The ZBuffer: Archive for January, 2005

Its short notice but David Weller has informed us that he will be speaking at the Seattle .Net user group's meeting this coming Wednesday on the Microsoft campus (that’s just the location, the event is open to the public).

Location:
Microsoft Bldg 43/Adams Room
Time: 7:00pm

Special Bonus !!!!!
The Zman will be there to watch. I know its not as exciting as meeting a world famous author but if you want to get together to talk Managed DirectX, how you hate the colours on the web site, or anything else then drop me a line and I'll try to find a way to meet up after the talk finishes.

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The FlatRedBall (FRB) Development Kit is a solution for rapid 2D and 2D in 3D (2.5D) game development. It is formed of three components:

The FRB Engine provides code for advanced Sprite management, storage, and file operations. The engine also provides support for input devices, sound, sound effects, texture loading/management, and collision, to name a few. It uses Managed DirectX and is written in C#.
The FRB Template provides four skeleton files for developing FRB applications. This eliminates the need for initialization, and speeds up development.
The FRB Helpers are a collection of graphical applications built on the FRB engine. They allow developers to create levels, complex Sprite relationships, frame animations, instruction sets, and emitters without writing a single line of code. All files created by the Helpers integrate smoothly with code: loading often requiring only one line of code.

In May 2007 an XNA framework version of Flat Red Ball was released. The Managed DirectX version still exists but new development should really be moved to the new version.

Patrice Scribe is the guy who created the DirectX type libraries used by VB (and other) programmers from DirectX 3.0 through 6.0. He has a set of articles from 2003 about various aspects of Managed DirectX. The code is in VB.Net and there are short articles on Bounding volumes, scene graphs and others. Given the dates the code may not compile against the current SDK. Looks like Patrice hasn't updated the site in a while either.

I've been informed that Patrice is/was the owner of the yahoo group I mentioned the other day, I've tried getting hold of him through his website and the mailbox is full. So Patrice if you read this drop me an email.

ThePentiumGuy has a VB based game programming site called vbProgramming with several Managed DirectX tutorials. The usual device creation stuff, learn about transformations and some sprite code (including transparency).

Just in case there is anyone who reads my blog but not Jason's I figured I would mention today's post. He brings news of jobs programming with managed directX at Short Stacked Studios in Toronto, Canada.

I was wondering what the situation is with jobs in this area so I did a couple of searches on monster.com

DirectX and C# : 18 jobs, 2 in Canada (see above), 2 in England and 14 in the USA.
Managed and DirectX : 3 jobs, the same 2 in Canada and a false positive at Nvidia

Xtreme .Net talk has a pretty active Managed DirectX forum

Time for another interview. This time with Rob Burke who wrote several managed DirectX programs for Media Lab Europe.

I found a yahoo group for managed directX. Right now it appears to be dead but there is an archive that some may find useful. I've tried posting (its moderated) and emailing the list owner with no success. If anyone has contact with the list owner then let me know.

Johan Lindfors has a blog entry about some MSDN workshops for managed DirectX. Its pretty short notice, they are in Stockholm tomorrow (Tuesday 25th Jan), Malmoe (Thursday 27th Jan) and Gothenburg (Friday 28th Jan). More details on MSDN Sweden (english translation).

Johan is thinking of putting the documents from the workshop online which would be a great thing. Feel free to encourage him in the comments on his blog.

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"Greetings program. I'd like to be positive, but I've seen your code types before. I give you around 5 core tick cycles on the d-Rez game grid before your blasted in to a million red pixels!"
d-Rez borrows from the dazzling look of Tron and implements an addictive 3D first person shoot-em-up. With simple controls d-Rez is very much in the arcade game mould where speed of play and lightening reactions are the only way to survive!

The game is looking pretty good for something still under development. There are screen shots, music samples and a development blog.

Nick Swan had the beginnings of a managed directX website before real life got in the way. He has a couple of tutorials.

DevMaster.net has some forums which have occasional Managed DirectX content

Something a little unusual for any programming language enthusiasts. Don Syme wrote a blog entry about using F# with DirectX. F# is a functional language from Microsoft research similar to ML however F# compiles to MSIL just like every other .Net language and can therefore call all of the same APIs as you can call from C# or VB.Net. The tutorials are linked from his blog and can be found at Jack Palevich's space

VBGamer is a site just for game programming in VB. Its not just VB.Net and Managed DirectX but they do have some tutorials and a forum which have relevant content.

developer, publisher
Read an Interview with the lead developer.

Download the demo at at worthplaying.com or experiencegaming.com

Koios Works' Tin Soldiers - Alexander the Great is a turn-based, simultaneous-play wargame with a classic feel and a reaction system to allow mid-turn adjustments to strategy. Aside from covering the most famous conqueror in all of history. Tin Soldiers - Alexander the Great places you in the role of Alexander the Great during his conquest of the known world. You will fight the grand campaign from inheriting your Alexander father’s mantel at the battle of Thebes to his conquest of Darius III and the Persian Empire and last great battle at the Hydaspes. Tin Soldiers: Alexander the Great also presents the wargamer with a unique miniatures-oriented feel with graphics of hand-painted, individually adorned soldiers.

As I pointed out, the details Rick gave out don't currently point to the right information at the online book stores. He's posted the correct information as well as included the names of his co-authors Jon Steed (who has some interesting texture theory articles on his blog) and Wes Greene (who doesn't seem to have a blog). Added book details to the tutorials section.

Sasha has got the transcript from the chat up on MSDN. Its all anonymous so I don't know who mentioned thezbuffer. Probably for the best since I don't have any t-shirts yet!

c# home article updated with a new tutorial on playing 3d sound from managed code

c# home seems to be a fairly new c# web site. They currently have 4 managed DirectX tutorials:

Intro to DirectX 9. Device setup, matrix math and texture examples.
DirectX 9 Tutorial. Device setup and enumeration, determining caps
DirectX in c#. Covers COM interop to DirectX as well as managed code. Has some performance numbers too.
DXSound part 1. How to play 3d sound from managed code.

Homepage

StarLynx: Earth Invasion
Features:

3-D Arcade Shooter
Single Player Campaign
2 - 4 Player Online Cooperative Play
Upgradeable Energy, Ballistic and Missile Weapon Systems
Waves of Enemy Fighters and Capital Ships
16+ Branching Levels with Multiple Story Lines
Hidden Levels

Currently in development by Joshua Bair. Read about StarLynx at the authors blog (Alternate URL)

Happened to be looking at some older versions of the MDX so I updated the Microsoft article to include a couple of older releases, version numbers and dates. I think this is all of the releases that included Managed DirectX. If you know better then let me know, its all I could find on Microsoft's download site and the date of the first one corresponds to the 'history of Managed DirectX' in the kickstart book.

Rick says the chat went well which is good to hear. Unfortunately I wasn't able to join in so will be eagerly waiting for the transcript. If you happen to have saved a copy please send it to me.

Rick is one of the guys writing a new Managed DirectX book that Tom had threatened to write. He's announced the ISBN on his blog but I'm not sure what good that is right now since it shows up as a totally different book at Barnes and Noble.

It also seems from my referrer log that someone managed to get in a link to The Z Buffer at the chat, so a big thanks to whoever that was. When the site is famous enough for me to have T-shirts I will send you the first one.

REMINDER: The Managed DirectX chat is tomorrow, Thursday 13th at 11am PST

From Sasha's blog comes news of an MSDN Canada chat entitled Developing Games and Tools Using Managed DirectX. Answering your questions will be DirectX authors Tom Miller, David Weller and Alexandre Lobao along with some other Microsofties

So mark your calendars for January 13, 2005 11:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M. Pacific time

The ZMan will unfortunately be working his real job so I will have to read the transcripts after the fact. Maybe they will give the web site a plug!

This is the official Microsoft newsgroup for Managed DirectX - sometimes Tom Miller or other members of the DirectX team show up.
microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.managed (Google Groups)

This is the official DirectX graphics newsgroup - useful for the really technical stuff.
microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.graphics (Google Groups)

There is also a specific newsgroup for programming DirectX from Visual Basic.
microsoft.public.vb.directx (Google Groups)

Added a link to the official Microsoft Visual Basic/DirectX news group (microsoft.public.vb.directx)

See Also: Newsgroups

From Gus Perez comes a link to Benjamin Nitschke's blog where he is currently writing a diary of building a game in c# and Managed DirectX called Lost Squadron. Looks like Benjamin was also involved in Arena Wars.

homepage
Currently under development by Benjamin Nitschke who was also involved with Arena Wars

Today is Tom Miller appreciation day at the Z Buffer, first a plug for his book and now a link to an interview that Jason did with him over at Managed World

Tom's second book is now available. Though the title doesn't explicitly call it out the entire book is Managed DirectX

You can read a sample chapter and see the table of contents at the home page on Sams website.

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)

\Managed DirectX and XNA Framework news