XPF: A Layout Framework for XNA
Right after Mr. Styrchak shared his work on a Sinner clone now comes the word that the brave people at Red Badger just released a first build of BronzeglowXPF – I even named it XPF at first, too 
Article: Programming your first XNA 4.0 game for PC, Xbox 360 & Windows Phone 7: Pong
by Thomas "Mister Helmut" Altenburger
I’d like to introduce the XNA framework to you with this very simple and straightforward tutorial. We will see what XNA is and how its basic features works to continue with the programming of your first game, a simple Pong clone for Windows. At last, we’ll try to convert it to the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7. This tutorial assumes that the readers have a basic C#/.Net understanding. I hope that it will help you to understand the basics of the framework and that it will motivate you to go further in. The article should be suitable to complete beginners in game programming.
About this tutorial: I wrote this tutorial back in the days of XNA 2.0 beta and used it as an introductory course I taught to master degree students. Since then, it evolved to support XNA 4.0 beta with added Window Phone 7 development.
English not being my native language, please forgive and/or report any English oddities.
This tutorial targets XNA 4.0 beta. It will be updated when the final version will be released. It uses some new features of XNA 4.0 so it will not run out-of-the-box on previous XNA version (mainly due to the usage of Viewport.Bounds and changed SpriteBatch.Draw arguments order).
Nick Gravelyn’s Alien Aggressors Tutorial
Nick Gravelyn (no introduction needed) has been kind enough to send us his Alien Aggressors tutorial (for XNA Game Studio 2.0) and allow us to share it with the world.
You can get the tutorial here: AlienAggressors.pdf
And you might also need the AlienAggressorsContent.zip pack of content to be used with the tutorial.
P.S. This article first appeared on Ziggyware (now defunct) a while ago.
Bob Taco Ind back to WP7 loving
After having a rough day in his relationship with Windows Phone 7, Bob Taco Ind (Michael B. McLaughlin) is back in business, with two short tutorials related to programming for the upcoming device. First, he shows you how to pin your game to the start screen, followed by one option of properly exiting a Silverlight-based game on WP7.
Post Scriptum thoughts for my colleague Cpt. Boki after realizing I'm kinda stalking Michael's blog... Where did the MVP Watch thingy go?
Contest deadline approaching!
Hi all,
Just a reminder that the deadline for our 'Absolutely Fine' XNA Tutorial Contest is closing in, and you have about 1 week to send your entries into the contest.
If you forgot the details of the contest, feel free to refresh your memory.
We're currently hard at work to get the rest of the entries online for your reading pleasure.
Good luck!
News from nuclex.org
Here's a couple of news from nuclex.org.
A new tutorial for Synapse Gaming's SunBurn engine demonstrating how SunBurn (and XNA) can be used in a dependency injection environment, a programming technique in which components are wired up to each automatically based on predefined bindings. Read more.
Cygon explains why he has chosen to reimplement XNA's GameComponent/DrawableGameComponent classes himself and how he's improved his design to cover environments where the game renders into a scene graph instead of directly using the graphics device. Read more.
Cygon is talking about a redesign of the event-based input handling system used by the GUI in his Nuclex Framework. Read more.
Enjoy!
Jemgine.Hex now available for download
Our friend Blecki has released another project called Jemgine.Hex.
Here's some info from his codeplex project.
Jemgine.Hex implements a subdivideable hexagonal grid for XNA projects. Jemgine.Hex makes it easy to create hexagonal grids in vertical and horizontal orientations and to do mouse picking on them. It's written in C#.
All source is for XNA 4.0, but the library itself will compile against XNA 3.1 if it's references are changed. The demo project will not.
The HexDemo project contains examples of
*Rendering hexagonal grids
*Generating a series of subdivided grids
*Detecting the tile under the mouse of several subdivision levels
Please go check it out here
You can also see the Blecki's Jemgine XNA Engine which is a very fast maturing engine for XNA here
Article: Texture Modification using Render Targets, with some Stencil Buffer Action
by Dave Carlile
Sometimes you need to modify a texture while your game is running, and there are a number of ways to do this. One of the first things newer game programmers often try to do is use Texture2D.GetData to copy the texture data from the GPU to an array on the CPU, modify the bytes, and then send it back to the GPU with Texture2D.SetData.
This is a bad idea on many, levels. Beyond issues with pipeline stalls, GetData and SetData can be slow, especially when working with a large texture. Any time you’re tempted grab data from the GPU for use on the CPU you should very carefully consider all of your options. There are often other solutions that let you keep the data entirely on the GPU and accomplish the same thing.
This tutorial will use an example that could be solved with GetData and SetData, and show you another alternative using render targets and the stencil buffer that will let you perform the same function entirely on the GPU.
IcoModel Beta
A new interesting project popped-up on codeplex. Daniel Hoctor released the first beta version of IcoModel. The original announcement on the xna forums explains what IcoModel is all about:
What is IcoModel?
IcoModel is a free, open source terrain system that provides an easy way to create and manage dynamic terrain in the form of a globe. The IcoModelProcessor has been designed specifically to work with geodesic spheres; the mesh is broken down into sectors--the pentagons and hexagons that make up the sphere--which the IcoModel class uses to manage the terrain.How does it work?
You simply load a non-textured, UV Mapped, geodesic sphere mesh via the IcoModelProcessor. Then you create an effect key that represents the different terrain types in your project. From that point on, you can assign any sector an effect key index, at any time. When you call IcoModel's draw function, each sector will be drawn according to its current effect key index.
You can see a video of IcoModel at work below:
P.S. Thanks to Mike (Bob Taco Ind) for the tip!
Matali Physics supports Windows Phone 7
We received word that the latest build of Matali Physics now supports Windows Phone 7.
From our informant: Matali Physics is an advanced, cross-platform, fully managed 3D physics engine, intended for the .NET platform. The latest build of the engine introduces support for Windows Phone 7. The available demo also shows the full physical 3D UI on Windows Phone 7.
You can try for yourself on the Matali Physics page.