TUTORIAL: A DATA DRIVEN SAMPLE ("SHOOTER ZERO")

Continuing with the "XNA Community Pimpage" tradition, I recommend reading this post on Gamey Little Hacker's Blog about data-driven game architecture and implementation.

Not only is the second part of the series on the matter but also you will find an interesting demo sample code which will bring some light for those of us who need tips and examples (and I say "of us" because I'm starting to deal with the concept of "Entity" within my engine so this example comes to me in the proper moment).

From GLH's blog: "Questions are welcome, and if there's enough interest I could write a few more posts that break out the details."

All in favor of more posts just raise your hands, or ... well, say, let GLH know that you're interested in more posts on this regard ... I am ...

OH MY ...

I was sad these days because my quite old crappy animation didn't make into Aniboom's finals (... not really ...) but I've been recently awarded with the "XNA Community Pimpage" by Sharky.

Thanks man ... ;)

"LIFTED" BY PIXAR

"Lifted" is the name of the upcoming short animated film from Pixar Animation Studios.

Being a follower of superheroe comic books I still consider that "The Incredibles" is the best animation film from this studios but I must admit that this trailer is really funny.

Enjoy!

TIP: DEPLOYING GAMES TO THE 360 WITHOUT SHARING SOURCE CODE

From Microsoft's forums (by Stephen Styrchak): "If you really want to share an Xbox 360 game without sharing the source, you can do it pretty easily. Just build your game into a DLL instead of an EXE (Game Library project). Then share a project with the source for the program entrypoint (main) that references your compiled assembly.

Basically, the project you have to share is the default Xbox 360 Game project with the Game1.cs file removed. The Game1 class should be defined in a separate DLL, which you can build from an Xbox 360 Game Library project. That way, the code in Program.cs will instantiate and invoke your game, which is implemented in another assembly.

You can develop the game using a multi-project solution and a project-to-project reference. But when it comes time to share it, just create a new Xbox 360 Game project and reference the already-compiled Game Library that holds all your game logic. Share that project (which is just a stub and contains no game logic), your compiled game assembly, and all the compiled assets.

This way, anyone with XNA Game Studio Express can use your shared project to build and deploy your game, without actually having the source for your game.
Although many people will encourage you to share your source as well, there are ways to show off your games and your creativity without giving everything away if you really, really don't want to.

Simpler methods are on the way. Just be patient.

--Stephen"

Some tip! But wait, if you can read between lines you may notice that something is cooking -even though no time frame has been revealed.

Please, tell me that an update pack for XNA is almost there ...

"... Just be patient ..."

Ok.

SOME HELPFUL ADVICE FOR THE 360 DEV.

Peter D. has published some tips that will help you avoid the "memory wall" you may find when developing games for the XBox 360.

From Microsoft's forums: "I mentioned in a previous thread, that developers need to be careful when creating their games as the 360 has only 512mb of ram available. I noticed recently that as more people start to use the XNA launcher, they are running into this memory wall.

So here are my top tips to help avoid the wall ..."

Want to know more, follow this link.

XNATUTORIAL.COM: WEEKLY UPDATE

The guys from XNAtutorial.com have published their Weekly Update summary of XNA announcements, workarounds, code, games, teasers, and reads.

It's amazing how fast the XNA community is growing: new blogs have been published (and old ones now include sections which focus on XNA), plenty of interesting games are being developed, and more and more video trailers are being released (most of the latter can be found on this site).

Enjoy!

ANIBOOM AWARDS WINNERS ANNOUNCED

At last! The list of winners of AniBoom's first competition has been published.

Congrats to the winners! (... 25k ... 5k ... is this for real? If so, some compo, don't you think? ...)

Also, a new competition is comming: "Aniboom Eyedoll Auditions", so if you have some experience in Animation you could give it a try. I would ...

... if only I had time ... :(