October 2007 - Posts

• Gamefest 2007 Slides and Audio

  Dave posted a list of the published talks from this years Gamefest. Unfortunately his email program mangled the links so that you end up being sent to Microsoft's web mail instead. Being too impatient to wait for someone to fix the links, I whipped up a little IronPython script to get the job done.

  You can see the script here and links are below. As Dave says they may not all actually be available yet and I've only tested a couple.

  import clr
  clr.AddReference("System.Web")
  
  from System.IO import StreamReader, StreamWriter
  from System.Net import WebRequest
  from System.Web import HttpUtility
  from System.Text.RegularExpressions import Regex
  
  req = WebRequest.Create("http://letskilldave.com/archive/2007/10/13/gamefest-2007-slides-and-audio-recordings-well-most-of-them.aspx")
  
  reader = StreamReader(req.GetResponse().GetResponseStream())
  html = reader.ReadToEnd()
  reader.Close()
  
  rx = Regex(r'URL=(http\%3a\S*).*<FONT color=#0000ff>(.*)</FONT></SPAN></A>')
  matches = rx.Matches(html)
  
  links = ('<li><a href="%s">%s</a></li>' % (HttpUtility.UrlDecode(m.Groups[1].Value), m.Groups[2]) for m in matches)
  
  writer = StreamWriter('links.html')
  for l in links:
      writer.WriteLine(l)
  writer.Close()
  

  Gamefest Talks: 

  • Profiling Tools and Techniques: New Guidelines for Finding Where Your Time is Going
  • Performance Update and Optimization Case Studies
  • Effective Game Disc Usage: Compression & Caching
  • Just Make Windows Work
  • VMX Optimization: Taking it up a Level
  • Multicore Programming, Two Years Later
  • Building High-Performance Data Pipelines Using the .NET Framework
  • Static Code Analysis on Game Code
  • Practical Steps in Game Security
  • Why Your Windows Game Won't Run In 2,147,352,576 Bytes
  • Visual C++ 2008: A Game Developer’s Perspective
  • Magic and Technology: Migrating from One to Many Cores in Shadowrun
  • Picture Perfect: Gamma through the Rendering Pipeline
  • GPU Font/Vector Rendering and Approximating Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surfaces with Bicubic Patches
  • GPU Data Structures and Advanced Lighting: State-of-the-Art Techniques from Microsoft Research
  • From the Trenches: Xbox 360 Development War Stories
  • Performance Considerations for Graphics on Windows
  • Windows to Reality: Getting the Most out of Direct3D 10 Graphics in Your Games
  • Mapping the Dark Corners: Creating a Flexible Framework for Dynamic Shadowing
  • Windows Vista Graphics Development Drilldown: Direct3D 10 and 10.1
  • Xbox 360 GPU Performance Update
  • Advanced Xbox 360 Graphics Techniques Using Command Buffers and Predicated Tiling
  • How to Break Game Security
  • Five Hundred City Blocks of Pure Destruction: Adventures in Testing Crackdown
  • Serving Multiple Masters with Build Instrumentation
  • The Xbox 360 Diaries: A Collection of Test Solutions Utilizing the XDK
  • XSim – How to Find Bugs with Simulation of XInput
  • Passing the First Time: How Activision Successfully Navigates the Submission and Certification Process
  • Better, Faster, Smarter: Using Tools for Certification Testing
  • TCR Failures, Taxes, or Death: Which One Can You Prevent?
  • Submission Pitfalls and How to Avoid the Crocodiles
  • Are Your Games “Games for Windows” Ready?
  • What Is Games for Windows – LIVE?
  • Medic!!! First aid for games hemorrhaging packets (and other common-networking problems)
  • Games for Windows: A Deep-Dive into the Program, Process and Technical Requirements
  • Third-Party Marketing: Process, Priorities, Partnership
  • PANEL: How to Engage the Community, Without Outraging Them
  • Bend Microsoft Project to Your Will
  • A Producer’s Guide to Games for Windows – LIVE
  • The World Beyond Retail: Maximizing Your Game with Connected Consumers
  • The 10 Things You Should Be Thinking About for Your Next Game
  • Developing Games for Xbox LIVE Arcade
  • A Producer’s Guide to Xbox 360 Certification
  • Bringing Games to Everyone
  • XACT to the Extreme: Game Audio Building Blocks for Programmers and Content Creators
  • A Field Guide to the XACT Authoring Tool
  • Power to the Core: Audio Foundations on Microsoft Platforms
  • XAudio 2 Goes Green: Making Game Audio a Sustainable Resource
  • Learn to Speak XAudio 2 Like a Pro: Translating from DirectSound and XAudio
  • XMA: Ndrstndg Prseptul Adyo Cmprshn
  • Positioning Yourself for 3D: X3DAudio and Sound Spatialization
  • Paint-by-Noise: Practical DSP Implementation Techniques
  • xAPOs Mark the Spot: The DSP Implementation Framework for XAudio 2
  • Case Study: Shadowrun: Magic, Tech, and Guns, Oh My! Audio at the Service of Gameplay within the Constraints of a Multiplayer-only Title
  • Dolby Digital 5.1: Taking it Back to the Basics
  • Ranking and Matchmaking: TrueSkill Revealed
  • Developing Server-Based Games on LIVE (I'm Looking at You, MMO)
  • Bringing the Best of Xbox LIVE to Windows
  • Connecting Worlds: Cross-Platform Game Creation Using Games for Windows – LIVE
  • Donnybrook: Making Networked Games More Fun
  • Adding Creamy Nougat and a Crisp Candy Coating to the Network: XRNM and QNet
  • Extending the XNA Framework Content Pipeline
  • Creating Content the Softimage|XSI Way for XNA Game Studio
  • Understanding XNA Framework Performance
  • The Costs of Managed Code: The Avoidable and the Unavoidable
  • Pre-Mortem: Torpex Games' Schizoid
  • What’s New in XNA Game Studio 2.0
  • Networking with the XNA Framework
  • Advanced Debugging in Managed Code
  • Getting Your Game on Xbox LIVE Arcade
  • Everything You Need to Know About Developing for MSN Games
  • The Quarter-Billion-User Game Platform: Developing Games for Windows LIVE Messenger
  • Clues in the Puzzles: What Casual Games Can Teach About Accessibility
  • LIVE as Design Tool
  • A Producer’s Guide to Games for Windows – LIVE
  • Microsoft Casual Games APIs for MSN Games and Messenger
  • Windows Vista and Casual Games
  • Building Games for Windows Mobile
  • Making Social Games that Are Fun for Everyone: Lessons Learned from Consumer Testing
  • Bringing Games to Everyone
  • Developing for Xbox LIVE Arcade: The Developer's View
  • Building Lifelike 3D Game Characters Cost-Effectively
  • The Art and Technology of Whiteout
  • Improving Static Lighting: Experiences from DICE
  • Integrating High-Level Shading Effects into Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya
  • Play It Forever: Designing Game Art for Today and Tomorrow
  • Athletic Performance: Creating Believable Interactive Character Motion
  • Natural Outdoor Lighting in Games
  • Track Environment Creation from Real-World Reference
  • Introduction to Human IK Middleware: Complementing Your FK Animation
  • Future of an Illusion: Game Animation for the 7th Generation
  Posted Oct 13 2007, 06:30 PM by leaf with no comments

  Filed under: gamefest

• Upcoming Events

  We've got some events planned in the next few weeks. Two events in London and one in Nottingham. We'd love to see some of our members there, so if you're interested follow the links and leave a post in our forums or send me an email (leaf @ this web site).

  • Wednesday 24th October, Central London
    This will be during London Game Festival. We'll be holding an informal drinks thing somewhere in central London (location to be confirmed).
  • Thursday 25th October, Bluu Bar Nottingham
    We're joining in with the XNA and Rare folks for a night during Nottingham's GameCity festival. There'll be free beer & grub, Frag Dolls, games, prizes and Robin and I pretending to be demo scene coders.
  • Thursday November 15th (2pm), QANTM in London
    QANTM are generously opening up one of their guest lectures to XNA UKUG members. Robin Moore from Rare will be talking about the development process of Viva Pinata.
  Posted Oct 08 2007, 10:35 PM by leaf with 1 comment(s)

  Filed under: events

• RandomChaos downloads on this site

  Charles' (Nemo Krad) blog has many posts worth reading if you're starting out on the path of XNA in 3D. Lately Charles has been having some trouble with his FTP host and so I'm happy to say that we will be hosting the RandomChaos downloads. We're still working on getting Charles to blog over here but I suspect it's just a matter of time before he gives in.

  Posted Oct 01 2007, 02:10 PM by leaf with no comments

  Filed under: site, examples