Mitch Walker : General

Finish the...

mitchw — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 01:48:00 GMT

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 be a list of things to be added or improved to XNA Game Studio and the XNA Framework, I was having trouble finding tough, interesting problems to solve, which is what motivates me.

So I’ve taken my love of games, of creating platforms and tools, and of a particular game series and found my next big challenge to tackle. A couple of weeks ago, I started as a Program Manager on the Microsoft Halo Studio team. I’m joining a(nother) team filled with very talented people and I’m excited about the possibilities.

Unfortunately, what I’ll be working on won’t lend itself to public blogging much anymore…not that I’ve been a regular blogger anyway. And I usually don’t post (or twitter) about day to day stuff. Me getting another Diet Dew from the fridge just doesn’t seem that interesting. J I’ll keep this blog around for a bit and see how it goes.

I’ll still be involved in the XNA Game Studio community, but now from the “other” side…a creator…as I continue to learn, create, and wait to see what the team comes up with next.

-Mitch

Halo 2 is Done!

mitchw — Sat, 02 Oct 2004 00:21:00 GMT

Read about it here:

http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=lastupdatekinda&p=763400

See you at the Redmond Town Center EBX at midnight 11/08!

XP SP2 Platform SDK Available!

mitchw — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 20:57:00 GMT

Grab it here: http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/

Whidbey Intellisense Feature

mitchw — Sat, 12 Jun 2004 17:49:00 GMT

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 to remember the name of the enum. Pretty cool, especially when working with Managed DirectX, which has quite a few different flags, etc.

I'm In!

mitchw — Sat, 06 Mar 2004 08:10:00 GMT

Jeff Sandquist has started a Links 2004 group/tournament for the software community. See you on the course!

More on Allegiance Source Code

mitchw — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 16:56:00 GMT

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 definately going to check it out.

http://www.freeallegiance.org/

"Longhorn" SDK Usage

mitchw — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 23:19:00 GMT

Hari posted about some of the features in the next version of the SDK, currently known as the “Longhorn” SDK. One feature is the ability to “target” the SDK based on the type of work you are doing or the type of information you want. We are currently debating how the “Longhorn” SDK will be used in this fashion. Some ideas being tossed around:

Different disciplines such as “ASP.NET Developer, DirectX Developer, Data Developer”
Based along current SDK lines such as “Platform SDK, .NET Framework SDK, DirectX SDK”

The idea being that if you indicate that you are a ASP.NET Developer, the SDK client would aggregate and present the topics that would be of interest to you or help you do your job better. Such topics may include reference documentation of ASP.NET, perhaps the ADO.NET reference documentation, all ASP.NET samples, all technical articles and blogs that relate to ASP.NET.

Part of this also implies that you can “componentize“ the SDK this way, so that you are only downloading and/or synchronizing the content you care about.

So the question is, do you like this idea? What level of granularity would you like? Do you just want to download the entire SDK, then filter on your own? Let us know!

New Camera: Canon Digital Rebel

mitchw — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:09:00 GMT

So I picked up a new camera last week, a Canon Digital Rebel. Quite a big improvement over my previous digital, a Nikon CoolPix 995. Unfortunately there hasn't been a good day to take it outside and try some shots, what with the WA weather and all. I decided to upgrade now as we are heading to Hawaii in March and I definately wanted a good camera for the trip. Got any recommendations for lens and a bag? I would like to pick up a zoom / telephoto for sure, maybe a lens that offers a wider angle than the kit lens too. I'll probably lurk over at the www.dpreview.com forums and see what folks there are using.

BeginScene()

mitchw — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 08:21:00 GMT

Intro...I'm a Program Manager on the “Longhorn” SDK team and have been with Microsoft for a little over 6 years. My current responsibilities are the design of the publishing system for the “Longhorn” SDK (The marketing folks like the quotes, not me...) and the owner of the .NET Terrarium game. That's right, I get to help work on cool stuff like Longhorn and make games. Still trying to figure out how I managed to do that. :)

As for Terrarium, we are currently working hard to release an update that will include the complete source code to the client and server. This has been a long time coming, but we definitely are nearing the finish line. I'm pretty excited to see what different modifications the community will do once you get your hands on the source. Once that is done, we will dive deep into work on the Longhorn version, which I'm planning on making quite a few large changes both in the architecture and game play. I'm a hobbyist game programmer that finds 3D programming quite interesting, so combining that with some of the technologies like Avalon should make for some very cool results.

As work progresses on “T2”, I'll be posting thoughts on features, designs, etc. I'd love to get your feedback on what you want to see in the next version.