XNA-UK User Group Prize Giveway!
Actually, it's about a Super Duper Prize Giveway at the September 1st meeting of the user group. Also accompanied by presentations about XNA, WP7, shaders and a Xap-a-thon. If you're interested and want more details, jump on their site and read all the details.
Links, links, links!
We'll start with NemoKrad's BoundingBoxes in XNA 4.0
Next, Stephen Styrchak talks about Debugging the XNA Content Pipeline with C# Express Edition and a bug-fix for Debugging Xbox 360 Content
Bob Taco Industries has two blog posts, one about Turning a Solution into a Template for XNA 4.0 and one about Sizing Apps and Games Properly Using the WP7 Emulator
Xna Creator's Club Online released some new samples for Windows Phone and XNA Game Studio 4.0
And Shawn explains the new Dual Texture Effect
Brute Force 2D Shadows
Because he is a much less busy man (it would seem), Charles Humprey made his own implementation for shader-based dynamic 2D shadows and posted it for everyone to see. You can read about it here.
Silent And Quiet
It’s been some time since the last MVP Watch and it doesn’t seem that much has been missed…
Anyway, George W. “Bugbear” Clingerman feels unhated and so did Vincente “Bête Noire” Cartas, Chris G. “Daggers Drawn” Williams started something, Andy “Jealous as a Barbary Pigeon” Dunn likes to do the opposite, Charles “Demoniacal” Humphrey ain’t impressed, Jim “Philophilosophos” Perry reviews movies.
Words And Easy
Richard “Craigellachie” Thomson writes code. Vincente “Tomintoul” Cartas will talk about XNA. Charles “Dufftown” Humphrey writes about code (supposedly Catalin “Linkwood” Zima was in charge to read what was written about code…) and is a lobster.
George W. “Knockando” Clingerman shares links, has a heart of gold and is in good company.
Glenn “Miltonduff” Wilson returns to XNA while Andy “Inchgower” Dunn keeps on runnin’.
Article : Sun- and Lens Flare as a Post Process
by Charles Humphrey
Now this sample has come from my current XNA toy which is the Blacksun engine I am currently writing in XNA 3.1. It uses deferred lighting, instancing and a post processing framework that I found on a great site here, all I had to do was make it engine ready.
If you want to have a look at the effect in the engine you can see it here.
This sample is just one of the elements from the post processing framework in the engine, there are none of the other goodies in this sample, just the Sun post process. This sample has also been created using the XNA 4.0 CTP, so I only had one render target to work with at the time. This means that you can't see the sun being culled behind objects in the scene as I can't create a depth map as well as the rendered scene, to be honest, I still don't have that bit of the shader 100% anyway 
Depth And Games
Matt “Blitzkrieg” Pettino fights with the depth buffer and Charles “One” Humphrey flags bits in XNA.
Meanwhile, George W. “The Frayed Ends of Sanity” Clingerman stares at walls, not goats and Chris G. “Fade to Black” Williams says Good Night.
Glenn “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” Wilson installs the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP finally, Jon “Escape” Watte releases a beta of kW X-port 1.4.5 for 3DS Max 2010 and in a desperate move Andy “Harvester of Sorrow” Dunn begs for common sense to be applied during peer review. Following the lead of desperation, Iñaki “Whiplash” Ayucar fulminates against clones, strongly.
John “Motorbreath” Sedlak has a new jacket, with a back, plays games, writes cryptic code. Joel “Ride the Lightning” Martinez loves LINQ and threats to release a game. Finally, Chad “Hit the Lights” Carter is a happy daddy.
Jekyll And Hyde
The week starts off with Catalin “Dan Briggs” Zima not being amused about the lack of support MS shows for Romania, followed by a Charles “Rex Rupert John George Robert Andrew Sinclair Earl of Mannoc” Humphreys in excitement, which finds an abrupt ending and Joel “Sandy Ricks” Martinez living on ancient hardware.
Ignoring the misery of his fellow champs Jim “Red Forman” Perry mourns the loss of ancient arts, this time The Art of Debugging, which Andy “John Steed” Dunn wonders how to apply to the wandering to off-topic Kinder on the forums.
Meanwhile, George W. “Dr. David Banner” Clingerman goes mean. Yep, that’s right: the “group hug, peace and love” MVP is the bully MVP now. And then he shows off. At least he ain’t meaning his kids…
Suffering from external mischief Chris G. “Bosco Albert Baracus” Williams is totally amazed and disappointed. He’s also giving strange hints about his whereabouts…
Shortly Replicated Pancakes
Jim “First Hand Knowledge” Perry writes XNA and Short Term Memory Loss.
Andy “Not Your Father” Dunn leaksprophesies information of XNA 10.5 (hint: it will take quite a few years and the arrival of the Sith Lords before anyone will get their hands onto it).
Richard “Pancakes” Fine works hard and eats unhealthy.
Charles “Picturesque” Humphrey does some aftermath (if you count photo sharing as that) of the MVP 2010 Summit.
If you’re in HR for your company Down Under and want to make one Glenn “Legendary Legend” Wilson unredundant this is the time!
Promit “Keep On Walking” Roy shares progress of BioReplicant, “a completely reactive procedural animation system for use in video games”.
Buzz And Contact
SCENE XIX
Twitter.
Enter Richard “Philosopher” Thompson.
Richard. Having the Blues http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/fractals/fotd/2008/10/2008.10.11-Having_the_Blues.jpg
Richard. A Hole in One http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/fractals/fotd/2008/10/2008.10.10-A_Hole_in_One.jpg
Richard. "With collections, the Null Object Pattern is free--you just return an empty collection."
Exeunt.
Enter John “Integrator” Sedlak.
John. Wow. I actually enjoy reading the CCO forums now!!
Enter Jim “Conservator” Perry.
Jim. @jsedlak so you're a masochist?!? 8\
John. @NemoKrad NICE! I am going to look at that tomorrow. Can I integrate it into FGF? http://jsedlak.org/fgf
Exeunt John and Jim.
Enter George W. “Reflector” Clingerman.
George. At some point I really should do a Kissy Poo post-mortem. Things we did right, but there's quite a few things I wish we had done differently
Enter Andy “Instructor” Dunn.
Andy. @Kitt1e2009 : Unless he has a 'scale to fit' then yes… for the icons on the right mainly (assuming the red box is correclty [sic] positioned)
Exit.
George. @The_Zman @Kitt1e2009 "assuming the red box is correctly positioned" is why I suggest you only fail if you're actually experiencing it
Exit.
SCENE XX
Enter Charles “Responder” Humphrey.
Charles. I am pretty sure, that like me you are more than capable of scanning the web for snippets of info on how to do this, well I thought, to save you the time and effort I’ll put up a simple how-to here.
Explain the code.
Charles. And that’s about it, hope you find it useful. The solution for this post can be found here. As ever C&C welcome.
Exit.