Distance field based decal rendering
Rim van Wersch shares an XNA Framework implementation of the Valve paper Improved Alpha-Tested Magnification for Vector Textures and Special Effects, presenting “[a] simple and efficient method […] which allows improved rendering of glyphs composed of curved and linear elements. A distance field is generated from a high resolution image, and then stored into a channel of a lower-resolution texture.”
sgMotion v1.0.0 Released
Tom Looman released his sgMotion library to CodePlex. Says Tom:
sgMotion is an animation library (based on XNAnimation by Bruno Evangelista) and provides full integration with both the Sunburn Engine and the Sunburn Framework.
More at the source.
HOWTO: show drawing items with the mouse in XNA
Jakob Krarup answers an unidentified question in the XNA Community Forums about “how to give a player the possibility of adding things to a game, and storing the position of the added images”.
Geodesic Grid, Part 3
Brian Schaeflein published part 3 of his Geodesic Truncated IcosahedronsGrid series, covering his design decisions about how to store the cells to aid pathfindig.
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.
Display Orientation on the ZuneHD
John Sedlak has two posts about using his FGF framework while working on the Zune HD and dealing with orientation.
He talks about how to support rotating and resizing of the display on the Zune HD (which supports both landscape and portrait gaming) and then continues with more explanations.
Building a 2D RPG
edg3 from RealDev started a series about Building a 2D RPG using XNA, and currently has the first two parts on his site.
They both deal with building the basic skeleton of the game, starting with planning and gamestate management and continuing with keyboard and mouse input.
If your interested in other RPG-related tutorials and content for XNA, here's some:
- Nick "Not an MVP Anymore" Gravelyn's Tile Engine Series
- Jamie McMahon series of 44 RPG Tutorials
- The Role Playing Game Starter Kit on XNA Creator's Club
- Jim "Evil MVP" Perry's book RPG Programming with XNA Game Studio 3.0
Icons and Bitmap Fonts Generator
Continuing their series of free stuff for everyone, the guys at Iron Start Media have released into the wilds two gifts for all game developers.
First a set of icons that you can use in your games, available here.
Second, a tool to generate bitmap fonts for your games, with details on how to use it.
GPU Geometry Map Rendering
Things not always go as smoothly as you want in the world of GPU programming, as shown by Dave CharlieCarlile from Crappy Coding. He tried to move the code for creating procedural planets from the CPU to the GPU, and then posted his findings. It's a very interesting read, and at the end he promises a comeback with more details about using PIX to debug his problems.
Article: Lens Flare Occlusion using Texture Masking and XNA
by Dave Charlile
Introduction
One of my side projects for the past couple of years has been a realtime fractal planet generator. It’s a huge project and not one I expect to ever really finish. But it has provided a great place for me to learn XNA and 3D programming techniques.