"If you need me, I'll be in the Glossary"

I'm presently writing the last, last, bits of the XNA book at the moment.

Pre-order it here in the UK and here in the US. You know you want to. You know I want you to. So go on. The best book on programming ever written. And the only one with cheese based gameplay.

The plan is to have a glossary at the end which describes all the programming terms. Good idea, except that I have to write it. Each time I used a term that I wanted to expand on I put a note in the glossary file that I needed to go back and fill that bit in. And the time has come to do the filling in. That means over 40 pages of writing.

I'm around half way through ("N is for Namespace") at the moment. It is due for the end of tomorrow.....

XNA Fun and Games in Dublin

We were up bright and early for a "Breakfast Round Table" discussion with academics from all over Ireland about the teaching of XNA and Computer Science.

Some of the delegates had got up at scarily early hours to travel here and take part. Once I got over the disappointment that the table wasn't actually round a great discussion was had. It was interesting to hear how the computing scene in Ireland is not that different from the UK.  Quite a few places are getting their students to write games as part of their teaching, others are starting game development courses. At Hull we have been doing this for a while, and so I delivered a bit of insight into how we make things work. And gave the book a good plug.

Then the student presentations started. Due to popular demand we were running two tracks and so everyone gave their sessions twice.  I took some pictures of the audience looking happy at the start of my sessions (I always take the pictures at the start, in case it all goes horribly wrong).

The audience for session 1

The first session went really well with a great audience. Then I staggered out of the lecture room and into the second session.

The audience for session 2, how they appeared at the start....

However once I got the laptop working on the projector things settled down a bit and I was able to focus on the job in hand....

Another superb audience.

I had another great session with these folks, and then it was off to the airport for a flight back to Hull.

The XNA European tour goes on tomorrow to Vienna. You can find out how they are doing on Charles Cox's blog here.

Sunday in Dublin

The hotel had some really posh flowers

Sunday finds me in Dublin, for the XNA European tour. This evening I met up with the tour team, who face the enticing prospect of seven European cities in as many days. Charles and Dave from the XNA group were amazingly chipper, despite having arrived only today and being deep in jetlag country. We had a splendid meal out and talked technical and non-technical (including my delivery of the "Orange for a head" joke - which probably represented the low point of the proceedings).

I'm just around for the Dublin event, I'm giving a couple of sessions tomorrow. Should be fun.

XNA 2.0 Available

Great news for XNA developers. Version 2.0(beta) is now out. Even as I write this it is installing on my machine. The list of improvements is long, and includes lovely things like XBOX Live network support, which is really interesting.

Find out more here : http://creators.xna.com/beta/betahome.aspx

Killing Chapter 12

It always helps to read what you've written. Last night I finished the final chapter of the XNA book. And then I read through it. And then I threw it away.

It was very worthy, concise and carefully written. It gave as good an explanation of component based development as you can get into 35 pages. But by gum it was boring.

So I've ditched it. Risking the wrath of my editor I've embarked on a rewrite to make it more interesting. Rather than class diagrams we are going to have "Hide the Controller", "Pell Mell Pelmanism", "Simon Says Party" and "Bread vs. Carrot".

Art was never my strong point.

I'll explain the code that makes the programs work, whilst giving people some very silly games to play.

Much more fun.

Bread and Cheese

I'm presently finishing off "The XNA Book". I'm just doing game state management and I needed to come up with a title screen for one of the sample games.

I hope you don't think that it is too cheesy..

Resolving the Eternal Struggle

Some questions may never be asked. Others might be asked, but probably shouldn't be. But that doesn't stop us asking anyway. Questions like:

Which is mightier, the Bread or the Carrot?

In an attempt to answer this, XNA, in association with VerySillyGames.com, will soon give you the chance to take to the table cloth of destiny and find your own answer by scoring cheese goals of fate between the tomatoes of goalpostness.

Maybe the carrot isn't so hot after all.....

This is a simple mod to one of the games in the XNA book that I'm working on at the moment. It took me one "Division Bell" by Pink Floyd to complete. I started writing the code at "Cluster One" and I'm just listening to the end of "High Hopes" at the moment. It's a great album by the way.

The full version will be coming to VerySillyGames.com soon, with full on eight player action using four controllers.

The Silliness Starts Here

I've put my first XNA file on VerySillyGames. It is just a silly screen display. The source code will be provided when the book is released. It is a nice example of how you can get really good graphical effects almost by mistake. You can find a runnable version of the program for the PC at www.verysillygames.com. It is optimised for 1280 x 1024 displays on a PC with the XNA framework installed. An Xbox version will be available later.

I've added rotation to the original program, let me know what you think

If you are lucky enough to be a student at Hull you can join the VerySillyGames.com development effort, where we are going to take some of the silly game ideas and try to make them real. This time next year we'll all be millionaires. Oh yes.

XNA Book Already Cheap

Amazon are discounting "the book". I've already ordered my copy. I want to find out how it ends....

Food for gameplay

Went out today and bought some cheese, tomatoes, a green pepper and a stick of bread. They are all going to star in Chapter 9 of the XNA book....

XNA Bits and Bobs, and the power of XACT

I've added a new section to the XNA Book part. This is where I put all the little things that I've found out about XNA development. I've discovered a couple of things about using XACT which you might find useful. They are here.

On the subject of XACT (the program that you use to create audio content for XNA games) I've gone from mild loathing to strong affection. Sort of a love affair, but with wavebanks. It lets you do really nice things with your samples, so that you can create complex sound stages with only a few wave files. It will change playback settings each time it plays the same waveform, to make a single sample sound like hundreds of different ones. It will randomly select a sample from a range, so that you get a nice variation in sounds. It will even let you bind variables in your program to settings used for playback, so that the sound can get louder on the left when the spaceship moves to the left.

So far I've only really scratched the surface of the tool (which is all I'll have time to do in the book) but if you want a nice way to add sound to games you should take a look. It is free, supplied as part of the XNA 2.0 developers kit.

Accidental Art

I've been playing with XNA for the new book (book news coming soon, along with another chapter). As part of this I investigated the use of layers and transparency and what happens if you draw lots of coloured things on top of each other. I ended up with this rather attractive arty looking display which I've made into a clock.

Having decided that the output looked nice, I then reckoned that from a software point of view the code could be a lot better organised. So I went in and tidied things up, re-factored classes, improved the scaling and made the movement of the layers more realistic. And of course the "proper" version looked rubbish.

I'll be making the clock available on verysillygames.com later on. And you can actually see the clock in action here. It is a bit jerky, but it gives you an idea of how it works.

Video: XNA Groovy Clock

Scary and Real

I've just found a web site that is truly scary:

http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/11849.aspx

In celebration of this I've added another chapter to the preview directory: /xna-book-downloads/.

Let me know what you think. Someone, please....

Now that's what I call Silly

I've just spent 24 quid. That is probably what some people spend on drinks on a Friday night. I could have got half of Bioshock for the 360 (which number one son says is worth a punt). I could have bought "Elite Beat Agents" for the Nintendo DS (but I don't have to because number one son got me it for my birthday). Instead I've bought:

www.verysillygames.com

- for two years. I know I could have got it cheaper, but I like to have all my domains in one place and I've used my favourite company for years and they have a very easy to use interface.

It occurred to me that I'm going to need a place to put all the silly XNA games that will form part of the book. So I bought the domain. At the moment it points into this site, but that can change. Anyone fancy setting me a site up for 25% of the equity, a profit sharing scheme and fringe benefits (in other words no money at all)?

Oh and Chapter 3 is coming along nicely. I should have it on the site some time next week. Prepare yourselves for the gaming sensation that is "Color Nerve" (note American spelling in vain attempt to increase market penetration).

XNA Book Chapters

I've posted a second chapter of the XNA book (actually I put it there on Tuesday). Remember that you can keep up to date with the book progress by subscribing to the RSS feed for the book journal. You can find my feeds here.

Sample XNA Book Chapters Now Available

I'm writing another book. If you want to learn how to program an XBOX 360 using C# and XNA it might be just what you want. You can find out more, and get your hands on the first chapter, here.

Wish me luck....

XNA and C# For Fun and Profit

Writing books would seem to be quite moreish. As soon as you've finished one you want to do another. So I am doing. This time it is a fun packed programming book which teaches C# and XNA at the same time.

If you know nothing about programming but want to make your XBOX do cool things then this is the book for you. If you have a wobbly table and need something to put under one of the legs, then this is the book for you. If you want something with a lot of words to colour in, then this is the book for you.

I'm presently working on Chapter 4 (I'll put some sample chapters up once I've decided where to put them).

Ten lines of C# will get you this funky clock....

Amsterdam Gets XNA

Had great fun today doing a session about XNA for DevDays. The audience were wonderful, and I took some happy snaps:

on the right...

...in the middle...

...and on the left

Thanks for paying attention people, and I hope you use XNA to get to some interesting places.

Before my talk we had a session from Dave Mitchell of Microsoft. He was able to tell us that the XNA Creators Club memberships are going to be part of Microsoft Academic Alliance. This is the best news. Now we can put a bunch of machines in our labs for people to write for and it won't cost us extra on top of our AA subscription. That news alone was worth going to Amsterdam for. If you are a member of a university faculty you owe it to yourself (and your students) to follow this up and get your hands on one of the best bargains in education at the moment).

Dave at the start of his presentation

Earlier today I went to a presentation by Scott Guthrie about Silverlight. This is a fantastic technology that lets you make very impressive user experience. It lets you put .NET powered behaviour into web pages and also gives you the Windows Presentation Foundation to drive your user interfaces. Excellent.

Scot talking about multiple language support in Sliverlight.

I've had a really good time in Amsterdam. I went out for a meal last night and took even more pictures:

Standard Canal picture

Artistic cake

There are some more on my Flickr site.

DevDays 2007

This morning found me boarding a plane for Amsterdam. I'm giving a session on XNA development tomorrow. Rather cleverly I didn't check in any luggage, so no waiting at conveyor belts for me. Rather less cleverly I'd also put my highly explosive shampoo and deodorant in my carry on bag. I managed to avoid the cavity search, but now I'm going to have to learn the Dutch for "Lynx Effect". Not that I seem to need it......

These two lovelies were wandering round the show accompanied by a bloke with a camera and printer strapped to him who was taking photos and printing them out for free. Very nice. Although the reason I look so pleased is that I'm clutching a copy of the Microsoft Mobile Developers Handbook. I wrote Chapter 13, which is about mobile graphics. I was stood in the bookshop reading my own printed words when the girls turned up. I resisted the temptation to hold up the pages and shout "Look, I wrote this!", since I figured they might not be that impressed.  But I settled for a picture.

DevDays is neat. It is based in Amsterdam at the conference centre there. I'll grab some pictures from inside the conference tomorrow. For today, here are some external shots.

Outside the Conference Centre

Authentic Dutch bike rider

XNA Party Time

Thanks to help from Kieran at Rare, Jon and I managed to snag invites to the XNA party, which was held at a really swish nightclub.

We had to pick up the bus outside the Metreon centre

As soon as we got to  the club, had our ticket taken, hand stamped and passport checked (no - really, it was that exclusive) we grabbed some free food and drink and, old people that we are, headed for the chill out zone. Which was really, er, cool.

The blue ceiling was amazing

Microsoft do parties well. Very well. Sitting watching the world go by with people bringing you free drink and food works for me. After a while though, we thought we'd explore the place.

Blue with XBOXes

We wandered into one room and found a band playing.

Forget the "Wedding Singer" looks. These guys were seriously good. And loud.

And they had even more XBOXes for gameplay whilst you party

Finally, we went upstairs and took a look at the winners of the XNA Express challenge. These people had spent the last few days at the show creating a video game from scratch using only XNA Express Edition. The winner looked very snazzy, with real time lighting and all sorts. If the competition runs next year there will be somebody from Hull in the mix, you mark my words.

XNA Winners

Then, having drunk and eaten our fill, and with the band ringing in our ears it was out into the chill night for a brisk walk back up the hill to the hotel.