MVP Weekend
George W. “The Desperate” Clingerman plans something spectacular XNA related for this weekend. You have to see the excitement here in the barracks: everyone’s running around, waving the arms in the air, the Sarg’s hyperventilating and Catalin’s worried about the peer pressure to counter the outcome…
Meanwhile, Chris W. “The Fool” Williams doesn’t like to be called a tool and Jim “The Tool” Perry still pretends to be the Evil MVP, without actually pulling an apple.
About Language
Iñaki “Visionary” Ayucar starts the week with an introduction to or of (depending on whom [or is it who?] you ask) Extension Methods and why they rock and why you most certainly want to use them for, like, everything.
On a bright Tuesday morning, George W. “The Giant” Clingerman pushes some very dark clouds onto the sky by publicly expressing his strong feelings for regions to organize code (that’s a +1e100 reputation thing; As a service for your memory: regions were introduced to hide the verbose, designer create code blobs in Windows Forms et al. when C# did not support partial classes.), finding a strong supporter in Vincente “1.8” Cartas.
To break the flow here’s a tiny, tiny photo of the XNA MVPs at the MVP Summit 2010:
Photo © 2010 Microsoft Corporation
Benjamin "The Invisible Yet Photographable MVP" Nitschke has some more photos from the Summit in Seattle 2010 (that’s the year of the happening, not the number of photos…).
John “Don’t Quote That” Sedlak playstests games.
Pedro D. “Talking Head” Güida has been granted a MAP award (yep, that’s right: there’s a “Microsoft Active Professional” award program for “professionals who are considered to be among the top 5% of most active contributors in the community”, which, basically, translates to “You talk a lot”).
Elsewhere, Andy “Sparkly Crown Jewels” Dunn and Chris G. “Fighter” Williams (who’s already on the meet the team page [hrm, when did that one get updated? Lat I looked, which was not that long ago, it featured fewer members…]) go commando in support of VB.NET, while Jim “Reads a Legend” Perry stays on the other side of the fence (or so). Later, after the dust of the epic and never ending battle settled, Chris G. “Equalizer” Williams embraces all languages (but not PHP).
The best news to last: George W. “Dance Time” Clingerman found his awesome back.
Jim Blogs About the Content Pipeline
Yes, that comes as a surprise: Jim “Eraser” Perry, the chap that deleted your forum posts for Very Good Reasons™, returns from the Global MVP Summit 2010 just to find his I am here for the community by the community spirit refreshed and comes out of the shadows – or, in true Phoenix fashion (that’s the mythical firebird, not the city in Arizona), arising from the ashes – with the master piece of diving deeply into the XNA Game Studio content pipeline to leverage its powers to serialize your game objects into (and out of!) XML.
In more dramatic news: George W. “End of Days” Clingerman lost his awesome – investigations if a certain J. is involved in this traumatic loss have already started: If you have any knowledge about the whereabouts of poor little Georgys awesome, please report to him immediately – and became all emo.
Meanwhile, Andy “Running Man” Dunn pleas to stop bashing the XNA MVPs, Chris G. “Predator” Williams exchanges gold for bullets and tells UPS how it is, Chad “Jingle All the Way” Carter longs for a Windows Phone 7 Series, er, phone, Glenn “Total Recall” Wilson prepares for the Azure launch, Jon “The 6th Day” Watte discovers Charles Darwin, Vincente “Collateral Damage” Cartas unboxes boxy boxes and Joel “Stay Hungry” Martinez progresses nicely.
Post Mortem: Kissy Poo
Looks like Friday is Post Mortem day in XNA land. After the previous Space Pirates from Tomorrow post mortem now comes in the one George W. Clingerman with his Post Mortem of Kissy Poo. Writes that George:
A short while ago I became a REAL game developer with the release of an XBLIG I helped create called “Kissy Poo”. Overall this game has been a huge success. It has far exceeded my original expectations of sales and was just a really fun project to work on. (In case you were wondering I was expecting to sell around 500 copies and we’re right now hanging around 1200 copies sold!). Now though, I want to take some time to reflect a bit and share what went well and what I would have done differently. I think it’s good for any project to take that time and who knows, maybe it will be useful for someone else besides me!
Read the whole drama at the source.
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.
Name And Saw
SCENE XVII
The blog formerly know known as MJP’s XNA Danger Zone.
Enter Matt “Danger Mouse” Pettino.
Matt. I got tired having an awkward mouthful of a blog name, so I decided to shorten it to something much snappier. Hence “MJP’s XNA Danger Zone” becomes simply “The Danger Zone”. I like it better already.
Share plans for the future. Exit.
SCENE XVIII
Twitter.
Enter Chris G. “Danger Tape” Williams.
Chris. @ninjaharlot guess you hate me then… cuz I think it's [Two and a Half Men] hilarious.
Chris. @TehGrumpyDude this cinches it… I need a Two and a Half Men tshirt to wear to the summit.
Chris. @ninjaharlot I have no doubt we will. It may involve a chair, a tv and some duct tape though… just sayin.
Enter George W. “Danger Poo” Clingerman.
George. Ugh stomach so sick from all the food I've eaten watching this superbowl game. The blue team looks good, but the gold team is doing well too
Pause.
George. @ninjaharlot I agree with that. I now want to destroy the planet! [Hack the planet! Hack the planet!]
Exeunt.
Chris. Bazinga!
Exeunt.