Posts from people working on the XNA team
Here's a list of interesting stuff posted this week by people working on our beloved XNA!
Shawn Hargreaves:
- Efficiently loading large arrays or lists
- Serializing collections of shared resources, part 2
- Iterator state machines
Shawn Hargreaves and Charles Cox Talk XNA Game Studio on Channel 9
Aaron Stebner:
- Configuring and testing icon images in XNA Game Studio 4.0 Windows Phone games
- What XNA Game Studio 4.0 functionality works in what version of Visual Studio and on what version of Windows
- Steps to upgrade an XACT project so it can be used with XNA Game Studio 4.0
Michael Klucher:
Nick Gravelyn:
- My AppWeek 2010
- Batch your polygons
- Don’t reinvent those wheels
- Don’t build more than what you need
- The delights of DualTextureEffect
XNA Creator's Club Online:
Three links for Windows Phone Developer
If you're a developer for Windows Phone 7, the following three posts by Michael Klutcher will most likely be of use. They're one month old, but they're useful for people who didn't see them yet:
Trouble Installing the Windows Phone Developer Tools
Expert Settings in Visual Studio
Now this is useful stuff!
Btw... no activity since I left? Where's all the tutorials, samples and blog posts, XNA peeps? 
(yes, yes,... I know I shouldn't be the one to talk)
Have fun reading Michael's post, linked above!
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.