaller, cleaner and more digestible chunks. While the original tutorial "worked", I knew the code wasn't as clean as it could be and I felt like I was throwing too much at you at once. Let me know if you think if it's improvement this time around. I'd be curious to hear from those of you who went through the tutorial before to check it out again now to see what you think.

Check out The Wizard: Part 3 - Making A Sprite Duck and let me know what you think. I always enjoy reading the comments and emails that I get.

I have just posted part two in the Wizard series. This series is covering adding movement and actions to a sprite. You can head on over to XNADevelopment.com to check out The Wizard: Part 2- Making A Sprite Jump. Part two covers adding the code needed to the project to get your sprite jumping around the screen.

After working through the tutorial, don't be afraid to modify and play with the code. That's one of the best ways to learn. If you get things messed up too badly, you can always delete the entire folder and re-download it from the site. The source code is always provided just for that reason.

Feedback, as always is encouraged and makes me purr like a kitten.

First, I just want to say thanks for all the great feedback I've gotten in comments and email. I don't make any money from doing these tutorials, I don't want donations and I'm not a fan of ads so your comments are what keep me going. Silly I know, but just a little "Thanks!" really does make all the work that goes into the site and these tutorials worth it. So "Thanks!" for the comments and emails. Keep them coming! I love hearing back from people using the tutorials and benefiting from them.

I have been working on completely re-doing the Wizard tutorial and the re-write is now down and posted. I have broken this tutorial into four parts to make it a bit more digestible and easier to follow. This is Part 1 and it covers getting basic input from the player via the keyboard and then using that input to move a sprite around on the screen.

You can head on over and check out, The Wizard: Part 1- Moving a Sprite around the Screen.

As always, the source code is provided along with the tutorial and feedback is strongly encouraged and welcome. Enjoy!

I have completely re-written and posted the tutorial covering scrolling a 2D background on my site . This tutorial has been upgraded with improved code and art assets and is now completely re-written for the XNA 2.0 framework.

I have also take the time to create a more advanced version of the source code. I tend to target beginners with my site so I don't always make my code as "robust" as it could be. Often, it teaches a concept, but it's not easy to reuse in another project. The advanced version of the code attempts to delve a little deeper into just how you might structure your code in a more object oriented approach for future reuse. Both the simpler and advanced versions of the code are available as separate source code downloads.

Head on over and check out the tutorial on Scrolling a 2D Background.

As always, I'm *BEGGING* for some comments and feedback. Seriously, even if it's just to say "Hi!". I love to hear from people that have read the tutorials and enjoyed them or even from people that didn't enjoy them. If you have some advice to give on how I should improve, I'd love to hear that too. And of course, if they're helping you out, I'd love to hear that as well. Just a couple comments can really make a difference in helping me stay motivated so if you have a few seconds, just take a little time, I really appreciate them!

I have completely re-written the tutorial covering creating a 2D sprite and posted it to my site at XNADevelopment.com. I'm much happier with it this time around. This tutorial covers displaying your first sprite on the screen and then positioning the sprite. The tutorial then takes you a step further and helps you get accustomed to object oriented development and walks you through creating a "Sprite" class for creating and drawing your sprites on the screen. Teaching you a fundamental step you will take throughout your game development process.

Go ahead and take a quick walk through on Creating a 2D Sprite.

These tutorials take time to create, so if you've benefited from them, let me know and take the time to leave a comment. I appreciate each and every comment and bit of feedback I get. Thanks for taking the time to show your appreciation.

I have re-written the tutorial covering Adding an Image to the game project for the XNA 2.0 framework and posted it to XNADevelopment.com. This tutorial covers adding images to the new "Content" folder available in 2.0 projects.

Head on over and check out the tutorial, Adding an Image to the Game Project.

As always, comments are appreciated.

Creating a new XNA Windows Game Project has been re-written for the XNA 2.0 framework and posted to my site at XNADevelopment.com. I created this tutorial to make it easier to write future tutorials since I can just point people to this tutorial when I'm talking about creating a new Windows game. The tutorial covers creating your first Windows game and getting that beautiful cornflower blue to show.

Head on over and check out the tutorial, Creating a new XNA Windows Game Project.

Please feel free to leave me any feedback. All comments are encouraged and appreciated. 

The complete re-write for this tutorial for the XNA 2.0 framework has been posted to my site at XNADevelopment.com. In this tutorial I cover all that you need to know to get started with the XNA framework and on your way to making your game.

I know I get a bit wordy, so I added a short little bulleted list to the tutorial, just for people that hate to read. (you know who you are!) So head on over and check out the tutorial, Getting Started with XNA development.

As always, feel free to leave me any feedback. I really appreciate your comments, they help keep me motivated and help me to continually improve my tutorial writing process.

Jeff Jenkins has graciously (and apparently posthumously since I had added his site to my links graveyard a while back) released a second version of his XNA 360 Controller button graphics for use in your XNA created games. What's that you say, why did I say "second", well that's because many, many moons ago he released his first XNA Button pack!

The only complaint that I have with these button packs is that, well, he's a much better artist than I am, so when I stick them into my games it just reminds me of how far I have to go before my mad skillz (yeah, I used a "z") get to that point. But other than damaging my pride, these are a tremendous resource for adding that polish and shine to any game.

I've also resurrected Jeff's site over at 360Prophecy from my links graveyard and added him as my very first link in my "Game Assets" link section.

Enjoy!

If you've already said yes, good for you! If you haven't, then you must live more than 1,000 miles away (any closer and I can't imagine you not taking a quick road trip).  But just on the off chance you're not even sure what  a PAXNAUG is, just head on over to the newly launched Portland Area XNA User Group site and see for yourself.

Our first meeting is going to be coming up towards the end of March. Don't forget to reply to the meeting announcement post on the PAXNAUG site letting us know you're coming so we can get an approximate head count. We want to try and get an approximate headcount so we can purchase the appropriate amount of grub.