More Content Now Available on creators.xna.com!

Michael Klucher
Program Manager – XNA Community Game Platform

We’ve got more great content available on http://creators.xna.com this month, including a new mini game, new tutorials, and new samples to keep you busy throughout the month of June.  If there's specific content you're interested in, be sure to leave feedback on our blog as your suggestions help us build better content. Enjoy the new additions!


Mini Game

• Catapult
  
  

Catapult is a complete XNA Game Studio Express minigame. The project comes ready to compile and run, and it's easy to customize with a little bit of C# programming. You are free to use the source code as the basis for your own XNA Game Studio Express game projects, and to share your work with others.

The goal in Catapult is to launch a pumpkin from your catapult as far as you can. You do this by moving the catapult towards the log and launching the pumpkin. If you wait too long, the catapult will smash into the log and you will have to try again. The all-time high score is kept in the upper-left corner.

Video Tutorial

• (Available Next Week 05/28/07 - 06/01/07 ) Video Tutorial 4:  Make a Game in 60 Minutes
  
  This tutorial shows how to gather the knowledge gained in previous tutorials to create your own game: a top-down space shooter featuring 3D graphics, input, audio, collision, and scoring.
  

Tutorials

• Collision Series 1:  2D Rectangle Collision
  
  This tutorial shows how to create a 2D game that uses bounding rectangles and collision logic to provide an obstacle-dodging challenge for the player.
  
• Collision Series 2:  2D Per-Pixel Collision 
  
  This tutorial shows a more advanced 2D collision scenario: pixel-perfect collision logic between the player and the obstacles yields a more realistic challenge.
  

Samples

• Shader Series 2:  Colors and Textures
  
  This sample shows how to combine texture operations with mathematical color operations to blend colors and achieve interesting lighting effects.
  
  
• Particle Series 2:  3D GPU Particles with Point Sprites
  
  This sample improves on the Particle Sample by animating the particles in 3D entirely on the graphics processing unit (GPU), resulting in higher performance, even with a large number of particles.
  
  
• Color Replacement
  
  This sample shows how to use a pixel shader to allow certain parts of a model to change color based on a player's selections.
  
  
• Content Pipeline Importer:  Custom Mesh Format
  
  This sample shows how to extend the XNA Framework Content Pipeline to import and process .obj model files and their associated .mtl material files into ModelMesh and ModelMeshPart objects at run time.
  
  
• Picking
  
  This sample demonstrates how to translate between 3D world coordinates and 2D screen coordinates, allowing the user to hover over a 3D object with a mouse cursor and displaying text above the chosen object.
  
  
• Aiming
  
  This sample demonstrates a versatile algorithm for in-game artificial intelligence: aiming. Use this sample to determine the correct angle necessary for one game object to face another object--for example, a car toward a waypoint.
  
  
• 3rd-Person Chase Camera
  
  This sample demonstrates a 3D camera that follows an object with a natural, springlike motion, and contrasts it with a rigid, fixed-offset camera.

Head over to http://creators.xna.com and download the new content today!