Sgt. Conker We are "absolutely fine"

The Week in Code XXI

The Nick “I did to much but won’t stop to do a lot” Gravelyn edition

• Getting started with SunBurn – part 1 in which our Hero complains about the suboptimal education material of SunBurn only to start doing it right
• Getting started with SunBurn – part 2 continues the above by adding a model to the scene so there can be light

This weeks episode is sponsored by MVP Watch: Taking notes about what “our” DirectX/XNA MVPs do.

The Week in Code (XX)

The no triple Edition

• Spice up your PC input with extension methods Nick “I do too much”  Gravelyn shares code of some useful extension methods to simplify handling keyboard input.
• Disk based data structures Mikael Svenson introduces his disk based array using memory mapped files. I am not sure how applicable it is for games – and due to the use of memory mapped files it is not usable on the 360 at all – but it looks interesting.
• ZX360 Vera Shackle makes the UK happy with the discovery of a ZX Spectrum emulator running in XNA GS on the 360.
• Xtreme plant optimization Aubrey at the Wolfire Blog shares his technique to optimize rendering of plants (sans code but I trust my loyal readers to be able to implement such on their own).

Due to technical difficulties sponsoring has been put on hold.

The Week in Code (XIX)

The mirror edition

• Pulsing Icons to Spruce Up your XNA Menus Kris Steele explains the basics for simple but effective UI feedback
• Revisiting randomness Jon Skeet shares a possible solution for the of so common problems everyone seems to have with using the Random class
• The Shawn wrote a few posts about premultiplied alpha and image composition

This post is sponsored by Xbox Indies on Facebook: the only application on Facebook that allows you to browse, search, discuss, and share Xbox LIVE Indie Games.

The Week in Code (XVIII)

Do a little dance, because it’s dance time.

• Importing and rendering XAML shape data in XNA Game Studio Manders vs. Machine created a content importer for XAML
• XNA Controller Library (version 1.1) Released cooltoolsonline (weirdish name) released on update to their (her? his? who knows, information is a bit sparse over there…) controller library that lets you bind input actions to methods in a simple way
• Zune HD Forms - A View of the Controls (because the Sergeant - and he only - like the Zune) Jarstan introduces the Zune HD Forms, a set of Windows Forms inspired UI control library for the Zune

This post is sponsored by Kissy Poo: Because it's dancing time!

The Week in Code (XVII)

The Renaud Bédard edition

• A Render/SamplerState Stack and Manager for XNA Renaud introduces his KISS style state stack for the XNA FX
• Squaring The Thumbsticks Renaud shares his code (and an explanation of his approach) for mapping the circular thumbstick values to an unit square

This post sponsors the current XNA 7 Day challenge Dual Buttons: create a playable in 7 days sporting two buttons for input only.

The Week in Code (XVI)

The where-are-the-links edition

• ZuneLib – Little Help for Zune HD Game Development Nick “Sensationalist” Gravelyn dumps his Zune HD helper library onto the web
• Rhino.Licensing by Ayende Rahien might be of use for your Windows game licensing

No links, no sponsor.

The Week in Code (XV)

The pseudo We support the Zune HD edition

• GUI Nearing Completion Cygon about his 2 years plus work on his GUI coming to a first end.
• Learning lambda expressions for XNA GS developers Nick Gravelyn wrote a tutorial – yes, I know this should be a more beyond the basics series but the XNA FX community seems to be rather quiet on the code and article front – about lambda expressions
• How To: Zune HD Touch Testing John Sedlak shows a simple Zune HD touch test “game”
• Zune HD Accelerometer Basics conkerjo shares his experiments with Mr. Tiny to demonstrate the use of the Zune HDs accelerometer
• Five Myths about Managed Code Immo Landwerth discusses five common myths of managed code

This post is sponsored by Epsicode: The soon-to-be-starving Belgian XNA developer gone Indie full time. Get Belgium onto Xbox LIVE Indie Games now!

The Week in Code (XIII)

The missing link edition.

• Nuclex Framework on CodePlex The whole lot (and it is a whole lot) of Nuclex Framework is available on CodePlex now
• Procedural Road Generation  LintfordPickle writes about his L-System (source included) and how he uses it for procedural road generation.

This post is sponsorless because all candidates are superstitious.

The Week in Code (XIV)

• Anaglyph Stereoscopic Rendering in First Person Renaud Bédard shares his code for anaglyph stereoscopic rendering
• Shapes, the 2D geometry and collision library, is available from CodePlex now
• How Are Methods Compiled Just-In-Time and Only Then? Sasha Goldshtein examines how and when methods are JITted
• String interning and String.Empty Eric Lippert on strings and how they are handled in the .NET runtime. The notes in the last 3 paragraphs about possible optimizations by using String.Intern is interesting…

No sponsor, no additional comments, no nothing to see here. Please move on

The Week in Code (XII)

This is the plain .NET and no XNA Framework special edition.

• .NET Naming Conventions Josh Twist shares his coding style by example (note: I do not like his style much but the idea of using a simple code example to visualize the style).
• Should We Change the Way We Name Interfaces in .NET? Russell Ball about dropping the I of the interface names and annotate the implementations with an Impl suffix instead. The first two comments pretty much sum up my current thoughts on this.
• It's Generic, not Multipurpose Sergio Pereira looks at some possible misuses of Generics in APIs where strings or type objects may be better suited – e.g. something I may be held guilty off, too…
• First videos of the structured editor prototype Kirill Osenkov shows off some videos of his structured editor prototype, which seems to be something nice for scripting IDEs…
• Thread Synchronization in .NET Ricardo Peres takes a look at the variety of means of synchronization available in .NET for different types of synchronization.
• Generic constraints for enums and delegates Jon Skeet explores the possibility of applying generic constraints to enums and delegates in the CLI and presents a prototype of his experiments.
• K.I.S.S. - C# Properties conkerjo discusses C# auto properties.
• Integration Tests Are a Scam presentation about things commonly tested via integration tests can be better verified through more isolated unit tests.

This post is sponsored by Reflective Perspective: The caffeine fueled thoughts of a UK Software Developer and home of “The Morning Brew”.