The Replacement Clingerman
As George W. “Father of an Army” Clingerman went quite quiet recently (conspiracy theorists claim he’s the XNA/XBLIG community manager now and hence is as quiet as the void that wasn’t a community manager…) we have to turn our head to the Evil MVP Jim “The Replacement Clingerman” Perry, who replaced locking with blogging what seems to be some sort of The Spy Game Design Series:
- Spy Game Design – Agent Specialties
- Spy Game Design – Inventory and Related Areas
- Spy Game Design – Assignments/Missions
- Spy Game Design–Death
- Spy Game Design – Advancement
- Spy Game Design – Combat
- Spy Game Design – Identities
And, compared to the AppBuh Forums mess his forums are alive and kicking.
Hiding a Clingerman to Talk Natively
In Benchmarking C#/.Net Direct3D 11 APIs vs native C++ (a post from March 14, I wonder why I did not share this already…) Alexandre Mutel explores the cost of calling native APIs from managed code (AKA interop) via micro benchmarking various managed Direct3D 11 APIs. He does this because:
Hopefully, in SharpDX unlike any other DirectX .NET APIs, this code has been written to be consistent over the whole generated code, and was carefully designed to be quite efficient… but still, It has obviously a cost, and we need to know it!
Spoiler: The offerings Microsoft has in store are, by far, slower than SlimDX/SharpDX.
In other news: There is a thread over in the AppBuhAppHub forums praising the XNA MVPs. We here in the barracks fully support that effort – mostly due to the fact that Captain ZSquare has access to various arms here and we lost the keys to lock up the arsenal… – so you might head over to add to the +1 (none of the Google +1 stuff) choir.
Posing a Clingerman to Welcome Our New Overlords
That’s right: George W. Clingerman finally stopped pretending being a developer/programmer/someone who knows code to pursue a career as DJ now, going by the nick DJ Cling-Star. Meanwhile, there are three new additions to the happy bunch that is known as the Direct/XNA MVPs:
The third one is MIA currently… [Update: OK, our intelligentintelligence services managed to get ahold of his name now, Dr. Minh-Triet TRAN, but not many more details…]
Lets hope thisthese guys can fulfill the demands of the community…
[Update: Moo]
Posting a Clingerman to Stay Relevant
Due to the lack of updates recently we’re going to do an XNA Notes inspired round up on this very Monday, and we also like to post a photo of the original author of the XNA Notes to shout yet another Vote for George!
With that out of the way here are the nominations for next Friday’s XNA Notes (in no particular order):
Jim “Still Not Evil” Perry shares an updated XNA 4.0 for Windows version of the Game State Manager sample.
Nick “MVP” Gravelyn breaks the word about a “solid way to handle trial [Ed.: not trail, as initially stated] mode on the Windows Phone 7” written by Dean Johnson.
There’s a new Ad SDK for XNA on Windows Phone 7 in town, seeking help for a very closed beta.
And last but not least, Jason Swearingen still participates in the #AltDevBlogADay, this time covering Spatial Partitioning. Part 1: Survey of spatial partitioning solutions.
A closing paragraph with the sole reason to have the text flow below the photo and bear no real content. The same can be said about this link to The ZBuffer. However, this The cake is a lie does have a meaning…
A New Book on the Block and A New Natur Beta
Sez the Chris G. Williams about the fruits of his collaboration with George W. Clingerman:
Weighing in at 552 pages and featuring a foreward [
sicObs.] by the legendary James Silva (Ska Studios, creator of The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, I MAED A GAME W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1, and more...) this book gives thorough coverage of XNA 4.0 as it relates to Windows Phone 7.
Continue reading more at Professional Windows Phone 7 Game Development: Creating Games using XNA Game Studio 4 (named in true Microsoft style and spirit…)
Via the forums comes the word that a new beta release of Natur is available. You do not know what Natur is? Well, neither do I so here’s the blurb from CodePlex:
Natur allows you to easily create and manage maps in 3D using the Xna framework. As you build your map, you can enter simulation mode at any time; this will activate bounds, physics, and any game logic such as animations and triggers. The following are currently supported:
- Animations
- Bounding Systems
- Interactive Objects
- Lighting
- Locations
- Physic Simulation
- Spawn Points
- Texture Palettes
- Triggers
Words And Pages
The Great Quiet is over in XNA MVP land as Chris G. “Avatar” Williams and George W. “Vatara” Clingerman break the news about their collaboration on the pamphletupcoming bestseller aptly titled “Professional Windows Phone 7 Game Development: Creating Games using XNA Game Studio 4”.
Meanwhile Andy “Ratava” Dunn ponders self publishing, asking for feedback.
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’.
Bacon And Blood
Catalin “Belgian Blue” Zima reflects about his 2009. Glenn “Gloucester” Wilson samples the touches, George G. “Dølafe” Clingerman touches the samples and Joel “Gloucester” Martinez touches smoothly.
Meanwhile, on a Saturday night at 2:20 Pieter “Dajal” Germishuys talks about drinking coffee. The day after Andy “Blonde d'Aquitaine” Dunn runs 50 miles.
Chris G. “Red Angus” Williams fears small people, frags for charity and Goerge W. “Dølafe” Clingerman downplays his contribution.
[Ed.: Somehow the relevance of the subjects actions of this very series is not what it used to be, resulting in a sort of dilemma of what to actually share here. Today's nick names ain’t the most inspired either…]
Memories And Kharma
Joel “Edmund” Martinez knows how to finish a game with XNA, while Andy “Earl of Gloucester” Dunn still tries to establish this “common sense” thing on the forums.
Intermission: most of the personas featured in this series are part of the preferable category mentioned at The Problem With MVPs – and, frankly, I cannot name one that would fall into the other category right now…
Vincente “Curan” Cartas battens in memories of the MVP Summit, Chad “Oswald” Carter repudiates his fetish and Chris G. “Edgar” Williams meets Kharma and has a Game Design Dilemma, asks Nine Questions.
Meanwhile, George W. “Fool” Clingerman is back at work, accepts meetings when there’s coffee and doesn’t know who he is. Richard “Caius” Fine knows himself.
Catalin “A Herald” Zima will be with us for yet another year and so will Pieter “Old Man” Germishuys. But at the end of the week, only George W. “Fool” Clingerman counts.