Game Development

Developer Groups in the Twin Cities

Chris Williams — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:57:46 GMT

This month is kind of a big deal (to me) here in the Twin Cities. We're launching not one, but TWO developer related groups.

The first one is my own project, the Twin Cities Developers Guild. (www.twincitiesdevelopersguild.com) Our kickoff meeting is on Tuesday, July 8 at 6pm (with our Kickoff Cookout starting at 5pm) at New Horizons of Minnesota (in Edina) and features Jason Bock (Magenic) speaking on "Writing Better Code."

Later in the week, on Thursday, July 10 at 5:30pm, the Twin Cities Languages User Group (www.twincitieslanguagesusergroup.com) is having their first meeting too. This one is at Magenic (in Golden Valley) The featured speaker for this event is Charles Nutter (Sun Microsystems) who will be speaking on JRuby.

If you're in the Twin Cities (or relatively close) you don't want to miss these events. If you are planning on attending either or both events, please take a moment and RSVP via the appropriate website. Thank you.

Also, later this month, there won't be a Twin Cities XNA User Group (www.twincitiesxnausergroup.com) meeting because we're having a joint cookout with the local IGDA chapter. Details to follow.

Happy 4th of July to everyone. Whether you celebrate Independence Day or not, there's still a 4th of July on most of your calendars, so I hope it's a good one. I plan to celebrate my freedom by having a few beers and making stuff explode. Good times.

Spaghetti Code Podcast w/ Jeff Brand

Chris Williams — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:48:05 GMT

A couple weeks ago, Jeff Brand and I sat down and talked about XNA on his Spaghetti Code podcast. We had a good time, as usual, and discussed various aspects of the XNA experience, and what's new in the XNA 3.0 CTP.

Here's the link: XNA Podcast

Rotating your arrays (aka When the hell would I ever use this?)

Chris Williams — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:23:15 GMT

I have a nephew who is wicked smart. Actually, I have 4 nephews and 4 nieces in total, but this is about one nephew in particular.

Anyway... he's fairly young, but he's always been interested in software development. By software development, I mean games of course. He doesn't just play them though, he's taught himself Java. Then I showed him C#. (Yes, I suppose I could have showed him VB... but he already knew Java, so C# was the logical choice.) Along with C#, was XNA. He really grok'ed XNA.

One of his first XNA projects was the standard breakout/Arkanoid type of game, with power-ups, etc... and particle effects. For a first (or even 3rd or 4th) game, it was pretty darn cool.

Before long, he was taking XNA in new directions. Asking questions I couldn't answer. Eventually, I hear from him and he's built something new. Not a game so much as a tool. Apparently he's big into Second Life. He needed a way to work with his Second Life models outside of the game, so he wrote a viewer in XNA and WinForms. Pretty sweet.

This weekend, I got an email from him. He's working on a Tetris clone and had everything done except the shape rotation. He's storing all the shapes in a 4x4 array and couldn't figure out how to rotate the array left and right.

It's funny how sometimes the hard stuff comes easy to us, while the simple stuff proves vexing. I run into this a lot at work. I think a large part of it comes from not having a CS background. Being largely self taught can be a disadvantage sometimes. Many folks will tell you that most of what you learn in a CS degree program is obsolete, and while that may apply to specific technology, there's a lot of theory and otherwise "common" knowledge that us self-taught folks don't always have when entering the work force. (Stay in School Kids!!)

So, I gave his question some thought and came up with (I hope) a pretty good answer. Assuming this is what he's trying to achieve, how would we go about making it happen?

Part of the problem to solve depends on which direction you are trying to rotate.

In the illustration, you can see the shape array is rotating one step to the right. This means that the first row of the Y axis becomes the farthest column of the X axis. Therefore, the next row is the second farthest column, and so on.

It should be a simple matter of looping through the source array and writing into the destination array.

So, if you're rotating to the right, you have a nested loop (X inside of Y) reading the source array row by row and you want to write to the destination array column by column, where the target column is the inverse of the source row.

On the other hand, if you are rotating to the left, it's actually even easier. The top row becomes the first column, the second row becomes the second column and so on.

The code should look something like this:

' For LEFT turns

For Y = 0 to 3

    For X = 0 to 3

        Destination(Y,X) = Source(X,Y)

    Next

Next

' For RIGHT turns

For Y = 0 to 3

    For X = 0 to 3

        Destination(3-Y,X) = Source(X,Y)

    Next

Next

This code makes some assumptions, like knowing you have 4x4 arrays and knowing which way you're turning, and of course actually drawing the resulting shape on the screen, in the proper color. I'll leave all that as an exercise to you, the reader.

The real question is: now that I've figured out how, when the hell would I ever use this other than in a Tetris game?

Heroic Adventure! now with automatic updates

Chris Williams — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:54:25 GMT

I've been playing with ClickOnce at work lately, and I like it, so I decided to publish HA! with it.

HA! really is the perfect application for it, since there are no external dependancies (other than .NET 2.0) and it doesn't care where you put it. I'll also be able to tap into the ClickOnce On-Demand API (which you can't do unless its running under ClickOnce) and pull down updates automatically in the background.

The project along with all the sourcecode, bug tracking, etc is all still hosted on Codeplex at http://www.heroicadventure.com but the publish site (since Codeplex still doesnt offer ClickOnce support) is http://www.ILoveVB.net/HA/publish.htm

Once you visit the publish page and install HA! you can just run it from your start menu and it will automatically check for updates when you run it and you'll always have the latest version (unless you choose not to update.)

Of course, automatic updates does kind of imply that I'll actually be updating HA! once in a while... no?

NINE Questions with Andy Dunn

Chris Williams — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:09:54 GMT

This is the first in what will hopefully be a series where I ask NINE Questions of various Interesting People in the Technical Industry. My first victim is Andy Dunn of www.thezbuffer.com.

1. Where are you from?
I’m from a town called Halesowen, just outside Birmingham in the UK. I’ve lived in the USA for almost 12 years.

2. Who do you work for? Give me the 10 second pitch on them. Why would I want to buy their product?
I work for myself. I have no products besides my own abilities. You are buying almost 20 years of software development experience. I like to say I was writing .Net code before there was a .Net – we just used to call it Visual Basic. Useful libraries? GUI editors? Easy database connections? I’ve been doing it since 1993!

3. What brought you to your current employer?
I used to work for Microsoft. It was and still is a great place to work for anyone who loves technology. I worked in the IT department building web and client apps that help run Microsoft’s day to day business. It was great. But as I progressed to more senior roles I found I was not coding and I *love* coding. I looked around and decided that the game industry would be fun. I talked to some folk at Microsoft and realizing I didn’t have the knowledge I took a class at the University of Washington. But still this wasn’t enough. I spent all of my time writing and looking at managed code and the game industry just wasn’t interested. Since I couldn’t find the time to become a solid C++ developer I looked at taking an entry level position in the game industry. While checking my finances I realize that if I could afford to take an 80% pay cut I may as well go the whole way and take a 100% pay cut. The plan was to work on my website, develop some new skills and then find a way back into the game industry. That’s when Microsoft launched the XNA framework and I realized I didn’t have to switch to C++. I got contracts doing starter kits for XNA Game Studio (Spacewar and Marblets) and since then I’ve worked several interesting jobs some with XNA and some without. If the money ever runs out I would be more than happy to go back to Microsoft if anyone would have me.

4. I've known you as The ZMan for years, but that's just one side of you. What's something the world doesn't know about you?
I like to run crazy races…. I ran the Goofy Challenge at Disney World this year – that’s a half marathon on Saturday followed by a full marathon on Sunday and I ran a 50k trail run a couple of months ago.

5. You went to TechEd2008 (Developers) this year. Was it your first time, and what did you think? Worth going back again?
It was my 1^st time to a US Tech*Ed – I attended a couple in Europe in the mid 90s. The US ones are more intense – far more Microsoft and well known speakers. This was my first time as a speaker and I spent most of the time worrying about and tweaking my sessions so I don’t think I had time to make an informed decision about how good it was. In general though Tech*Ed is outside my area of industry so it’s probably not worth me going unless someone else is paying.

6. Lots of folks find equal or greater value in the networking, rather than the sessions. Would you agree? Did you have a favorite session or event?
I enjoy and get a lot out of the networking at all the conferences I go to but I would never say that’s what I am paying for. I always see conferences as forced training that you never have time for the rest of the year. As you become more expert on technologies your opportunities for training in new technology get less and less. Your boss expects you to somehow learn through osmosis from the browser and MSDN. When you go to Tech*ed or PDC you get a week of just listening to people talk about stuff. I always come home with a huge list of cool things to do most of which are STILL on post-it notes on my desk 3 years later ;-)

7. I followed a lot of folks on Twitter during TechEd, and it seems like the way to go when out of town. What's your take on Twitter?
I wonder if I am too old for the social stuff ;-) Twitter is something I feel obliged to be on but I spend 50% of the time being annoyed by the trivia that some people think is important to tell the world. It’s like YouTube – separating the wheat from the chaff is almost impossible and I wonder how many million hours are wasted with this stuff.

8. Any non-technical hobbies? What are they and why?
See 4 – I don’t have time for hobbies between XNA and running. Does sex count as a hobby?

9. Last of all, any tattoos?
I am 100% ink free. Maybe a tramp stamp that says “XNA” would be appropriate should I ever make my millions from the technology!

new XNA announcements

Chris Williams — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:45:06 GMT

Along with a new look and feel, the creators.XNA.com site has some pretty big announcements:

The GDC 2008 presentations are now available.

Additional information has been posted about The Democratization of Game Distribution (AKA YouTube for Games.)

The Role-Playing Game starter kit has been released (which I am VERY excited about.) I spent a couple hours on this last night.

Also, there's a new video on Game Development for the Zune available over at Channel 9.

Give me a break. Wii Fit is a game, nothing more.

Chris Williams — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:34:46 GMT

Sorry, but I'm calling bullshit on this one. The parents aren't right. Nintendo isn't responsible. It's a GAME.

Say it with me... IT'S A GAME.

One more time, in case it didn't sink in: IT'S A GAME.

It might be a great idea, it might even help kids get in better shape, but at the end of the day, it's just A GAME, produced by a company that MAKES GAMES. If you want serious health and fitness evaluation software, don't buy it from the people who brought you SUPER MARIO.

Duh people... take some responsibility for your children and stop relying on society to teach them not to lick the light sockets.

Your kid probably was fat anyway.

what are the good PSP games?

Chris Williams — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:16:30 GMT

So I'm getting a PSP here soon, from a good buddy who doesn't want his anymore.

Those of you that have PSPs... what are the good RPGs?

XNA 3.0 CTP is ONLINE NOW!!

Chris Williams — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:33:23 GMT

Blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2008/05/07/announcing-xna-game-studio-3-0-community-technical-preview-ctp.aspx

Download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DF4AF56A-58A7-474C-BFD0-7CF8ED3036A3&displaylang=en

Why are you still here reading this?? Go. Download. Now.

Popfly Game Creator

Chris Williams — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:27:56 GMT

Did anyone NOT see this coming?

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2008/05/02/popfly-game-creator.aspx

Noteworthy quotes:

You can start with a known collection of game templates that are already built in and customize and share them, or start with a fresh idea and a clean canvas and build your own game.

Casual games created using the Game Creator will have all the same attributes that Mashups and webpages built with Popfly have – they can be rated, shared and embedded as Windows Vista sidebar gadgets and on Facebook.

Very cool!!