XNA

If you are reading this...

Nick — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 21:47:00 GMT

Then you are missing out on content on my new blog!

The new blog url is:

http://sharepointnick.com/blog/default.aspx

And the new RSS feed you need to subscribe to is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/sharepointnick

See you on the other side!

SharePointNick.com

Nick — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 20:55:00 GMT

www.sharepointnick.com

This will be the new site very soon!

Make sure you are using the feedburner RSS feed and the move will be painless for you! Here it is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Vb-techWeblog

There's some 600 people that aren't using this so you better all update it now!

XNA 3d models available for free

Nick — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 19:13:00 GMT

I've been playing around with the XNA stuff a little over the weekend. We all need a break from SharePoint from time to time don't we?! :-)

Nearly finished my first game 2d, although the code needs tidying up before I upload if for you all to see. It's more of a novelty game than anything else but I think all the SharePointers out there will like it!

The one thing I was worried about with XNA was my poor graphic design abilities. The good news is that over on Turbo Squid there are tons of 3d models that people have done that they make freely available to download. Here's a nice Ferrari Enzo for example:

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/305203

I downloaded the .fbx file, but is there a way of getting the textures to go with the .fbx? (hopefully a pro xna person might be able to help me out here!)

As well as free stuff there's also lots of amazing models you can purchase! You can even get a model of an entire race circuit around a city if you like:

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/203043

Anyway, if anyone knows about getting the textures for the free models I'd really appreciate it. I hope I don't have to make the textures myself!

Technorati tags: XNA, C#, 3d models

XNA Xbox 360 bits and pieces

Nick — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 18:42:00 GMT

I posted something about XNA a little while ago but never managed to find time to download the beta of XNA Game Studio Express. But Microsoft released version 1.0 just before Xmas and with a few video's up on Channel 9 I've had sometime this past few days to watch them and get everything downloaded and setup.

First thing you've got to do if you're even slightly interested in gaming is watch the Channel 9 Videos here.

http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/XNA

The best one I think is Looking at XNA - part 2, but they should all definitely be watched. How cool is it watching as they put a breakpoint in Visual Studio and it breaks when the game running on the 360 hits it!

So once you've watched all the vids get the stuff downloaded. You can find full instructions here on how to link your 360 and XNA Game Studio Express:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb197292.aspx

I bought a 12 months subscription to the XNA creators club as it's a good saving over the 4 month option. XNA Game Studio comes with the Spacewar game which you can create, edit, and deploy to your 360. No joke but I had this working in about 15 mins and that included running up and down the stairs to my 360 a few times! I can see I'm going to either have to move it up to the office, or buy another 360 and TV for up here! :-)

So I've only spent a little while on this today and I'm trying to keep cool about how great it really is. From watching the Channel 9 videos you'll see that full 3d games are possible, and the comment that games of a higher graphics standard than 1st generation Xbox games are possible with XNA is pretty damm amazing!

So now I'm going to start going through the various sites and tutorials out there. I kept buying Game development books with C++ throughout university but never really got past the basics so I'm going to start this from afresh as well. I think I'll post tutorials on the blog as well as I find writing what I learn always motivates me to learn it properly, and to keep going! :-) So I've invented a new XNA category tag for the blog in case anyone wants to subscribe to just those posts.

One funny thing that's kind of related, I was searching around on Amazon.com for any XNA related books and came across Game Engine Toolset Development. Reading the authors biography it's pretty cool and scary that he used to be a SharePoint guy! Perhaps there's hope for me yet getting a career in the Games Industry! :-)

So the next steps as I mentioned are going through the tutorials. I've also hooked up with a friend I play on Xbox Live with who's interested in working on a game and has a very creative mind :-) so I'm hoping for good ideas to come from him! If anybody else is interested in doing anything let me know. I think the thing that .NET developers are going to struggle with and what we'll find hard is the 3d modeling and art work, so if you are any good at 3d models let me know! Also any links to good XNA resources please leave them in the comments section.