XNA UK User Group

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XNA UK News

November 2007 - Posts

  • XNA 2.0 Beta Released

    I try to avoid making posts that are just copying what other blogs are saying, but you might be interested in this so I'm making an exception. Go get the 2.0 beta

    Posted Nov 20 2007, 09:15 AM by leaf with no comments
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  • Rare Viva Pinata Talk at QANTM London on Thursday

    Just a reminder. Robin Moore from Rare will be doing a presentation on Viva Pinata's development process. The talk will be held at QANTM's new London buildings near Angel tube station. There are more details available in this forum thread. XNA UK User group members are very welcome and if people want we can go for some drinks/snacks afterwards. 

    Posted Nov 12 2007, 12:19 PM by leaf with 1 comment(s)
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  • XNA GUI System

    Aaron posted to our forums with news of his XNA Windowing System. The project is hosted on code plex and you can read more about it on his blog.
    Posted Nov 07 2007, 11:35 AM by leaf with no comments
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  • London Meetup Hazy Memories

    Last Wednesday we had our inaugral User Group meetup. Unsuprisingly, It was great!

    We ended up choosing the Toucan pub in Soho (my company's official 'Central London office'). Unfortunately this was a bit of a last minute decision, workloads thwarting our plans to tell everyone days in advance, but we still managed to convince a bunch of our wonderful users to come out and play.

    Our almost entire lack of planning was reflected in the fact that, err, we hadn't actually told anyone what we looked like (Leaf usually wears a red carnation in his deerstalker, but that evening was an exception, and my flashing XNA mittens were in the wash). Luckily we were helped out by two facts : firstly, the Toucan is just about the smallest pub in the world and thus people looking for other people are quite easy to spot, and secondly - it's Soho! Anyone not ranting about how excited ITV3 is with their revolutionary new reality show is clearly a visitor.

    We were : Gareth (F4T C4T), Dan (YourFurryFiend) [that's half the team who created the Award Winning Herriman! Ed.], John (Joops) and finally Dan's work colleague who promised us he'd sign up to the site the following morning. We haven't seen him yet, but to be honest the thought of doing anything the following morning excuses him.

    So we all found each other pretty quickly, and turned our attention to the important matters of beer and XNA. Fantastically, Microsoft had provided us with both of these things! There was an awful lot to talk about - games, coding, art, games/coding/art industry gossip, where we all worked, everyone's personal projects, whether anyone has ever beaten Herriman and - the big question - how could Pizza Express have possibly run out of pizza dough?

    We had a few drinks, we headed to Nandos, the stories flowed with the Peri Peri sauce and before we knew it the clock said midnight. We parted with promises to do it again soon, and we definitley shall. Perhaps even more of you can be tempted out next time?

    We had a great time - thanks again chaps! And of course - many thanks as usual to Paul Foster at MS for helping us out : )

    (ps if anyone has any photos from the night please drop me a line - my phonecam pics all look a bit like this...) 

  • Now in Neon

    As part of the Game City event, some of the Microsoft folks had a neon XNA sign made. We had the sign placed next to our table at the Freeplay event, so that people could find us.

    We liked the sign so much that we decided to use it as part of the user group logo. You can see on the left, one of the original photos of the sign and here is the new logo, with the image of the sign squeezed and rotated into place. What do you think?

    We also took other photos throughout the night and Robin should be posting some of those and a little write up soon. In the meantime head over to Paul's site where he has a very nicely done video of the event, unfortunately we're not in it.

    Posted Nov 01 2007, 12:41 PM by leaf with 4 comment(s)
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