Words And Pages
The Great Quiet is over in XNA MVP land as Chris G. “Avatar” Williams and George W. “Vatara” Clingerman break the news about their collaboration on the pamphletupcoming bestseller aptly titled “Professional Windows Phone 7 Game Development: Creating Games using XNA Game Studio 4”.
Meanwhile Andy “Ratava” Dunn ponders self publishing, asking for feedback.
Not so Breaking News
…anymore anyway as even the sleepiest, under a rock living member of the XNA community will already know that our beloved local MVP extraordinary Catalin Zima got married the last weekend. Although life in the barracks is still on halt due to the impact of the party (albeit of the virtual form only) we like to share our congratulations with Catalin. So, here it comes: Congratulations, dude! (spectacular, ain’t it?)
In related news: Shawn Hargreaves put a ring on it (the ring finger), too, so we use this opportunity to also congratulate The Shawn!
P.S.: We place our bets on Andy Dunn to be the next to take the chance…
Silent And Quiet
It’s been some time since the last MVP Watch and it doesn’t seem that much has been missed…
Anyway, George W. “Bugbear” Clingerman feels unhated and so did Vincente “Bête Noire” Cartas, Chris G. “Daggers Drawn” Williams started something, Andy “Jealous as a Barbary Pigeon” Dunn likes to do the opposite, Charles “Demoniacal” Humphrey ain’t impressed, Jim “Philophilosophos” Perry reviews movies.
Words And Easy
Richard “Craigellachie” Thomson writes code. Vincente “Tomintoul” Cartas will talk about XNA. Charles “Dufftown” Humphrey writes about code (supposedly Catalin “Linkwood” Zima was in charge to read what was written about code…) and is a lobster.
George W. “Knockando” Clingerman shares links, has a heart of gold and is in good company.
Glenn “Miltonduff” Wilson returns to XNA while Andy “Inchgower” Dunn keeps on runnin’.
Article : Sun- and Lens Flare as a Post Process
by Charles Humphrey
Now this sample has come from my current XNA toy which is the Blacksun engine I am currently writing in XNA 3.1. It uses deferred lighting, instancing and a post processing framework that I found on a great site here, all I had to do was make it engine ready.
If you want to have a look at the effect in the engine you can see it here.
This sample is just one of the elements from the post processing framework in the engine, there are none of the other goodies in this sample, just the Sun post process. This sample has also been created using the XNA 4.0 CTP, so I only had one render target to work with at the time. This means that you can't see the sun being culled behind objects in the scene as I can't create a depth map as well as the rendered scene, to be honest, I still don't have that bit of the shader 100% anyway 
Bacon And Blood
Catalin “Belgian Blue” Zima reflects about his 2009. Glenn “Gloucester” Wilson samples the touches, George G. “Dølafe” Clingerman touches the samples and Joel “Gloucester” Martinez touches smoothly.
Meanwhile, on a Saturday night at 2:20 Pieter “Dajal” Germishuys talks about drinking coffee. The day after Andy “Blonde d'Aquitaine” Dunn runs 50 miles.
Chris G. “Red Angus” Williams fears small people, frags for charity and Goerge W. “Dølafe” Clingerman downplays his contribution.
[Ed.: Somehow the relevance of the subjects actions of this very series is not what it used to be, resulting in a sort of dilemma of what to actually share here. Today's nick names ain’t the most inspired either…]
Memories And Kharma
Joel “Edmund” Martinez knows how to finish a game with XNA, while Andy “Earl of Gloucester” Dunn still tries to establish this “common sense” thing on the forums.
Intermission: most of the personas featured in this series are part of the preferable category mentioned at The Problem With MVPs – and, frankly, I cannot name one that would fall into the other category right now…
Vincente “Curan” Cartas battens in memories of the MVP Summit, Chad “Oswald” Carter repudiates his fetish and Chris G. “Edgar” Williams meets Kharma and has a Game Design Dilemma, asks Nine Questions.
Meanwhile, George W. “Fool” Clingerman is back at work, accepts meetings when there’s coffee and doesn’t know who he is. Richard “Caius” Fine knows himself.
Catalin “A Herald” Zima will be with us for yet another year and so will Pieter “Old Man” Germishuys. But at the end of the week, only George W. “Fool” Clingerman counts.
Depth And Games
Matt “Blitzkrieg” Pettino fights with the depth buffer and Charles “One” Humphrey flags bits in XNA.
Meanwhile, George W. “The Frayed Ends of Sanity” Clingerman stares at walls, not goats and Chris G. “Fade to Black” Williams says Good Night.
Glenn “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” Wilson installs the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP finally, Jon “Escape” Watte releases a beta of kW X-port 1.4.5 for 3DS Max 2010 and in a desperate move Andy “Harvester of Sorrow” Dunn begs for common sense to be applied during peer review. Following the lead of desperation, Iñaki “Whiplash” Ayucar fulminates against clones, strongly.
John “Motorbreath” Sedlak has a new jacket, with a back, plays games, writes cryptic code. Joel “Ride the Lightning” Martinez loves LINQ and threats to release a game. Finally, Chad “Hit the Lights” Carter is a happy daddy.
The Sheep And The Butcher
Joel “Desperation” Martinez fears the loathing in FarmVille. Chad “Rage” Carter discovers that all men are created unequal, while Jim “Thinner” Perry doesn’t. In between Chris G. “The Gunslinger” Williams ponders alternative careers and recommends Dead Girl.
Catalin “The Colorado Kid” Zima is impressed by the hidden gems in talks performed by The Shawn, which raises the interests of one Andy “The Regulators” Dunn. Pieter “The New Lieutenant's Rap” Germishuys is happy about the current evolution of the software industry.
Richard “Roadwork” Thomson will be presenting 3 sessions during the upcoming Utah Code Camp (free, upcoming being March 27th, 2010).
Meanwhile, John “Stationary Bike” Sedlak gets spiritual and George W. “Dreamcatcher” Clingerman is asleep.
Jekyll And Hyde
The week starts off with Catalin “Dan Briggs” Zima not being amused about the lack of support MS shows for Romania, followed by a Charles “Rex Rupert John George Robert Andrew Sinclair Earl of Mannoc” Humphreys in excitement, which finds an abrupt ending and Joel “Sandy Ricks” Martinez living on ancient hardware.
Ignoring the misery of his fellow champs Jim “Red Forman” Perry mourns the loss of ancient arts, this time The Art of Debugging, which Andy “John Steed” Dunn wonders how to apply to the wandering to off-topic Kinder on the forums.
Meanwhile, George W. “Dr. David Banner” Clingerman goes mean. Yep, that’s right: the “group hug, peace and love” MVP is the bully MVP now. And then he shows off. At least he ain’t meaning his kids…
Suffering from external mischief Chris G. “Bosco Albert Baracus” Williams is totally amazed and disappointed. He’s also giving strange hints about his whereabouts…