XNAtutorial.com

I had to shoot this one between teaching classes. It is half-an-hour long, and I shot it in half-an-hour. My wife called me Spielberg, who is famous for shooting fast. (c: I’m even a bit impressed myself… Hope I don’t stutter and jump to conclusions too much, though.

XNA Tutorial Seven doesn’t progress anything on the game. Instead, I spend some time wrapping up a few loose ends, and answering a few questions I have received. I go over static and instance members, pass by value and pass by reference, and advanced commenting.

What kind of game do you want this to turn out as? Send me some feedback in the comments below, please! You can email me too, email to anything at XNAtutorial.com, and I’ll get it.

UPDATE: People have started to come with suggestions, so I figured I should put them in a poll. If someone comes up with another good idea, I’ll add that alternative.

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I’m doing the weekly roundup a bit early, because I’ve promised the wife quality time. No XNA for me all weekend! (c:

Not many new things. The main piece of news is probably an XNA Wiki, by Seiggy. It is in its infancy, which is why you should head over and help out!

PsyCadelik has updated his Mario Bro’s clone, so now it is not only playable, but legal. He is kind enough to hand out source code in the download as well.

The CodePlex has yet another project. At this speed, they’ll beat SourceForge.net in no time! The XGameInput project gives you control over mouse, keyboard, and gamepad input from one handy interface. Andy Fraser is a good man.

Hello guys! And gals!

The sixth tutorial is ready. This time, we actually use our new Ball class to make more than one ball. At the same time, we learn about arrays, and for and foreach loops.

I also included the source this time, for you lazy bastards out there. Don’t use it! You’ll learn more if you type yourself. I quickly looked over the source, and added a few regions for clarity. I hope I packed up the right solution folder…

Cheers!

LearnXNA.com keeps expanding. This week, they have put up a few really good games, including a Tank Game by Michael Lee, KBreakout by Kyle Schouviller.

Xbox360homebrew.com are chalking another one up! They announced an XNA Homebrew Developer Contest. First prize is a one year Creators Club membership, so you better start pulling ideas out your nose now (if that’s where you keep yours). You will keep copyright on your code, but you will have to publish a blog with the progress, because the whole thing is means as a learning experience for the XNA community.

The CodePlex is starting to have little XNA mushrooms popping up all over. I hope it doesn’t itch. My favorites include the Lunar Lander Evolved project, in 3D, by John Wells, and the XNA Parallax Scroller Engine, by Paul Kinlan, XNA Physics API (XPA), by XNADev.ru, and the Mercury 2D Particle Engine XNA component, by JimJams.

Gary keeps putting out quality information. This week he takes a serious look at speech in RPGs, and how to synthesize it from scratch. That makes sense, as he works in the Natural Language Processing group at Microsoft Research. He has also had time to update his XNAextras with pixel-based collision detection, and posted instructions on their usage. Where does he find the time?

Stefan Virag keeps posting great XNA sound tutorials, and he just finished his third. He has also moved the hosting of the files, so if you’ve had problems downloading, check back on his site again.

The MSDN forums always contain good resources. There, Matt Stum announced his Particle Wars.

XNAresources.com keep providing high quality stuff. This time there is a good looking version of Pong for you, by Raasta, and Bunnies Hunt, by Benji. If I would be naming XNA game of the month, kind of like Gregory Wurm does, Bunnies Hunt would be it. It just made me laugh.

Ziggyware.com also keeps putting quality tutorials out there. This time Michael Morton has spent a week on Rotated Sprite Per Pixel Collision Detection for XNA. Check it out, because it can be hard to implement without guidance.

Garrett Hoofman is also working hard, and has updated Schism again.

IRC

There are three major IRC channels which discuss XNA as well. I’ve deliberately not installed Internet on my main computer, because I waste so much time then, so you won’t see me there, though.

#mdxinfo on AFTERNET is the most busy channel, but is is mostly off topic. If you want to meet the gamedev.net crowd, many of them hang out here.

#manageddx on EFNET has very few users. XNA celebrity Tom Miller shows his face now and then.

#xna on EFNET is the new channel, and many MSDN forum regulars have this channel open, and are ready to chat. XNA celebrities here include Michael “Ziggy” Morton, Mark Coffman, Andy “The ZMan” Dunn, and David “LetsKillDave” Weller, but more are probably lurking in the shadows.

These weekly roundups are getting longer. XNA is obviously catching on. Good times!

Cheers!

It got late when I shot this, so I might be repeating myself out of tiredness, stutter more than usual, and be missing logical steps in the explanation. If it is unbearable, let me know, and I’ll recut/reshoot it. It is the first beta, after all.

It got a bit long too, because refactoring in the Express Edition isn’t exactly smooth compared to the pay version. It is around 56 minutes long.

Oh, and for those of you that haven’t noticed, I always post tutorials in their own category, so you can subscribe to only XNA tutorials, if you don’t care about industry news. You can also find them in the link list to the right. I have to make a page for them…

Download XNA tutorial number five.

Cheers!

UPDATE: READ THIS BEFORE WATCHING!

I have to profusely applogize. I screwed up at the end of the tutorial. I was so tired from trying to keep myself updated witht he military coup here in Thailand, that I completely left out the last part of explaining what properties are.

The method I end up with in the tutorial is not a property! It was only part of explaining how to make a full blown property. Bear this in mind, and you’ll get the full picture with the next tutorial. So sorry. Gotta go and catch some Zs - I’m a bit bad at knowing when it’s time to take a break sometimes… /c:

I’ll correct it in Tutorial 5, beta 2, but for now I’ll just explain it at the beginning of tutorial 6. I figure people are more hungry for Tut 6 than for me to correct Tut 5, right?

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