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December 2008 - Posts

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 2:27 PM

Pixel perfect collision detection using GPU occlusion queries

Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby present my final joke of 2008: Q: what do you get if you cross a stencil buffer with an occlusion query? A: pixel perfect collision detection! Ok, the joke sucks. But I think the technique has merit: Temporarily disable
Posted by ShawnHargreaves | 8 Comments
Friday, December 26, 2008 12:50 PM

Zune battery versus hard drive

I made it back from a fantastic vacation in Thailand to find Seattle covered in snow . I'm pleased to report that my attempts at making a battery efficient Zune game worked out pretty well. On the return flight I listened to music for 8 hours, while playing
Posted by ShawnHargreaves | 0 Comments
Tuesday, December 02, 2008 5:28 PM

Zune landscape mode

My Zune Freecell game runs in 320x240 landscape mode, rather than the default 240x320 portrait orientation. Unfortunately, the XNA Framework does nothing to help you render rotated scenes. Fortunately, you can do this rather easily by drawing everything
Posted by ShawnHargreaves | 3 Comments
Tuesday, December 02, 2008 5:10 PM

Zune battery efficiency

I'm going on vacation to Thailand tomorrow ( touch wood ). But I'm more worried about the flight itself than the current political unrest. My partner Tracy is prone to fidget, plus she has a major Freecell addiction. Combining a 14 hour flight with suddenly
Posted by ShawnHargreaves | 2 Comments
Tuesday, December 02, 2008 4:22 PM

So many buttons on the gamepad

My girlfriend (not a gamer) is addicted to Word Soup . I (also not much of a gamer) am enjoying browsing through the many Community Games , admiring their tremendous variety, creativity, and (at least in some cases :-) polish. But here's the thing: too
Posted by ShawnHargreaves | 1 Comments
 
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