Focused And Slim
SCENE XXIII
The home on the internets of one J. Sedlak.
Enter John “Quiet Before Focused” Sedlak.
John. One piece of functionality I consistently find myself writing and rewriting is the implementation of the INotifyPropertyChanged interface. This class, located in the main FGF library, makes that rewriting unnecessary by implementing it in an open way.
Share the goods.
John. As you no doubt saw in the writing of the Application class, FGF implements its own version of the XNA Framework’s component classes. The first major reason for doing so is that the builtin component classes require you to pass in a (Framework) Game object through the constructor. […] The second major reason for my implementation is that by controlling the interfaces and base classes, I can easily support more advanced situations such as the separation between initialization and content loading/unloading.
Introduce the modules.
Move on and Collect with events.
John. For most purposes, the builtin collection classes supplied by the .NET Framework are terrific. They are simple and straight forward implementations that do exactly as you expect. But for our purposes, a collection class that fires events when the collection is changed is simply better and in some cases, necessary.
Explain the code.
Exit.
SCENE XXIV
A well-known space of venting.
Enter Promit “Slim And Tuned” Roy.
Promit. I’ve been doing some work on SlimTune quietly, and now it’s to the point that I have to decide what the next phase of things should be. There are essentially three major groups of work to tackle: UI improvements, memory profiling, and instrumentation.
Explain the UI improvements.
Promit. I’m hoping that with the next release branch, 0.2.x, users will enjoy a much better overall experience.
Exeunt.
Geodesic Grid
Brian “JeBuS” I-Don’t-Know-His-Last-NameSchaeflein published a multi part article about Geodesic Truncated Icosahedron (part 2 is here, part 3 is pending) in C# and the XNA Framework. Geodisc Truncated Icosahedrons are “a shape made of hexagons and pentagons” that “has as many faces as needed to make it as spherical as needed, like a Geodesic Dome”.
Head over and grok the code for fun and profit.
Also note his disclaimer in the first post:
I don’t claim that my way of programming is the best way. As far as design patterns and whatnot go, my way works for me, and the code gets the job done. If anyone can offer a more “elegant” approach to anything I’m doing, I’m all ears.
Making an Xbox LIVE Indie Game
George "not focused on anything today" Clingerman just shared his thoughts on what it takes to make a quality XBLIG Game. It looks like he's planning to continually add stuff to the list, so repeatedly tap your finger on F5 for a while, until a stable state is reached.
P.S. Shameless free ads: If you have little kids, or are a little kid, make sure to take a look at George's (and ZMan's) game Kissy Poo.
Cause And Action
SCENE XXI
Twitter (where else?).
Enter Catalin “Will Quit For Attention” Zima.
Catalin. @conkerjo I keep wondering whether or not he sees me as an MVP… I never get on his MVP Watch and now he's bumping all XNA MVPs but me
Catalin. @CptBoki maybe I should stop writing for sgtconker then… whatever it takes to get some attention!! 
Denial. Exit.
SCENE XXII
Enter George W. "I *AM* Absolutely Fine” Clingerman.
George. This is the beginning of collecting my thoughts on what it takes to make a quality XBLIG. These are taken from the best practices suggested by Microsoft, the XNA community and my own observations. Eventually I want to start providing code examples/samples for the various things listed here. Even if you can't make a fun game, a best sellilng [sic] game there's absolutely no reason in the world you can't make one that has a high level of quality and polish
List ‘em all.
George. Participate in the forums
- Playtest
- Pee [sic] Review [@TehGrumpyDude Of course, pee review. It's super important. Look for blood in it. If you see blood during pee review call a doctor! - @clingermangw]
Enter Andy “Bitter And Cold Chocolate” Dunn and John “The Quite Quiet But Quite Helpful” Sedlak.
Andy. @clingermangw : You missed including avatr or ZOmbie in the title
George. @The_Zman oo., good bitter point!
John. @clingermangw should write articles for @sgtconker - it is a natural fit.
Andy. @clingermangw : You should add 'NEVER use the font/menu defaults from the game state sample'
Exeunt.
Article: Using XNA Content pipeline extensions for localization.
by Roy Triesscheijn
Introduction
In this tutorial series I will show how to setup a simple Content Pipeline extension. At first it will be used to parse XML files containing text and their translations, in a part 2 we are going to extend our processor to also parse other xml files which contain data about localized textures and sounds. We extend XNA’s content manager to make use of all this extra data.
SunBurn 1.3.1 Released
A new version of the Sunburn Engine, namely 1.3.1 was released a few days ago, containing some new stuff including a sweet looking Avatar Lighting and Shadows sample.
Havoc And Breakage
SCENE XIX
Enter Promit “Most Ventilating Professional” Roy.
Promit. In order to try PhysX, I have to request a developer account, then have it approved.
Venting.
Promit. I downloaded Havok without hassle and that will likely be my choice from now on.
Memories, more venting and a conclusion. Exit.
SCENE XX
Twitter.
Enter Andy “Save Cadbury, Join Your Kraft” Dunn.
Andy, rejoicing. It has finally happened #KissyPoo breaks the 1000 mark several months ahead of schedule thanks to Majors Minute http://tinyurl.com/5wrf3y
Andy, bragging. and #kissypoo is back on the 1st page in best selling on marketplace http://tinyurl.com/5uaav5
Andy, begging. If you've not already rated it, let see some love for Kissy Poos ratings eh? http://tinyurl.com/ydbluua
Celebration. George W. “I Was Code Before I Evolved” Clingerman stays silent on the matter. Exeunt.
Forgetful much?
How could I forget to post about this?
It took slightly less than a couple of years since his post on the subject, but Shawn Hargreaves is finally on twitter: ttp://twitter.com/shawnhargreaves
A list of other XNA people on twitter can be found in the above linked thread.
The Indie Stone tutorials
Over at The Indie Stone forums, they have a bunch of XNA/C# tutorials. Subjects include Game Flow and State Machines, Gravity, Garbage Collection, Timer systems, and others. Go check them all out.