Submissions Closed
Yeah, as pointed out in the comments, the deadline was sooner than I actually said in my last email.
The submission for the 'Absolutely Fine' XNA Tutorial Contest is now closed.
We'll soon be starting formatting the rest of the articles, posting them, and then posting a master list of all entries. After that, judging and voting will begin.
Meanwhile, enjoy our news feed
1 Day remaining
Quick reminder for our 'Absolutely Fine' XNA Tutorial Contest: The deadline is about 1 day away, so if you want to enter the contest, send us your entry!
At the moment, we have 4 published entries, and another around 14 entries that we're preparing for publishing.
Good luck!
News from nuclex.org
Here's a couple of news from nuclex.org.
A new tutorial for Synapse Gaming's SunBurn engine demonstrating how SunBurn (and XNA) can be used in a dependency injection environment, a programming technique in which components are wired up to each automatically based on predefined bindings. Read more.
Cygon explains why he has chosen to reimplement XNA's GameComponent/DrawableGameComponent classes himself and how he's improved his design to cover environments where the game renders into a scene graph instead of directly using the graphics device. Read more.
Cygon is talking about a redesign of the event-based input handling system used by the GUI in his Nuclex Framework. Read more.
Enjoy!
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.
IcoModel Beta
A new interesting project popped-up on codeplex. Daniel Hoctor released the first beta version of IcoModel. The original announcement on the xna forums explains what IcoModel is all about:
What is IcoModel?
IcoModel is a free, open source terrain system that provides an easy way to create and manage dynamic terrain in the form of a globe. The IcoModelProcessor has been designed specifically to work with geodesic spheres; the mesh is broken down into sectors--the pentagons and hexagons that make up the sphere--which the IcoModel class uses to manage the terrain.How does it work?
You simply load a non-textured, UV Mapped, geodesic sphere mesh via the IcoModelProcessor. Then you create an effect key that represents the different terrain types in your project. From that point on, you can assign any sector an effect key index, at any time. When you call IcoModel's draw function, each sector will be drawn according to its current effect key index.
You can see a video of IcoModel at work below:
P.S. Thanks to Mike (Bob Taco Ind) for the tip!
Matali Physics supports Windows Phone 7
We received word that the latest build of Matali Physics now supports Windows Phone 7.
From our informant: Matali Physics is an advanced, cross-platform, fully managed 3D physics engine, intended for the .NET platform. The latest build of the engine introduces support for Windows Phone 7. The available demo also shows the full physical 3D UI on Windows Phone 7.
You can try for yourself on the Matali Physics page.
First two entries to our contest are online!
Hi all,
Two fine entries into our contest are now online.
Input Playback, by Jesse Chounard
Derived Effect Classes in XNA 4.0, by Dave Carlile
Do you like them? Submit your own! ![]()
Have a nice reading!
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
XNA-UK has had an overhaul
The XNA-UK User group website has had a major overhaul of its look and feel.
The XNA-UK website has lots of good content for the community and you should go check some of it out.
XNA-UK is also setting up some annual meeting which can be found on their companion site.
Storage in XNA Game Studio 4.0
Nick Gravelyn has a new blog post explaining the changes made to the Storage system in XNA 4.0