The Week in Code (XI)
- Cross Platform XNA Projects (X64 Content) John Sedlak (AKA the reason behind of the decline of Ziggyware) shows how to enable x64 compilation targets for XNA FX Windows game library projects; note: it will not magically allow you to build x64 games with the XNA FX (as John himself mentions at the end of the post)
- K.I.S.S – Fading between images with XNA Conkerjo (now on a shiny, new domain) shares his code to fade between two images, sprite batch style. Someone might claim using a shader, taking two textures as input might be better but that wouldn’t fit the K.I.S.S. moniker well…
- Realistic Soft Edged Water In XNA The first article on XTaticware deals with the challenges of rendering realistic still water bodies in an efficient way
- Quick and Dirty Screenshots in PC Games Nick “fanboi” Gravelyn dumps his code to take screenshots of Windows games – Hm, I toyed around with the EndDraw approach to do video dumps once, maybe I should get that into a sharable state…
This post is sponsored by XTaticware, the non profit venture to provide an alternative source of C#/XNA information.
The Week in Code (X)
We continue to use the not-so-regular-but-still-somewhat-defined schedule.
- GC Helper for Obtaining Live Instances of a Type, or How I Implemented GC.GetAliveInstancesOf<T>() All Your Base Are Belong To Us shares some “automagical” code to track alive instance of a specified type.
- Stencil Rendering Renaud Bédard shares some sample code for a stencil rendering effect.
- EasyStorage Released Nick Gravelyn released his storage library “
for making it quicker and easier for XNA Game Studio developers to manage the StorageDevice without all the details
” on CodePlex.
This post is sponsored by Ska Studios: I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1
The Week in Code (Special Bulletin)
Promit Roy released version 0.1.5 of his SlimeTune Profiler to the public - yes, that includes you, too!
The Week in Code (IX)
Looks like this is changing to a bi-weekly schedule. Post more stuff, people!
- Using Dependency Injection in XNA Nuclex about using Ninject in XNA FX based projects
- Suffix Tree: For anyone making a word game (or algorithm nerds in general) Zikomo Fields shares his C# Suffix Tree implementation on Google code
- Fasterflect - a fast and simple API for Reflection invocation Buu Nguyen presents an alternative to the .NET reflection API for reflective invocations
The sponsor of this post is Xbox Indies (formerly known as the Xbox LIVE Community Games Catalog): now with editorial content!
The Week in Code (VIII)
- Threaded Renderer Kevin Gadd about his approach to threaded rendering.
- XNA Paint.NET Importer Rainault shares his (simple) Paint.NET importer.
- Storage Device Management 2.0 Nick Gravelyn wrote 15 pages of storage device management.
- Advanced Debugging Tutorial – Part Two Chad Carter about debugger visualizers and their possible use for debugging XNA FX games.
The sponsor of this post preferred to stay anonymous.
The Week in Code (VII)
After a short hiatus (I just didn’t run into any XNA FX related code…) we are back with a tiny list:
- “XNAVATARS” - PART 2 – NO SHADOWS? Pete implemented Jons way of Avatar shadowing
- New Version A* pathfinding in 3D Roy A. Triesscheijn shares a new version of his 3D A* path finding code utilizing binary heaps.
- BRAINS – XNA A.I Library – Source Code Conkerjo released his A.I. Library for XNA GS games.
- SlimTune Profiler for .NET in which new DirectX/XNA MVP Promit Roy promises a new open source .NET profiler by September.
This post is sponsored by XNA Roundup: “We find the best games on the Xbox LIVE Community Games tab and give you the rundown on what's worth playing each and every week”
The Week in Code (VI)
- What does the optimize switch do? Eric Lippert on the things the C# compiler does when invoked with the optimize switch
- SlimDX’s Hobbyist Curse, and Open Source Blessing Promit Roy on the acceptance of open source libraries and made by hobbyist projects in the Microsoft community
- Spatial hashing implementation for fast 2D collisions Conkerjo shares his simple spatial hashing prototype for 2D collision checking
This post did not find any sponsor…
The Week in Code (V)
- Fixed XBox 360 Controller Shoulder Button Images Kevin Gadd shares his readability modification of the standard shoulder button changes
- How does the .NET Compact Memory allocator work It is never wrong to know the innards of the CF.NET
- Component-Driven Development and IoC Containers Mini series about Component Driven Development and IoC containers for enterprise applications, but applicable to games, too. Here’s part 2: The Actual Development Process of new Applications and Migrating Existing Legacy Applications
- Real-Time Physics 103: Fluid Simulation in Games 2D and C++ but still interesting
We take a break from the sponsored by series with a note of the Ziggyware.com Donation Drive: If you like to see Ziggyware grow and continue to host future contests with great prizes, consider to donate a dime or two.
The Week in Code (IV)
Lets see how long I can keep posting these…
- Conkerjo writes about Simply RenderTargets
- Not code but still useful: Gimp XCF Processor An XNA 3.0 Content Pipeline Extension Library that allows multi-layered Gimp XCF files to be compiled and flattened for use in-game as Texture2Ds
- XNA Shader Programming - Tutorial 19, Hemispheric ambient light as I always seem to forget about this form of lightning…
- A selection of Ziggyware Spring 2009 XNA Article Contest entries (I am glad to be no judge as all are rather interesting reads):
- Animated SpriteBatch Text using a State Machine because I like text
- 2D KeyFramed Animations for XNA I have not seen something like this for the XNA FX before
- Creating a Better Lobby to cover some network related code here
This post was brought to you by Uhfgood's Game Reviews
The Week in Code (III)
Rename to The Week in XNA FX Land pending
- Cross-Platform XNA Menu System Matt Pettineo released a new version of his menu system and companion editor
- Top Sources of Heap Garbage Renaud Bédard lists a few (seven, to be specific) ways to generate performance affecting garbage on the 360 and how to prevent it
- Not code at all but targeted at developers: In GUIDE: I want to write original music for my game, but I don't know anything about music!!! Dave1005 outlines how to compose your own music for your game. I am not sure if this will transform you into the next James Silva within a days length – or, given the reputation of developer art, will enable you to create useable music at all – but it is still a nice read.
This post is sponsored by The ZBuffer: News, Information and resources for Managed DirectX and XNA Framework.