Brain Dump

Shawn Hargreaves is off to pastures new…

So Shawn has announced his move to the Windows Phone team - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/12/13/from-games-to-telephones.aspx XNA will be losing a key developer and we’ll be losing all those insider snippets from his blog that were such...

Published Wed, Dec 14 2011 2:57 PM by Edward Powell

Filed under: WP7, XNA 4.0

Buccaneer–Progress Update

http://www.youtube.com/v/PYTgJ8cldug http://www.youtube.com/v/PYTgJ8cldug Some of you may know that I have been tinkering with the idea of a Space Trading game for my phone for a while. I really need to scratch the ‘Elite itch’ I’ve had since about 1985...

Published Sun, Nov 6 2011 7:05 PM by Edward Powell

Filed under: WP7, XNA 4.0, Reach Profile, BEPU Physics, LibNoise.XNA, Clone, Elite

BEPU Physics Demo for UK Imagineering Fair

http://www.youtube.com/v/1goNaTgvNZU http://www.youtube.com/v/1goNaTgvNZU Next weekend I’m running the small Vectric stand at our local Imagineering Fair. This is a charity I’ve been involved in for a few years now that promotes engineering education...

Published Mon, Aug 22 2011 11:11 PM by Edward Powell

Filed under: XNA 4.0, Vectric, Imagineering, BEPU Physics

Another Radio 4 gem for games devs at a loose end…

Just listened to this great one off item from radio 4 about Polaris, the world’s best poker playing robot (at least when the programme was first recorded): http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b008kj9m Thought some of you may find it interesting too....

Published Sun, May 29 2011 2:00 PM by Edward Powell

Battle of Trafalgar for Windows Phone 7–Part 4, Fake shadows, but real name labels.

Shadows are hard, and on under WP7 they are really hard. However, the do *really* improve the sense that your models are truly part of the scene because they blend the otherwise artificially bright boundary between each element so that everything looks...

Published Sun, Apr 10 2011 10:12 AM by Edward Powell

Updated dds plug-in for Photoshop, including 64-bit support

Just a quick one to say that I have just noticed that nVidia have recently updated their dds plug-in for Photoshop here: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html It has several updates, but for me the most significant thing is it...

Published Thu, Mar 31 2011 12:22 PM by Edward Powell

Filed under: dds, photoshop, 64-bit, plug-in

Battle of Trafalgar for Windows Phone 7 - Part 3, Creating an ocean effect

With simple BasicEffect rendering of the ships with a skybox in the background, the next thing we need is the sea. My first approach was only ever intended as a placeholder, but it actually worked surprisingly well. Hopefully most of you will be aware...

Published Thu, Mar 17 2011 3:30 PM by Edward Powell

Battle of Trafalgar for Windows Phone 7 - Part 2, Creating a Skybox

Anyone who, like me, has at some point cocked up their rendering code such that everything is rendered as a black silhouette, will appreciate that the default cornflower blue background does have some merit when you first start your XNA project! However...

Published Thu, Mar 17 2011 2:48 PM by Edward Powell

Battle of Trafalgar for Windows Phone 7 - Part 1, Pocket Battleships

I've been invited to give a presentation for Microsoft UK's TechDays Online Conference on Wednesday 24 March about the rendering techniques for the phone. As a basis for this I'm going to base this talk my on-going obsession to bring the Battle...

Published Thu, Mar 17 2011 1:41 PM by Edward Powell

Filed under: WP7, Tech.Days, TechDays, Rendering, Microsoft, Reach Profile

Bleep Bleep Bloop: Music and Video Games

I bloomin’ love Radio 4 and now that the average age of a gamer is 34 (apparently!) they put on programmes like this :) If you missed this the other week you can listen to it on iPlayer here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00yj887/Bleep_Bleep_Bloop_Music_and_Video_Games...

Published Sun, Feb 27 2011 2:31 PM by Edward Powell

Modifying the vertices of a ModelMesh at runtime in XNA 4.0

I have an upcoming WP7 demo that requires some effects on a mesh that would normally be the preserve of the custom shader. To get around the problem of no custom effects on the phone, I wanted to manipulate the properties of my mesh’s vertices each update...

Published Thu, Feb 24 2011 5:34 PM by Edward Powell

Filed under: DualTextureEffect, WP7, XNA 4.0, VertexBuffer

JigLibX physics engine update for XNA 4.0

There’s been a bit of chat recently about collision detection and physics implementations. I know that many of you are aware of mature port of an open source library to XNA called JigLibX and I thought it would be worth highlighting that ‘noone88’ has...

Published Sat, Jan 15 2011 3:45 PM by Edward Powell

XBlig-UK meetings –2011!!

Never mind Christmas, the 2011 XBlig meetings are now only a few ‘sleeps’ away too! Along with Charles’ more advanced discussion of deferred rendering for the HLSL junkies, I’ll be applying the technical equivalent of a soothing cold-water head towel...

Published Thu, Dec 23 2010 1:17 PM by Edward Powell

Using Softimage Mod Tool to Create DualTextureEffect compliant models

I finally seem to be making some progress in using Mod Tool to produce some models for my new phone. This is all self-taught stuff, so if you can see things that I’m doing wrong, or I could do better, please do comment – I’m hoping that...

Published Sun, Dec 5 2010 8:08 PM by Edward Powell

Filed under: XSI Mod Tool, Modelling, Softimage, Rendermap, DualTextureEffect, XNA 4.0, Efficiency

Fantastic VS2010 extension for viewing XNA 4.0 content

Just spotted this project from Tim Jones on his blog, RoastedAmoeba.com and thought you all might want to take a look: It allows you to preview, rotate and set solid/wireframe fill modes on your content from within Visual Studio 2010 – genius!! BTW I...

Published Fri, Dec 3 2010 10:34 AM by Edward Powell

Filed under: WP7, XNA 4.0, Visual Studio 2010

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