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xna
Posts about or related to the XNA Game Studio (http://create.msdn.com/).
Guncraft on Kickstarter - Last Chance this weekend!
Andy Dunn, known far and wide as The Zman (accept no substitutes) has been a strong supporter of the XNA community for many years now (and the Managed DirectX community before that). This coming Sunday at 9:41 pm EDT (UTC + 4) the Kickstarter project for the game, Guncraft, (on which he is the Lead Programmer) comes to a close. They’ve garnered pledges in the amount of $15,375 at the time I’m writing this. The project must meet a funding target of $16,000 by the aforementioned deadline. I think this ......
Posted On Saturday, March 24, 2012 12:51 AM | Comments (0)
Dream.Build.Play 2012 Registration Now Open!
Registration for this year’s Dream.Build.Play competition is now open! Head over to https://www.dreambuildplay.... for more information and to register. This year’s DBP includes not only Xbox 360 games but also Windows Phone games as well. So you can develop for either or both! Like last year, I’ve created an unofficial countdown clock for the end of the submission period. Check it out here: http://www.bobtacoindustrie... . But don’t wait until the last minute to submit ......
Posted On Monday, March 5, 2012 3:24 PM | Comments (0)
Getting started with Metro style DirectX
A little more than three months ago, Microsoft hosted the //build/ conference at which they unveiled the upcoming version of Windows (commonly called Windows 8, though I don’t know if the marketing folks have accepted the fact that that is the name most of us are expecting for it yet). They released to the developer world a build of it called the Windows Developer Preview (and Windows Server Developer Preview) along with various tools for creating the new “Metro style” apps. I wasn’t able to make ......
Posted On Saturday, December 31, 2011 4:06 AM | Comments (1)
Interpolation Sample for XNA
One thing I’ve always enjoyed in Silverlight/WPF are the easing functions ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/e... ). The easing functions are commonly used to provide interesting looking animations via key frame-based interpolation. XNA has a few, limited bits of interpolation built in (primarily Lerp (i.e. linear interpolation) and SmoothStep (i.e. cubic interpolation)). For a sprite animation project that I’ve since set aside (it’s not dead, but it’s been back-burnered for a while ......
Posted On Saturday, August 6, 2011 3:23 PM | Comments (0)
Dxt Conversion Content Pipeline Extension Sample
I’ve been slowly creating a new WP7 game over these past few months. In the process, I began experimenting with Dxt compression. It’s a very nice feature, especially on the phone where high DPIs make Dxt’s artifacts less visible. One thing I didn’t like, though, was the way that XNA’s default Texture Processor handles resizing to power of two. When using Dxt compression with the Reach graphics profile, you need to use textures that are power of two sized (e.g. 32x64). Dxt itself requires that the ......
Posted On Monday, August 1, 2011 10:24 AM | Comments (2)
Welcoming Visual Basic Users to XNA
With the release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta, Visual Basic joins C# as a supported development language for XNA. I’ve been busily converting my samples to VB recently. They aren’t all done yet, but quite a few are (only three remain that I plan to convert). Rather than make anyone wait, I’ll share what I’ve completed so far and will add more when I have the remainder finished. Without further ado: Content Pipeline Extension Sample: VB Source Code – Related Blog Post DragAndDropGame: ......
Posted On Tuesday, May 24, 2011 6:30 PM | Comments (0)
XNA Custom Content Pipeline Extensions Sample
For the longest time, the Content Pipeline was a magic transmogrification device to me. I would add content to a content project and it would get mystically turned into stuff I would load in my game with ContentManager. A few months ago I decided it was time to put an end to its magical aspects and learn how it worked and how I could put it to work. I thought it would be helpful to share what I learned so I created a sample. This sample has two different custom extensions. The first is a complete ......
Posted On Sunday, May 8, 2011 2:33 AM | Comments (0)
XNA and VB: The Preparations Continue
I posted a little while ago about how, with XNA and VB becoming a supported scenario, I was starting down the road to learning VB. Just a brief update on that. If you ever need to learn another language, having practical tasks is a huge benefit. Something I’ve been making use of is Project Euler. Writing the solutions in different ways to intentionally make use of certain syntax features has helped me both internalize them and understand them. As a by-product, I managed to hack together a VB Windows ......
Posted On Wednesday, May 4, 2011 12:08 PM | Comments (0)
WP7 Games: Recommendations on Resuming
I realized that I’ve given several people recommendations on how to deal with resuming a game from tombstoning on Windows Phone 7 over Twitter in the past month or so. So I figured I would write up my thoughts on it. There is no perfect and objectively correct solution. But there are certain common sense things that I believe will help make every gamer’s experience great. First: Read these: http://msdn.microsoft.com/e... and http://create.msdn.com/en-U... ......
Posted On Thursday, April 14, 2011 11:44 PM | Comments (3)
I’m a Microsoft XNA/DirectX MVP!
Yesterday I found out that I have received a Microsoft MVP Award for XNA/DirectX for 2011. It is a distinct honor and quite humbling. I join the ranks of many great individuals whose contributions, encouragement, and help have had a profound impact on my life. I have greatly enjoyed my time helping others in the App Hub forums, on Twitter, and through this blog since I first discovered XNA a little more than a year ago. I look forward to the expanded opportunities I will have to help you realize ......
Posted On Saturday, April 2, 2011 1:17 AM | Comments (2)
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Bob Taco Industries is an ISV focused on game and app development for Microsoft platforms headed up by Michael B. McLaughlin. Mike is a Microsoft Visual C++ MVP (previously an XNA/DirectX MVP from 2011-2013), a developer, a writer, a consultant, and a retired lawyer. If you're a developer who is just getting started, consider checking out the BTI website's section for developers for links to code samples and other helpful sites.
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