Getting started with game design is at best confusing.  Should you learn XNA? Yes.  Should you learn XAML? Yes  Should you learn DirectX? Yes Well that wasn’t very confusing was it?  Let’s take a look at the list of technology and...

In the current environment of game design you can get away with flash and dash game design, that is rapidly put together your game post it and make your money then move on to another project. Many technologies go this way from time to time and then they...

As some would say on my team: Expression Suite is dead. I say (and so does Jerry Nixon ): Long Live Expression Suite! Expression Design is awesome, even if the documentation seems out of date, but all of the Expression 2 stuff on the Expression Web site...

If you are starting out building games, and want to check out XNA development, you might want to take a look at my blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/devschool . It discusses lot’s of things, randomly. How do you add shapes to a silverlight based...

There is a fantastic tutorial out Anatomy of a Silverlight Game: Avoid Common Mistakes When Building Online Games , which is as up to date as you can find on the web. I have been going over a few of the tutorials and this is the best one I have encountered...

As usual in the development cycle there are so may tools that can be used. Paper and Pen/Pencil, for many good designers the way to go. Since I am not a good designer, rather a lazy guy, after all I want to do is go swimming in the ocean and then hang...

If you need Free sounds, music, 3D Graphics or 2D graphics, then you need to get these game templates. There is a treasure trove of sounds, music and other objects in the AppHub!  If you download and install many of the apps they all include reusable...

Develop a game that uses a “game theory” of economics and sell findings from various scenarios to financial institutions Example: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/researchgames/ Develop a game that can be used to learn different math skills...

Reasons given in no particular order: Scalable CPU, so if you get those 20,000 users suddenly paying for a subscription, you can handle it Scalable Leaderboard, everyone wants to know how they rate against the other players, even with goofy games, especially...

To get started with building a game company you will need a website that you can control the architecture and systems.  There are some excellent sited that are inexpensive that you can use, but controlling your own site has benefit$, yep, your own...

If I have a favorite blogger and software author, other than Alfred Thompson, it would be Andy Beaulieu . Andy had done an exceptional job of describing how to make a shuffleboard game for Windows Phone 7.  This is a clearly done, with each step...

WOW! Expression Blend 3 is IMPRESSIVE! Download it for free from this site: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=a04aa0ae-87be-4201-a65e-e792859122fc Here is a table for your justification to purchase Expression...

Oh-oh, it may be true that if you wait long enough everything comes back into fashion.  HTML 5, Javascript/ECMAScript are back in fashion. First you need to have the ability to run a web host on your machine.  If you don’t want to use Visual...

Wow! The Movie Angels & Demons is advertised on MSN using a combination of Flash and Photosynth. Well I would have liked to see Silverlight utilized instead, but the result is a fantastic combination of the two products. It does prove that Microsoft...

  Share this post : Ok, from the previous blog post, we discussed the use of the UIElement RenderTransform in XAML, but why did we bother?  This is part of the process of  connecting the XAML based UI object with the “Code Behind”. ...

Building a Silverlight Fireworks program would be just the thing.  I did my usual search for a project that already is build and found a great site that compares Flash and Silverlight, both create a fireworks display!  You get to compare the...

One of the problems with cancer research is how to utilize single trials for research.  What that means is this: Say you have an interesting result from a patient that responds well to a drug or drug cocktail, it doesn’t count as research. ...

If you are reading this blog, good, if you aren’t, then how did you get to this part of the sentence?  Ok, haha. The is a problem here, games have randomness right?  Sort of like that annoying opening sentence.  In a movie for example,...

Could be more.  Likely less. As of 11:21 4/12/2012, the documentation for how to program using C++ consists of some complicated samples (that I must say are useful, but complex), a little discussion here and there, and that’s it. Don’t get your expectations...

Usually one doesn’t encounter the use of the product PowerPoint and TFS in the same sentence.  But there you just did.  What if you could use storyboards directly for your game design and then set up work items in Team Foundation Services (either...

Attend in person If you want to attend this event use this link: FREE VIP Windows8 Developer Event - 4/23/2012 - Club Nokia @ LA Live... And register from Scott’s blog. Attend online using Live Stream Use this link (available also from Scott’s blog) http...

It’s summer, and Farseer Physics guys created a fun tool to play with water, even if you are stuck in the office.  Click on the picture to go to the Farseer site.   This is a great example of a physics modeling the real world.  Or is it...

Let’s move off of the MVC path for today, I have been thinking about how do you describe human motion? In game design we often like to reconstruct things like motion equations using software algorithm over and over again. With respect to defining motion...

TouchDevelop is a new tool that is being tested by Microsoft Research.  It isn’t JavaScript, it isn’t C#, nor is it C++ or Visual Basic, it is something completely different. Initially developed for the Windows Phone, it now works in iPads, Safari...

I had a nightmare and Steve Wozniak was dancing in it. No wait a minute, he was on TV dancing with some good looking woman. The ‘Woz is a good hearted guy and all, plus he has got the people phoning it in for him. Now what does this have to do with Silverlight...