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 
Windows Phone 7 – XNA Brightness and Contrast
With the addition of Windows Phone 7 support to XNA comes some limitations. If one wanted to have brightness and contrast controls for their game, previous methods may not be available. Considering features such as programmable shaders or device gamma ramp to achieve such a task will leave you out of luck. However there is a simple (and perhaps old school) way of doing it, and that is blend states.
Click Continue reading to see how!
Article : Battlestar Galactica Text Effects in XNA
by UberGeekGames
If you’ve watched the excellent sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica (the 2004+ series, not the original!), you may have noticed that during scene transitions, they use a cool effect that draws text in strips. For example, when the story jumps from a Cylon Baseship back to Galactica, it might cut to an outside view of BSG and have text in the lower left corner of the screen noting the time and place. The text fades in strips, which I thought was a pretty cool effect. I decided to replicate that in XNA.
First, let’s look at the end result:
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
100% Test Coverage
After Markus made flashy statements about having "100% Test Coverage" on his new release of Nuclex, he posted an explanation about what that means exactly, which should help us mere mortals understand it better. Read more on his site.
Nuclex Framework Updated
In Nuclex Framework R984 Released! Markus “Cygon” Ewald announces the immediate availability of the latest version of the Nuclex Framework on CodePlex. Highlights include:
- 100% test coverage of the GUI library (I leave it to the educated reader to determine if that means anything useful)
- Control navigation with the game pad and cursor keys
- The GUI library contains controls for buttons, check boxes, radio buttons, horizontal and vertical scroll bars, text boxes, lists now
Article : Pie Menu
by Catalin Zima
Pie Menu
For the people who want some UI stuff in XNA, here’s a small sample that contains a Pie Menu Component, attached to a cursor. If you don’t know what a pie menu is, read about it on wikipedia.