XNAtutorial.com

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!