February, 2010

The XNA Framework runs on more platforms than people tend to realize. There is Xbox 360, and Zune, and Zune HD, and Windows with an NVidia DX9 GPU, and Windows with an AMD DX10 GPU, and Windows with an integrated Intel GPU, and... I found it interesting...

Congrats to Jamie, who got my quiz basically right, although missing some subtleties on the Windows side. Full answers:   Windows Xbox 360 Zune OcclusionQuery Yes , except for Intel DX9 cards, where IsSupported returns false (exception if you ignore...

On which platforms and hardware can you use the following Game Studio features? OcclusionQuery SignedInGamer GraphicsDevice.VertexTextures MediaLibrary.Pictures TextureAddressMode.Border XACT SetFrequencyOfInstanceData For bonus points, what happens if...

Any of you fine folks going to GDC this year? I’ll be there all week, and am speaking at the Microsoft Game Developer Day on Wednesday, then again on Thursday. Feel free to drop by and say hi - I’d love to sync up!

A couple of commenters on my previous post felt the Game Studio API is already sufficiently easy to learn ( thanks guys! ), and pointed out that we can never hope to make it easy enough for everyone. True that. The sarcastic British part of me wants to...

I am tremendously proud of what we have achieved with XNA Game Studio over the last few years: We opened up Xbox 360 game development. For the first time in history, anyone who cares to do so can create and sell games for a major console, including features...

I often blog about existing or recently announced XNA Game Studio features, and also more general graphics and game programming techniques. Sometimes I write about ancient history , but I rarely discuss the future. There are two reasons for this: The...

I was going to finish up these 2D vs. 3D posts by linking to some articles about vector math. But upon looking for good articles to link to, I found myself thinking " ho hum, I could do better than that ". So I want to write more about this stuff. Gonna...

I find it interesting how some kinds of math work pretty much the same regardless of the number of dimensions. For instance vector and matrix code hardly changes when you move between two, three, or higher dimensions. You just alter the number of components...

Some great comments on my previous post . A popular theory is that our affinity for 2D could be an artifact of the displays we are using. JeBus says: "If we had holographic technology, where the game objects actually appeared around the player in...

It makes sense that our brains have evolved to be better at calculus than probability . This is a survival trait: calculus is necessary any time you want to kill a rabbit with a sling, but you can get by with only crude estimates of probability ( see...