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  Today Microsoft releases XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 The official link and download page aren't there yet but after digging around I found a link[1]. Here's the official link[2] [1] Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 [2] Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 1.0

Today I have met Jason Olson[1]. I have been reading his blog ever since the gaming world was looking for the ultimate gameloop in managed code[2]. Like Jason I love game development and do 'normal' development for my work. This week he is teaching Longhorn Server at a Train The Trainer event in Amsterdam. I'll be redelivering ...

Yesterday I attended a meeting that set me thinking: how could I, as a trainer and consultant, use more of the things that my students, my customers and I love about gaming? In one of the courses I teach, we do a simulation of a software development project and everybody likes it even though at times it may look silly to 'play' on the ...

Microsoft decided to open up the console game industry in a revolutionary way: up until now we've been struggling with all kinds of hacked, cracked and half decent SDK's to produce Indie games[1] for the consoles but now Microsoft announced a Express (free!) version of XNA[2]. Anyone will be able to write a game for the XBox (and Windows XP at ...

I wish… Job Details

Curious as I am, I sometimes trace the way people find this blog. The words they enter in Google or MSN search are tracked so I know what the my audience (you) is interested in. Today someone from Belgium Googled for Weerd game and there my blog turned up as number one BUT the exciting part is number two: Home Computer Games: Weerd! I am a game! ...

When you are building a game you might need some enemies to make the game interesting. However it is not so easy to make a good enemy; too stupid results in an easy game and too smart causes frustration because it is too hard. A good enemy is one that passes the Turing Test (it could be a human being). This article on Monsters explains how to ...

Tom Miller has writen an article on improving (or not making obvious mistakes in) code that uses Managed DirectX. Although it might be aimed at game programmers, in my experience many .NET programmers just don't know the caveats of .NET. Writing games forces you to think about memory usage and performance.

In this introduction is a lot of info on Managed DirectX for Windows Mobile 5.0 I'm still looking for a little time to test this. I might even try to migrate my 3D engine…  

For all of us that enjoy writing a game and other serious applications: The DirectX SDK (june 2005) is out. Hmmm, a bit of a reminder for me that I need to spend more time on hobby programming instead of doing serious stuff in my own time… I'm really struggling to get shadows in my 3D engine and a more flexible design. More on this later…