\Managed DirectX and XNA Framework news
You can now subscribe to the news page with your favorite RSS reader using the XML icon on the left or at http://www.thezbuffer.com/feeds.aspx. The news page will always contain any new or updated entries to The Z Buffer so a subscription means that you will never miss anything new.
The RSS feed is validated however it is generated by code I wrote rather than a commercial blog engine so please let me know if you have any issues.
I have tested the feeds in Bloglines, Feedster and Newsgator for the web
The first managed DirectX game now has a demo available to download. Get it at worthplaying.com or experiencegaming.com
See Also: Tin Soldiers, Games
Those of your waiting for an RSS feed are one step closer tonight. I've updated the website to include permalinks to the articles which I wanted to include in the feed. http://www.thezbuffer.com/articles/{nnnnn}.aspx will take you to each article through the magic of URL rewriting. The titles are now also hotlinked.
Rob Burke made a blog entry about his previous work with Media Lab Europe. He worked on several projects that used a Managed DirectX graphics engine called Symphony. You can also read more about it in a Microsoft Case Study
Triple Buffer has some beginner tutorials for Managed DirectX. All updated to the October 2004 release - that’s nice to see. Unfortunately there's only a handful in managed code the rest are all C++.
This section is for non game applications written using managed DirectX - read about them here.
Mike has a new blog with some managed DirectX content including some math tutorials explaining rotation matrices.
Craig has some screen shots of his map editor in today's blog entry. I remember when all the 3D games looked like this. Kids today don't know they're born :-)
Stephen Gower has 2 samples called Liquid Brain and Bucky Balls. They are from 2003 so the source was designed to run against an earlier version of the framework.
C Sharp corner requires free registration to get the source. If that bothers you you can find one of the samples here
Fixing the Code:
To compile the code against the current version of the framework you need to add 'null' as an additional 1st parameter in the font.DrawText call and change the light.enable() to light.update()
GotDotNet.com is the place for all things managed and has a DirectX area and a forum.
All of the content is now ported into the database and its ready to reveal to a select few followed very quickly by all those who spot it in their referrer logs. If you have suggestions for extra items that I have missed, ideas for sections you would like to see or corrections to current entries I can be contacted at zman@thezbuffer.com.
Craig has a new entry on the current state of his game engine
Alias Website, Learning Edition
Complete $2000, Unlimited $7000, Student discounts available if you qualify.
Learning edition - FREE. The learning edition is limited in what it can render and the file format is not compatible with other programs
so its not much use for creating games.
Discreet Website, GMax
Full version $3495
GMax - FREE. Limited to output in GMax format only which is useful for mods of games that are built to support it but little else except for practice.
Amabilis
$50 for Plus, $70 for Pro
Caligari
$299
Milkshape3D
$25
NegDesign
$49
Wings3D
FREE
Anim8or
FREE
Giles
FREE if you do certain classes at GameInstitute
Tom is the designer and development lead for the Managed DirectX API and has a blog on MSDN. Tom has written 2 books about or using managed DirectX. Managed DirectX 9 Kick Start : Graphics and Game Programming and Beginning 3D Game Programming.
Brandon has a great managed DirectX demo on his blog using lots of shaders and implementing some special effects.
Joakim has some managed DirectX tutorials.
Lynn has written a book on writing 3D game engines using Managed DirectX Introduction to 3D Game Engine Design Using DirectX 9 and C#. He has a website and a forum to support it.
Craig has a wiki containing Managed DirectX tutorials.
Justin's blog isn't just about managed DirectX but he has some posts on it as well as some game design entries.
David has a blog entry about updates to the source code for his latest book to work with the October DirectX release. Whilst its available to everyone if you find it useful you should probably think about buying one of his books.
Gamedev has just about everything you need to read about and then some more for good measure. Articles, reviews, forums, job listings and more besides. They have a mailing list if you don't have time to visit every day.
Flipcode has news, forums and my favorite the Image of the day
Devmaster is new to me - I found it while researching the graphics engines for this site. More news, more forums and great database of 3d graphic engines
ShaderTech is THE place to go for shader information.
Ranger is a very cool implementation of a continuous lever of detail algorithm for rendering large landscapes in real time with massive draw distances. Its not managed code but I've seen level of detail questions on the newsgroups and its very cool.
A bit of URL rewriting and the URLs look much nicer e.g. /categories/engines.aspx rather than /readdatabase.aspx?category=engines. Now everything is in a database I have much more flexibility to display the data in different ways for example RSS feeds. But first I have to finish moving the hard coded pages into the database.
Nvidia - one of the 2 major producers of graphics card chipsets. Nividia
do a lot of R&D into graphics and are regular presenters at GDC and SIGGraph. Their developer website contains a wealth of information about graphics and tools to download.
ATI - the 2nd of the big graphics chipset producers. ATI also have a huge R&D
division that puts out a lot of papers, demos and tools on their developer web site.
Written by Tom Miller from the managed DirectX team.
Updated source code available on The ZBuffer downloads. (note: this contains the modified files only, you need to purchase the book to get the original source)
Riemer has a 9 part tutorial in c# showing how to create a 3d terrain. There is also one tutorial about reading the keyboard using DirectInput
Thobias has an introductory tutorial that runs quickly through the basics of device creation and basic drawing and ends with some basic shader code.
Homepage
| " |
Punch'n'crunch is the first mouse-gesture-driven Fun Boxing Action game in development. Unique character design and animations Punch'n'crunch offers a variety of 8 - 20 characters to choose from - the wackiest ones you've ever seen - at least 20 attack animations, ridiculing animations with impact on the following attack gesture. Hidden gestures and opponents, special gestures and combo system. Facial expressions, speech and texture changes which reflect the state of health. Puppeteer-like control of characters |
" |
Craig has 16 tutorials in a wiki (so if you want to update them you can) which cover all of the basics including 2d and 3d fonts.
GameDev has many forums. The .Net forum has some Managed DirectX questions but they are mixed in with other .Net gaming questions. Pretty useful though and you can always check out the main DirectX forum for the more technical stuff.
Frequently on the forums and discussion groups its obvious that a beginner is confused about 3D fundamentals. Dan has done an excellent job with his "3D for the Rest of Us" series (Part 1, Part 2) where he explains the various coordinate systems and how transformations work. Looks like he intends to write more. While this blog is really about the Avalon 3D API the concepts apply to Managed DirectX just as well.
