When we shipped XNA Game Studio 3.0 last month, and then turned on Xbox LIVE Community Games this month, that, to me, really completed our initial vision for XNA Game Studio, the changes in the way games are made, and creating opportunities for a new class of game developers. While there will always...

So I’ve played quite a few XNAGS games, and quite a few that have been released to Xbox LIVE Marketplace as part of the Xbox LIVE Community Games beta. Based on the types of issues we’ve seen and feedback in general about good development practices, we set out to create the “best practices” for creating...

There are two pieces of feedback that I hear quite a bit related to the audio support in XNA Game Studio Express. It only supports WAV files. All of my sounds are in a different format, such as WMA. Audio binaries are too large. WAV isn't compressed, so my music tracks are huge! We're investigating...

You've probably seen the post announcing we're releasing a Beta 2 of XNA Game Studio Express . This release contains lots of fixes and tweaks based on feedback and it includes the much anticipated Content Pipeline! As we get closer to release, I'll have a post that explains some of the changes. If...

Are you a hobby, casual or Indie game developer? If so, we're looking for participants in a usability study which will help us build better products and technologies to help serve your needs in this area. Participation criteria: You must have been actively involved in programming games within...

I'm glad to announce that the Terrarium 1.2 Server is finally available for download. Head on over to the Terrarium Downloads area to snag it. Now included is a configuration tool that will create the database, create the virtual directory and congifure permissions and settings for you. Also, the server...

An update to the DirectX SDK is now available. Here is a brief list of changes: Tool Updates PIX - Call capture and playback, Asynchronous events, Triggers and Actions Maya Exporter - Maya 6 Support, Procedural texture support, Updated installer New Samples C++ - AntiAliasing, Instancing, ConfigSystem...

If you've downloaded the latest DirectX9 SDK, you may have noticed that all of the Managed docs are tagged with the “This documentation is preliminary and subject to change.“ line. Here's the scoop from Mark, one of the Programming Writers: The Summer 2004 SDK Update provides complete...

I'm heading off to Meltdown . Well, not really until tomorrow morning, seeing as it is just in downtown Seattle. Should be cool, hoping to pick up some new ideas to try out. Tom's giving a talk titled Using Managed Code in Your Game , and there are quite a few sessions on Effects, Shaders and the like...

The Terrarium 1.2 client has been released to the public! Here are various links: Public Server: http://www.terrariumgame.net/terrarium Post with details: http://www.windowsforms.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabIndex=1&tabId=41&PostID=16874 A partial list of What's New: ...

Just stumbled upon one of those little features that are so nice and once you get used to it, it's hard giving it up. When attempting to assign a value to an enum property, as soon as you type “ = “, it brings up the intellisense window to the specific enum type. No hunting around or trying...

Long time between updates! I felt I couldn't let another month go by without a post, so here I am. Yes still working on getting Terrarium 1.2 ready to release (it is real close, honest!) and working on the “next big thing”. On that last note, I leave you with this:

So I've spent the evening working on the UI for the 1.2 version of Terrarium . (This is the version built on .NET 1.1 and will sync with the release of the source code). At first I was going the Photoshop route for the buttons, etc. but realized that I could do much of what I was doing just using GDI...

So I started working on prototyping some terrain rendering for the next Terrarium . It really is amazing how much faster one can work in Managed DirectX (Direct3D in this case) vs. the C++ API. While the screenshot below is not terribly impressive, it only took me about 2 hours to get the base framework...

It was announced today that Mythica , a MMORPG with touches of a RTS in it, has been canceled. Here is the announcement found on the home page “ Our goal with ‘Mythica’ was to create a truly innovative massively multiplayer online role playing game. While the game looked ready to...

Grimmwolf replied to my post about the Allegiance source code release informing me of the place to go for current Allegiance activity. Here you can download the compiled client, find out current activity, learn how to play and I would imagine get involved in Allegiance coding and modifications. I am...

I know it's been mentioned in a couple of blogs, but I just wanted to give a quick comment on the release of the Allegiance source code . There are two things that make this such a good move. 1) It allows the community that has developed around Allegiance to thrive. 2) It can provide a great learning...

I really need to update the Terrarium Portal in a big way. Way too much stale information, not a very good lay out and basically a boring appearance. I'll have to see what I can do to change it up a bit. Eventually (for T2?) I would like the server hosting the game itself to also be the portal. So...

I was looking through a bunch of old code and came across some utilities in C# that handle loading the Quake MAP file format. There are several classes in this bunch: The basic MAP file parser that take the text based MAP file and loads it into memory. A “compiler” that converts...