\Managed DirectX and XNA Framework news
Article merged into Myrke entry
So you think you are a good Managed DirectX programmer eh ? Well if you have some SQL skills (or a friend who does) then you could be ready to enter the Connected Systems Developer Competition. There are 15 categories to enter and number 10 is:
- Best use of Managed DirectX, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server Express
I know it seems strange to put DirectX and SQL server together, but the competition *is* all about connected systems. Closing date is September 15th 2005 so you have plenty of time. Lots of other prizes too - check out the official rules
developer,
publisher
Matrix Games has announced their latest Tin Soldiers game. Like its prequel, Julius Caesar was written using Managed DirectX. The graphics engine has been upgraded for this game. For screen shots and more information see the product page.
***Reminder***: Chat is imminent - 26th April 2005 1pm PST
From VB.Net Chat Announcements
DirectX 9.0 Direct3D Graphics with Visual Basic .NET
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 from 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific Time
Hosts: Tom Miller and Adam Gallant.
Do you have questions about how to best use Visual Basic .NET to program DirectX 9.0 graphics? Are you unsure when to use a particular Direct3D feature? Join members of the Visual Basic and Windows Graphics & Gaming Technologies teams and discuss how to leverage the power of DirectX 9.0 from Visual Basic .NET.
Ask the ZMan is now live on MSDN's Coding4Fun portal.
I've already had a few suggestions/questions for future articles but if you have any other burning questions feel free to email me.
Some guidelines:
- Nothing too open ended e.g. How do I write a game engine. Whilst its interesting it has to be something that can be described in one or 2 articles. So try something more specific.
- Nothing you need answering tomorrow. The lead time for me to write some demo code and the article and get it published in MSDN is weeks rather than hours. If its an emergency try the newsgroups or forums
- I probably won't be covering advanced stuff initially. The other game development series are covering the basic stuff so I don't want to drop people who are learning in at the deep end. Still send the suggestions - I will get there eventually.
- Send me your feedback - writing isn't my thing so this is something new for me and I'm happy to take constructive criticism on the writing or the coding.
- Like The ZBuffer the articles are all managed directX, and as per the Coding4Fun team's request the code will be VS2005 (express products), so no OpenGL, or unmanaged directX questions.
And to my friends and family - sorry I've been talking about this so much, its very exciting for me to get published on MSDN, and thanks for your support.
Jason Zelsnack has a managed wrapper available on his site as part of a demo.
(found on Inner Realm, thanks Mykre & Bonk)
It's also rumored that Brandon might be working on a managed wrapper, though that was a long time ago.
The Tokamak physics engine is available free for commercial and non commercial use.
RobyDX has created a managed wrapper for it which is available on his website on this page (translated to english by google). It's not complete yet but he is looking for people to try it out and give him feedback. Contact details on his website.
So you've not quite decided to go out and buy a book on Managed DirectX yet. Well maybe if you could preview them free online for 2 weeks it might help you make up your mind.
So I present to you Safari from O'Reilly. It includes books from 23 of the top technical publishing companies including O'Reilly, Sams and Microsoft Press.
In the Managed DirectX space you can read:
- Managed DirectX® 9 Kick Start: Graphics and Game Programming: Tom Miller
- Beginning 3D Game Programming: Tom Miller
Yes the link has an affiliate code in it, yes I make a few $$ if you actually pay, but here's the deal - I'm a fully paid up member and I'm only recommending it because its really useful to me and at $9.99 per month on the cheapest plan its less than I spend on books each month. Half the book purchases I make only have a handful of useful chapters anyway. So try it free for 2 weeks and if you decide to continue, The Zman thanks you.
Update:
Well after a bit more work looking through the logs and some help from Dare, the author of RSS Bandit I think we have it figured out. It seems that if you leave RSS Bandit open with the view of my blog, every time the RSS feed gets fetched RSS bandit rerenders the page containing all of the entries. If you've never deleted any of my entries (which I should be happy about) then the page rerenders every article and pings my page to let me know. Unfortunatly for me this person has all 200+ articles and has the feed refresh at 30 minute intervals. So my web stats show a hit for the RSS page followed immediatly by 200 pings for each article. This caused 2400+ hits to my site today. The next closest IP address managed 115 (which is still quite high). Looks like I'm going to have to reconsider how I measure my stats.
So here's some useful information for you. The web site is a hobby, and because I value my job I don't edit it at work. So set your RSS readers to pick up once a day around midnight (PST) and you will get all the updates and my stats won't suffer.
Previous Entry:
Looking through my site stats I see a huge number of hits from a blog reader at 84.92.148.236 which resolves to aemitchell.plus.com. If this is you can you drop me an email and let me know what reader you are using so we can work out the issue. Thanks.
Not so many completed games recently, and though this one is simple it is complete which is more than most of us can say.
So from the shores of Denmark I present DXPong. The blog it came from is in Danish, a language which google does not help me translate, so the content is beyond me. However there are screen shots here and the download is here.
David Weller is looking for feedback on his future book writing efforts. It would seem he is either updating his .Net game programming book to a second edition or writing a new book on avalon gaming. So if you have an opinion please let him know - you can contact him through his blog.
Yesterday MSDN launched Coding4Fun, a new portal just for the hobbyist developer. They know there are a lot of hobbyist game developers out there so amongst all of the other great articles there is a special place for game developers, and no surprise there will be plenty of Managed DirectX content including:
- A Beginning Game Development column by Derek Pierson from 3Leaf Development
- An upcoming video series by Digipen
- and coming soon a Q&A column called "Ask The Zman" by.... well I'm sure you can guess who.
On the last note I have a few columns lined up but if there are areas of managed DirectX that you would like to ask a question about you can contact me at the usual address or at the email address for the column which is askzman@microsoft.com.
Here are places you can view/download some of the presentations from GDC2005:
- GDC website
- Microsoft
- ATI Presentations, Videos of presentations
- NVidia includes some video and audio.
Its not Managed DirectX, but its my web site so I get to break the rules occasionally. The GDC is going to be showing some of the 2005 sessions streamed from their web site starting April 19th. You can watch the sessions here.
GPX is a blogger who is going to document his efforts making a first person shooter in Managed DirectX. Very early days, he's not even got his progress site up, but you might want to subscribe to see it from the beginning.
WindowsForms.Net is a Microsoft run .Net site for all things Windows Forms based. They have a Game Development Forum with some Managed DirectX Q&A
Thanks for the link Minh
With help (actually he did most of the conversion) from twawsico from the newsgroup I present to you the sample framework, and 3 of the c# samples converted to VB.Net
A few site updates in anticipation of some upcoming entries. I've grouped some of the articles and 'editorial' pieces that don't currently have a category into an articles category, and added a downloads category.
The astute amongst you will notice the google ads too, I figure I spend a fair amount of time keeping the site going so a little extra revenue will help with the small costs.
