Michael Quandt

Comment Issues

Chr0n1x — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 04:45:31 -0900

Hi, I just noticed that for some reason I have not been getting any emails concerning new comments. (All the settings are correct :S)

Anyway, I have gone through and approved any comments that were legit, and deleted any spam comments I found. Commenting is also now unmoderated.

[Review] Halo Wars

Chr0n1x — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 03:08:11 -0900

Platform: Xbox 360
Developer: Ensemble Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Rating (USA): T (Teen)
Rating (AU): PG (Parental Guidance Recommended)
Demo: Available on Xbox.com

(This review is based on a release copy of the game graciously provided by MGS)

Halo Wars is the final game to emerge from the venerable Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires series), and the first title from Ensemble to be exclusive to the Xbox 360 console. The game will be released in PAL territories on the 26th February 2009, and in North America on the 3rd March 2009. The title is available in Standard and Limited editions, with the limited edition contained in a plastic covering that holds a Steelbook case for the game, and an extras package for the bonus items, just like Halo 3.

The limited edition contains a code for a Honour Guard Wraith vehicle that can be redeemed on Xbox Live, and a code to download the upcoming Mythic Map pack for Halo 3. It also contains a rubber patch from the Spirit of Fire (the UNSC ship in the game), 6 leader cards that describe the leader powers, and a graphic novel set in the Halo universe.

Gameplay

If you believed that Halo Wars is simply Halo 3 scaled up, you would be right. The gameplay has the feel of its FPS cousin, and the game manages to maintain that feel in the writing, and even in the menus. However the RTS base of the game still shows, for example when air units sit in place to attack a building. Unit feel and movement was obviously emphasised in the game, Warthogs will fishtail, bounce around when they land, and get knocked about when they ram through a group of enemies.

The unit selection is rather extensive,from units you know and love, like the Warthog and Grunts, to some craft previously unseen in Halo games, like the Vulture super unit, which is great for unleashing devastating barrage attacks on the enemy base. Covenant bring the old favourites like the Elites, Jackals and Hunters to the party, and you gain a feeling of satisfaction when you unleash a couple of Scarab super-units on the enemy, knowing what they were like in Halo 3.

The two sides really differ when it comes to leader powers. The UNSC uses a special attack menu which is called up by pressing Up on the D-Pad. The power you have, depends on the leader chosen at the start of the match. However unlike the UNSC, who does not have any units to represent their leaders in skirmish/multiplayer, the Covenant leader is actually a controllable unit on the battlefield. The covenant deploy their leader abilities through the use of the Special Attack that each unit has. Whilst the UNSC can use their powers in any visible area, the Covenant leader must be within range to use its ability. However the Covenant also gain the ability to teleport other units to the leader’s position, creating a great way to reinforce an attack on the enemy.

The “console simplification” can really be seen in the base building mechanic where all buildings are constructed in fixed locations around a central base, (Firebase for the UNSC, Citadel for the Covenant) and supplies (the resource for the game) are collected over time by a specific type of building. Most maps have at least 4 base locations, with the empty ones being held by an AI party that you simply need to crush to gain control of the position.

The control scheme works very nicely with the Xbox 360 controller, however the lack of control groups and more advanced controls will be an issue for those coming from the PC and wanting to try out Ensemble’s final offering on consoles.

Movement is handled with the Left Thumbstick, and camera rotation and zooming is handled with the Right Thumbstick. The ability to select all units, or just all units on screen, as well as being able to cycle through the unit types selected using the Right Trigger will certainly help those who are willing to learn the controls. Moving around the map can be sped up by using the Left Trigger, and without this, the movement controls simply wouldn’t work.

However this console simplification has really worked for Halo Wars. Whilst the game would most likely fail if it appeared in this state on the PC, the game controls, and mechanics work quite well for console, enough to make Halo Wars one of, if not the best RTS games on consoles to date.

Difficulty in the single player campaign ramps up pretty fast, with the jump from Normal to Heroic being much harder than the jump from Easy to Normal. Certain campaign missions also cause a spike in difficulty. You could be progressing nicely through the campaign, and then get stuck for a long time on one mission due to what look like overwhelming odds. One mission has you defending civilian transports for 20 minutes whilst the Covenant mount a full scale attack on you, your Spartan allies, and the Civilians. Combined with the love that AI Spartans have for hijacking vehicles, this can quickly become a painful mission where surviving through to the end is difficult; especially when the enemy has their full tech tree, and you are limited to just over 1/2 your units. This can ruin the fun of the game, especially when a reasonably early mission causes a great amount of frustration.

Skirmish has the player fighting alongside AI teammates, or alone, against one or multiple AI foes. The skirmish AI can be challenging, however they are not very “smart”. It is quite possible to take over a base right next to their own, and they will continue to try to send forces to your main base. Recreations of famous maps like Blood Gulch will surely bring fond memories for fans of the previous Halo games, and being able to fight those same battles on a much larger scale is certainly enjoyable. Halo Wars ships with a good number of maps that range from 1v1 to 3v3, and span all of the locale types in the game. More than enough to keep you playing for a while.

Graphics & Audio

Being a console RTS, Halo Wars certainly does not have the detail of Empire Total War, however the game does have a reasonably high quality for its class. Animations are the key point here, with the quality level being close to, if not the same as Halo 3 (I wouldn’t be surprised if the animations were given to Ensemble by Bungie).

Textures are at a pretty good resolution, and the particle effects really add to the scene, and the feeling that this is a Halo game however the game does occasionally slow down at 1080p, although this is very rare and usually only during heavy action.

Halo Wars simply has to be played in High Definition to look good, and due to the detail required and information on screen, players need the extra space afforded by a minimum resolution of 720p to really experience the game.

The pre-rendered cut scenes which break each mission were created by the CG studio Blur and as usual are top notch. The colours in many missions are bright and lush, which looks great as a backdrop to the destruction that is about to occur. However in keeping with the Halo universe, many locales are dull, and Ensemble has put a lot of effort into ensuring that the game looks great in any environment.

The audio in the game is very similar to Halo 3, with many sounds most likely brought over from the FPS title. You cannot fault Halo Wars on the audio, the engine appears to be able to handle the many diverse sounds on screen at once, and the score by Stephen Rippy manages to keep the Halo musical theme alive throughout the game.

Overall

At the end of the day, Halo Wars does not manage to do what Halo did for FPS on the console. If Halo Wars was a PC game, it would be lacking immensely, however for the needs of consoles, the game is executed extremely well. The controls are well designed for the Xbox 360 controller, and this is crucial for the gameplay of an RTS on a console. Difficulty spikes are an issue, and it is never fun repeating the same mission over and over again, especially one running on a timer.

Whilst I am certain that most Ensemble fans would have preferred a PC RTS for their final game, it is nice to see one of the best do justice to a Halo RTS. This is a solid effort by Ensemble to bring RTS to the consoles, and it is certainly above par when compared to other games in the same class. A very fun game to play, and an awesome way to experience the Halo universe. The addition of a timeline will certainly be loved by the Halo universe fans, and provides an easy way for new players to learn about the back story behind the war, as well as the major events leading up until the events on earth in Halo 3.

I did not get a chance to experience the multiplayer, however the skirmish games were good fun, and I can only hope that playing over Live enhances the experience.

If you are a console gamer wanting to experience the wonderful world of RTS games, this is a perfect introduction to the genre in a familiar setting. We can expect DLC and updates for the game to appear down the line from the newly formed Robot Entertainment, which is staffed by ex-Ensemble employees.

If you intend to pick this up, you cannot go wrong by picking up the limited edition, especially if you are a Halo 3 fan. Early access to the Mythic map pack, and a good Halo Graphic Novel is worth the extra price for a fan, however if you do not play Halo 3 on Live, then you should probably just choose the standard edition.

Pros:

Excellent graphics
Fitting control scheme
RTS replay value

Cons:

Mission difficulty increase is annoying
Occasional slowdown/stuttering
Lack of ‘standard’ RTS features (Control groups)

Rating:

8.9/10

Best of luck to the employees of Ensemble in your future endeavours, and great work on your final game as Ensemble studios.

Toast?

Chr0n1x — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:37:52 -0900

Dark Omen Games Website Re-Opens

Chr0n1x — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:21:00 -0900

Just wanted to announce that Dark Omen Games, a collaborative little game studio that now has about 5 members including myself, has a new website/blog.

Here we will post any games we are developing under the DOG banner, as well as anything else appropriate. You can find the site at http://www.mquandt.com/dog, and hopefully soon that will become a proper domain. (Once we get our old one back)

Scalars & Vectors

Chr0n1x — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:45:04 -0900

Please note that I will first explain what each concept is, and then I will write up how to calculate/get each concept afterwards.

A scalar is simply another name for a number, however it uses that name to indicate a difference between a Vector and a single number. (Or other mathematical structures)

In the field of game programming, Vectors play a key role in almost every aspect. In its simplest form, a Vector is a collection of 2 or more scalars that indicate a point in space, relative to the Origin [3D=(0,0,0) | 2D=(0,0)]. Each scalar in a Vector is called a component, and indicates the distance along the corresponding axis from the origin. For example, the Vector (9,5) is 9 units along the X axis, and 5 units along the Y axis. Vectors can be used to indicate positions, directions, and many other things. It all depends on the context, and what the Vector is relative to. (World/Local space)

Vectors in pure maths generally refer to a direction rather than a point, however in computer graphics we use Vector structures to represent a point. We can view a point as the end of a direction from the origin, however when written, points usually are written with parenthesis (0,0) and Vectors are usually written either using angle brackets <0,0> or in component form, where each part (component) of the Vector exists as the coefficient of a unit vector pointing along the corresponding axis. [More on Unit Vectors later]

For example, the Vector <9,5> can also be written as 9x + 5y.

The accepted way of indicating something is a Vector in digital form (as opposed to written on paper) is to bold the vector, for example i.

So now that you are most likely confused, let us move on to Unit Vectors. A Unit Vector is a vector with a distance of 1. This is the way you represent an axis in Vector form. For example, the unit vector for the X axis in 3D space is <1,0,0>. You can see that in our component form, the scalar co-efficient of x is 9, which is the distance along the X axis.

Key to getting the Unit Vector, is a concept called Magnitude. This is represented by two bars on each side of the vector. The magnitude of the vector is a scalar representation of the distance from the origin, so if you need to find the distance of a Vector from the origin, you are simply calculating the Magnitude.

The magnitude is found by applying the distance equation between the Vector and the Origin. The distance between two vectors is found by taking the square root of the squares of the difference between the corresponding components. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it?

To find this in code, we use the following:

public double Distance(Vector3 i, Vector3 j)
{
    double x, y, z;
    
    x = Math.Pow((i.X - j.X), 2);
    y = Math.Pow((i.Y - j.Y), 2);
    z = Math.Pow((i.Z - j.Z), 2);
    
    return result = Math.Sqrt(x + y + z);
}

In Mathematical notation, this is just:

So for magnitude, where we are getting the distance between the Vector and the origin, we are subtracting 0 from each component, which simplifies the equation down to:

So now how do we use the result of this to find the unit vector? Well the equation for a unit vector is . This pretty much means that we divide each component of our vector by the magnitude of the vector. This is what we do to “normalise” a vector, and this allows us to multiply the vector by a number and not change its direction.

Remember that Vectors are a way of representing many things, although the common definition is that they represent a direction combined with a magnitude, which we can use to get a point, as if we moved the point from the origin along the direction using the magnitude. It is all about context, and that determines how you use the vector and its components. For example, a normal is a vector which indicates the direction perpendicular to the object’s tangent. (A tangent is a vector parallel to the line/object)

Another calculation common in computer graphics that uses Vectors is the Dot Product. This is a multiplication of two vectors which gives a scalar value that can indicate many things, usually though it can be used to get the angle between two vectors. The dot product is rather simple, you multiply each component of a vector with the corresponding component in the 2nd vector, and then add the result of each of these multiplications together to get a scalar value.

We can use this and:

to find the angle between the two vectors. After rearranging we use

(Note that the cos is simply ArcCos)

I hope this has explained what a Vector is and some key aspects about it, if you have any further questions leave a comment. Comments and criticism welcome. I plan to write another post on Matrices, with a focus on their application in computer graphics.

If I have missed anything, just tell me in a comment and I will add it in a later post, this was written after a nice lunch on Christmas day, and I am a bit tired now.

Windows Update: 8024420C

Chr0n1x — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 04:21:03 -0900

Just got a new computer the other day (info coming soon) and only had a disk for Vista x64 RTM on hand. I loaded that on and attempted to use Windows Update to move to SP1 when I was presented with the error: 8024420C. Now I have had this error before on a previous system, however I forgot how I solved it, although I thought it was solved by downloading the offline install of SP1 and running that.

So I did that, and upon booting into SP1, found the error was still there. Much searching later I found that the error has to do with proxy settings, with suggestions like ensuring “Automatically Detect Configuration” is on in the LAN settings on Internet Options, amongst other things.

The issue here: I am not on a proxy. So after much effort searching (to no avail) I did what I usually do – suspect the firewall.

Turning off Windows Firewall gave me an immediate response, my updates now worked! Turning the firewall back on gave me the error again, and so I realised that Windows Firewall was the sole culprit here.

Morale of the story? I guess there is none, thankfully I have a NAT to protect me, and hopefully Windows 7 doesn’t have this issue.

On that note, word is that Windows 7 will enter full public beta early Jan, open to all, so if you are daring (or have a VM), give it a try, and give feedback!

NXE + Gamercard Widget

Chr0n1x — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:35:47 -0900

The NXE is finally out! The next time you switch on your Xbox (if you haven’t already), you will be prompted to update.

So now I must say, welcome to the NXE. I successfully got it from the second round of the preview program, and have been enjoying it since. It is a great change that really gives a new breath of life to the Xbox 360.

Whilst I was sitting on twitter and watching my friends login and gain the download tonight, I wrote up a small widget for BlogEngine.Net that displays your GamerCard, provided by MyGamerCard.Net.

If you want it for your own blog, you can download it from here. Instructions are in the archive.

(Or from my Skydrive)

On another note, A Kingdom for Keflings was released for Arcade, which takes advantage of the avatars you create when you download the NXE.

Move Complete – Software Updated

Chr0n1x — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:51:41 -0900

I recently finished my server platform move with my hosting company, and now am working to get my site hosted on IIS7+Server 2008.

I have decided to shift my MVC efforts from a website like this to another area, probably a portal for UTS MSP.

In the meanwhile I have also updated to the latest version of BlogEngine.net and hope that there are no issues. ;) If you notice anything, leave a comment.

Moving Servers

chr0n1x — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:53:09 -0900

I am currently in the process of working with my webhost to move my site over to their new platform. The benefits of this means I can use subdomains properly (I think) and they promise me that I will be on the Windows Server 2008 platform, which means IIS7. :) (That lets me use things like the URL rewrite module)

Due to the inspirational talk by Scott Hanselman at TechEd Sydney 2008 I am also considering using Asp.Net MVC to create a new blogging/content platform to replace BlogEngine.net on this website. Currently BlogEngine.net is serving me well, however I do like to write my own, and I would prefer to bake in a good page system rather than adding to a token implementation on a blogging platform.

More info once I make the move, and once I get started on the project. Might even make a small screencast or write a tutorial on it.

XNA Game Studio 3.0 is here!

Chr0n1x — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:27:07 -0900

Just in time for developers to polish their games for Community Games, XNA Game Studio 3.0 has been released. There are numerous changes, however the most important ones are:

XNA Game Studio 3.0 now supports Visual Studio 2008 (all editions), however it does not support VS2005 anymore, so ensure you upgrade!
Friend Invites over Live – Add the ability to let players invite their friends on the Xbox/G4W Live network.
Automatic Asset compression – this one is obvious
New Media system – now you can add MP3 files to your content folder and play them using the new Media namespace.
Zune support
One Click installation for Windows games

Remember, if you live in the USA and some parts of Europe, Xbox Live Community Games will be released with the New Xbox Experience on the 19th of November.

Download XNA Game Studio 3.0 today!

Update: From the updated FAQ:

“Creators Club Premium members in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland and Spain will be able to sell their games. We'll be adding support for other regions later in 2009 and beyond but these are the only countries where XNA is enabled to pay their residents.”

Halo 3 Expansion?

chr0n1x — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:50:21 -0900

After a 12 hour long countdown on the Bungie website today, Bungie has released a teaser trailer for their next project, which is set in the Halo Universe.

The teaser trailer, entitled ‘Keep it Clean’ is very vague on details, however the keen eye will notice that it is in New Mombasa, the city destroyed in the beginning of Halo 2, and the fact that this game is still a part of Halo 3.

The trailer opens to cameras showing an evacuated New Mombasa. Then it cuts to some drop pods falling in the outer atmosphere. The streets are deserted, as shown by the camera ‘Lubamba’ and there is a space elevator in the distance, as shown by camera ‘Mbaraki’. The camera cuts to thousands of drop pods falling in the distance, and focuses on a small group, before a large explosion (presumably the warp in Halo 2) occurs, destroying the city.

The AI and cameras reboot to show a destroyed city, however when the camera Mbaraki reappears, you see a single drop pod falling towards the city. It cuts to Halo 3, before showing the pod from a different angle, as it smashes past the camera. Then it cuts to black and reads: “Prepare to drop”, before jerking around a bit more and reading Bungie, then showing the standard Xbox 360 clip.

Here are some more screenshots from the video. Note the entire trailer is pre-rendered, click on the thumbnails to get a hi-res version of the screenshot.

You can view the trailer for yourself, just head on over to Bungie.net and download it in either Quicktime or WMV, Small Medium or Large.

Dreamspark out in AU

Chr0n1x — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:33:05 -0900

So TechED Sydney is over and I now have the time to post about the big announcement for students that came out of the event. On Tuesday Microsoft held TechEd Student Day, a free day for students to come along and sit in on a series of presentations geared towards students, TechEd style.

Aside from that, every University student who attended the University half of the day received 4 DVDs full of free software, ready for use. Now if you could not attend this event, do not fret, this is all available for you as well (if you are a student), however you need to download it for yourself.

Head to https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/ and Sign In with your Windows Live ID, and then verify your student status and you can get your keys and downloads for all the software listed. This includes:

Visual Studio 2008 Pro
Visual Studio 2005 Pro
Windows Server 2003 Standard
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
Microsoft Expression Studio
12 Month XNA Creators Club Trial
XNA Game Studio 2.0
Virtual PC 2007 (Great for use with Windows Server 2003)

Grab the downloads, grab the keys, and start making cool things with this free software. Anything you make can be distributed with a non-commercial license, so get to it!

Spore

Chr0n1x — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:23:00 -0900

The game enjoyed an ‘early’ release in Australia, I picked it up last week and had loads of fun! For those who do not know, Spore is the latest game from the genius game designer that is Will Wright. Here he has taken his Sim style of games, where you create more than you destroy, and expanded it more than ever.

Now you can create life from the cellular stage, modifying your creature through some really intuitive and powerful tools before you get to the tribal stage where the game turns into a little version of Populous. (Also created by a game design genius, in this case, Peter Molyneux)

The game is lot of fun and I would recommend it to everyone, however I do have some issues with the DRM the game uses to fight piracy. Electronic Arts decided to use Securom to ‘protect’ the game after a large amount of backlash came from their idea to have people activate every 10 days. Now the game activates upon installation, however there are a limited number of activations possible before you have to contact customer support to reset your counter. In my opinion this does more to hurt the legitimate consumer than it does the pirates, as the scheme has already been cracked.

Those issues aside, the game runs great and is lots of fun. On the technical side the game makes heavy use of procedural generation, for textures, models, music and animations. The use of procedural generation allows people to share their creations using a small file that weighs in at less than 100kb. (In most cases 20-30kb)

Maxis have also developed an innovative way of sharing the content. Inside your ‘My Documents\My Spore Creations’ folder, you will fine png files that are 128x128 and contain an image of the creation. This is actually all the data the game needs to generate the creature/ship/vehicle etc. To share this, you simply give the png to others and they put it in their folder, and it is ready for use. The bonus of this is that because it also contains the thumbnail, you can easily create a small gallery for people to browse.

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Released

Chr0n1x — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:29:38 -0900

Microsoft has just released the long-awaited SP1 update to Visual Studio 2008 and .Net 3.5 after being in beta for a number of months.

Download it here

SP1 brings loads of enhancements and features to both Visual Studio and .Net 3.5, including a major performance (20%-45%) boost for WPF, the ADO Entity Framework, and full support for the newly released SQL Server 2008.

Wordle

Chr0n1x — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 05:36:31 -0900

Pretty cool. Wordle generates word clouds from text provided, or RSS feeds. This one for example came from my blog homepage.

It is free, just visit http://wordle.net/ to make one of your own. They use a Java applet to generate the image, and you can customise many aspects of it.

Mojave Experiment

Chr0n1x — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:04:16 -0900

Microsoft has made a pretty good marketing ploy to help improve the image of Windows Vista.

Called “The Mojave Experiment”, they took a number of Vista ‘skeptics’ and showed them Windows “Mojave”, the next version of Windows. Overall these people, who had given Vista 4/10 or lower when asked in the beginning, rated “Mojave” really well.

Then Microsoft dropped the bombshell, Windows “Mojave” is really Windows Vista.

The positive reactions of the participants about Windows “Mojave” really shows that you need to experience things for yourself rather than relying only on what you hear, as most of them did. As one participant noted: “You have to see for yourself.”

You can see the video of the reactions and participants at the "Mojave" Experiment website.

Speed up Vista boot time with Multi-Core

Chr0n1x — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:53:00 -0900

Update: Comments confirm that this in fact does nothing, and Vista should use all cores by default.

Whilst searching through my RSS feeds today I found a little gem that could give you a nice boot time improvement.

It seems that even on dual/quad/n core machines, Vista boots using only one core. Peter Provost has a solution he found that will allow you to take advantage of all of your cores.

In summary the steps involve going to msconfig and changing the number of cores.

To do that:

Start –> Run
Type msconfig, click Ok
Click on the “Boot” tab
Click Advanced Options
Enable the checkbox titled “Number of Processors:”
Change the number to your number of cores using the drop down box
Click Ok
Click Ok/Apply
Restart

That is basically it, just follow those steps and you can enable Multi-Core startup.

This option also exists in Windows XP. It is under the tab named BOOT.INI, also under Advanced Options in there, however it is called /NUMPROC. A bit more advanced since there seems to be ini editing here, but either method isnt for a basic user

Spore Creature Creator Demo

Chr0n1x — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:26:00 -0900

Not much has been heard on the Spore front recently, in comparison to two years ago. However today saw the release of the Spore Creature Creator Demo. Spore is the latest game from design genius Will Wright of SimCity and Sims fame. Taking the “Creation” gameplay idea to a whole new level by letting you create your own species and leading them from the cellular stage through evolution until they advance themselves to space travel.

The key element of the game that is being promoted by Will Wright and team, is the procedural content generation technology inside the game. To be able to create any kind of species you like, with practically any look, they let you do the art creation yourself through an easy tool, and generate the rest, like animations on the fly.

This tool, a simple modelling tool for your species, vehicles and buildings is what has been released early for fans to play around in. A demo of the Spore Creature Creator, featuring a subset of the “parts” available in the full game is now available to download from most game file sites on the Internet.

The editor is extremely simple to use, and does not need a tutorial or manual to start using. Some of the more advanced features are prompted by an unobtrusive text popup at the top of the screen, making it easy to jump into.

I did however find that creature textures were generated every time you switched from “Test Drive” mode to the editor and back. Which introduces a noticeable period of “lo-res” texturing on your creature. I feel that caching would have been a simple and effective option here, since if no changes are made during an editing phase, there is no need to regenerate the texture.

Aside from that, the editor was pretty easy and fun to use, and this is a good taste of a key element of the full game coming in September.

Go ahead and download the demo today, it weighs in at 205mb and runs pretty well on a decent system.

GameArena Download Link

or from the Official Spore Website (Mac version available there as well)

Havok Physics and Animation Now Free!

Chr0n1x — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:49:46 -0900

For those doing native application development that need a Physics or Animation product, Havok, partnered with Intel have released the world famous Havok Physics & Animation package for free.

This gives you the complete binary for use in your personal, educational or even commercial game as long as it is below US$10.

Currently there does not seem to be anything for XNA (despite an apparent job ad a while back), but I am sure this will be wrapped soon enough, and then the power of Havok will be available for use on the PC platform in XNA as well.

You can get Havok from http://tryhavok.intel.com. Just fill out the form and download the Programmer binaries and Artist tools.

Big MSP Event #1

Chr0n1x — Sun, 25 May 2008 02:41:45 -0900

I have been a Microsoft Student Partner since the beginning of this year, and in conjunction with the other MSP at UTS,(Chris Webster) have been planning a large event for this semester.

Recently we decided that the best thing to do was to give a talk on the ways you can get free (or cheap) software from Microsoft as a student.

The time has finally arrived.

How to get Free (and cheap) stuff from Microsoft

Slides and content will be available after the presentation, although probably only late night or next day due to a late lecture. :P

If you intend to come to the event, head to the website there and register your interest so we can get an idea of numbers.

Remember, not only do you take away the methods of gaining free software, but you also take away a bag of goodies and have the chance of winning a lucky door prize!

Australian Game Exports on the Rise

Chr0n1x — Mon, 19 May 2008 06:11:25 -0900

In my preparation for CeBIT starting tomorrow I found an article on the website about the recent export numbers for Australian Game Developers.

http://www.ausinnovate.com/2008/05/05/export-boom-for-game-makers/

The article mentions that 06-07 data shows $139.7 million in generated revenue, with most of the market coming from Queensland or Victoria. Programmers accounting for 29% of those employed, compared to 34% for artists. A logical number. :)

If you missed out on the free registration, check for information next year around February, that is the time the free Registration occurs.

Digital Tutors: Maya + XNA

chr0n1x — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:21:49 -0900

The professional video tutorial scene has started to adopt XNA from the looks of it, with Digital Tutors releasing a DVD training package named Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA.

Popular highlights:

XNA Development Overview
Interfacing with Keyboard and Gamepad
Building Controller Systems
Controller Vibration
Exporting and Loading Static Meshes from Maya
Exporting Animated Characters from Maya
Moving and Turning a Character
Object-oriented Programming with Bullets and Targets
Baking Textures in Maya
Deriving Bounding Boxes from Maya
Collision Detection with Bounding boxes
Collision Detection with Rays
Building a Custom Animation Player
Switching and Blending Between Animations
Chase Cameras
Camera Shakes
Drawing Text

CGSociety has this to say about the product:

'Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA' contains nearly five hours of project-based training for technical artists learning the methods of creating game content using XNA and Maya. 'Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA' offers artists an essential workflow and innovative techniques for easily integrating Maya and XNA for game creation.

Since this costs money, I cannot get this at the moment and so I cannot give my own review. However it looks like a good product, and considering Digital Tutor's track record, it should be a good investment for the artistic programmers out there.

Edit [17/5/2008]: I noticed that Digital Tutors also has an interesting looking Training Package titled Real-Time Shaders with XNA.

XNA 3.0 CTP Available

Chr0n1x — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:34:38 -0900

As of now the XNA 3.0 Community Technology Preview is available for download.

XNA 3.0 CTP

This requires a version of Visual Studio 2008 and will co-exist with Visual Studio 2005 and XNA GS 2.0.

Note there is no Xbox360 support in the CTP release, however there will be with the final release, currently only PC and Zune.

Now I am off to see what else they added. :) Enjoy.

New UTS MSP Website

Chr0n1x — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:54:56 -0900

If you are a student attending UTS, then visit the new UTS MSP website and watch it for details on promotions and events that we are running. Some great stuff will happen and you do not want to miss it! :D

http://www.utsmsp.com

Demos Happen Here

Chr0n1x — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:29:46 -0900

To help celebrate the launch of Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft is holding a competition that is open to all.

To win some really awesome prizes, you just need to create and submit a 10 minute or less video demo of one of the new technologies being launched. So that could be C#3.0 or LINQ, or anything else related to the products launched at the Heroes Happen Here 2008 launch event.

The comp runs from the beginning of April (it's started!) until September, and is open to everyone.

You can get more details as well as a registration form at http://www.microsoft.com/australia/heroes/community.aspx.

It is pretty simple, just create a small demo, put it online using Silverlight Streaming, complete the registration form and send it in.

If you are a part of a group you have a higher chance of making the national finals because 3 demos from at least 2 people in a group (User group etc) will go through, whilst only 30 random demos will be chosen by Microsoft if they are alone.

So find some other people making demos, choose your best and send them off!

If you win in the national finals, you get a Media Center PC, a trip to Tech Ed 2009 in LA, and a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite, WITH a MSDN Premium subscription! All for a 10 minute demo.

~~(There seems to be issues with the website at the time of writing, but I have assurances it will be resolved ASAP)~~

April Fools from Youtube

Chr0n1x — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:42:16 -0900

I was alerted to the fact that at the time of writing, Youtube has ALL of it's featured videos pointing to the ever famous Rickroll.

They look like normal videos, except they all point to the same video: Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, aka the Rickroll.

Beware: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI (the link the videos point to)

is one of them, note that the link is underlined to show its being hovered over (that's how Youtube does it)

and note the url in the next one:

GPU Gems Free and Legal online

Chr0n1x — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:17:34 -0900

Nvidia has released the first of their acclaimed GPU Gems series for free reading online in its entirety.

These are full HTML forms of the articles, all revolving around techniques for rendering. Completely free.

You can go and read the book here and even take advantage of 30% off the print copy. (See the top of the page, available at time of writing)

If 24 started in 1994

Chr0n1x — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:14:00 -0900

Found this whilst trawling the RSS feeds. Pretty funny, a good take on what 24 would have been like if it had been pitched in 1994.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1788161

Some great references in there. He really wouldn't survive without modern technology.

Free Development & Design Tools for Students [DreamSpark]

Chr0n1x — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 03:41:00 -0900

As of now (well a couple of days ago) DreamSpark has been available to students in a number of major countries around the world. It is a great program that empowers students to work with technology without being restricted by finances.

What is DreamSpark?

DreamSpark is free software. It is a program where if you are a student and can verify that (usually with a Uni email address), then you can get a ton of free professional development and design tools from Microsoft.

What is included?

Visual Studio 2005 Pro
Visual Studio 2008 Pro
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
SQL Server 2005 Development Edition
Expression Studio
XNA Game Studio 2.0
12-month subscription to XNA Creators Club

These are available alongside the already free Express editions and MS Virtual PC, all perfect to get into developing for a wide range of platforms, including the Xbox 360! (requires the Creators Club subscription)

Go to the DreamSpark Website and follow the instructions there to get your free stuff. Countries and Universities are being added all the time, so if you aren't able to get in now, check later. Or better yet, talk to your University about getting into this.

So how is this different from MSDN?

Well for one thing, this does not contain any free client Operating Systems. So that means you cannot free versions of XP or Vista through DreamSpark. However DreamSpark does give you a 12 month Creators Club subscription for free, which is worth $129 Australian ($99 US), so you can start using Visual Studio 2005 and XNA Game Studio (does not work with 2008 yet) to create games for your Xbox 360.

Resources for XNA

So you want to get started in XNA? Well there are a ton of resources out there already, prepared to help you get started.

Firstly I have a strong knowledge of XNA, and post up Samples and Tutorials to this site. Currently not much, but I intend to get more up. :)

Then you have the Creators Club website. This site is the official site for XNA and contains tons of info on the subject. You do not have to have a subscription to access the learning materials, just a couple of premium starter kits and partner items. On the website there are plenty of samples detailing almost anything you would want to do with XNA. A couple of Video tutorials, and plenty of friendly help on the forums.

You can get to the website through http://creators.xna.com

For a really nice set of tutorials for the beginner, working through creating an engine, you can't go past www.thehazymind.com where Mike Schuld has put together plenty of tutorials explaining many key aspects of basic engine development. Once you are done, or if you have an issue, head to the forums at www.thehazymind.com/smf and post there. There are plenty of people there (including myself) willing to help you out, as well as some extensions to the engine and plenty of ideas and friendly coders.

For a daily must read (maybe for your RSS reader) you cannot go past www.ziggyware.com for articles, links and videos relating to XNA. I suggest you bookmark that and check it every so often for great resources and tutorials. Sometimes even competitions with great prizes.

Of course there are plenty of books coming out on XNA, just search Amazon for XNA and you can find them easily. Some nice light reading before sleep. ;)

For writing HLSL shaders, there are a couple of options:

NVidia FX Composer 2
AMD/ATI RenderMonkey
InteliShade (For VS Standard and above, Express does not support add-ons)

Once Australia gets into DreamSpark, I will post more on it. If you can get into it now, enjoy. Otherwise in the meanwhile, you can download any of the express editions as well as XNA Game Studio 2.0 for free and get started.
(XNA Game Studio requires Visual C# Express or higher)

Save $1075 on MS Office 2007

Chr0n1x — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:19:00 -0900

If you are a student studying at University or TAFE in Australia, you can get Microsoft Office 2007 for only $75. If you are in a uni/TAFE course, its almost guaranteed you will need to write up reports/essays. So why not take advantage of an awesome offer.

If you are a student of one of the institutions listed at http://store.digitalriver.com/store/msshau/ContentTheme/pbPage.universities then you can take advantage of this offer. Just make sure you have an email address with the Uni/TAFE as well!

Click that link to take advantage of this great deal!

If you and your Uni uses Endnote, ensure you have Endnote X1, which has built in support (may need a reinstall) for Office 2007.

MS Office 2007 Ultimate includes:

Word 2007
Excel 2007
PowerPoint 2007
InfoPath 2007
Groove 2007
OneNote 2007
Publisher 2007
Outlook 2007

You can get these in one of two forms:

'Perpetual' (Permanent) license for $75
1 Year license for $25

Both of these provide all of the above, and for $14 more you can get mailed to you a backup Trial disk which you just enter your key into to activate.

If you already have one from an orientation day or MIX On Campus 2007 (or other) then you can use that trial, or even if you have the bandwidth, download the trial from the blazing fast Microsoft Servers.

You can then take the $1000 you save and put it into a CANVAS card http://www.mycanvascard.com.au/ or a trip to Contiki!

Take advantage of this offer and make the most of your Degree! :)

University Stage:1-1 Start!

Chr0n1x — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 18:40:00 -0900

So tomorrow begins my first year of university at UTS studying for a Bachelor of Engineering in ICTE Software. (Pretty much Software Engineering)

Should be enjoyable, and should also provide some inspiration so I can get started programming again. Been relaxing too much these holidays.

Big news out of GDC, as most already know. XNA Community Games is finally here, and a general timeframe for XNA 3.0 :) Sad that Australia doesn't get the game preview that is currently running. :(

I am in the process of working on a small game, but still in the tech planning stages, I want this engine to be useful for later projects and maybe even samples or demos.

Dreamspark is also something big that occured which is good for me. Being a student, I can get access to this once it is prepared for Australia. Some great resources in there for students, all for FREE! XD

I need to update more... :S

Happy 10th Birthday XML

Chr0n1x — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:29:00 -0900

I was reading Scobleizer this evening and found out it is the 10th Birthday of XML. (created 1998) So Happy Birthday to one of the key technologies in computing today!

Edit: and through Scoble's post I found a great list of the people behind XML, created by one of the people behind it. Here: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/02/10/XML-People

One of the funniest ZP reviews - CoD4

Chr0n1x — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:40:00 -0900

This weeks update to Zero Punctuation sees Yahtzee reviewing Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4, and it sits up there with some of his really hilarious reviews.

Infinity Ward must be cheering by now.

Click More to see the video. Not safe for work, contains swearing.

Happy New Year!

Chr0n1x — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:40:29 -0900

Just want to say happy new year to all those reading. It has been a great year for myself, I finished up my final year of school and will be starting university next year.

I have a couple of things planned for the new year, now that I have time to work exclusively on programming items. I have an idea for an XNA tool I want to implement that can make things easier, especially with file size restrictions. I also have a project that I need to get started on, also XNA related, but more on that should appear in the new year.

In any case, I hope you all have a good new year, and that we continue to progress. For those still awaiting midnight, don't party too hard. ;)

Post Processor 2.0 sample released

Chr0n1x — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 21:06:00 -0900

I just finished up my sample for the 2.0 version of the Post Processor (see first post on this blog) for XNA2.

The sample was built in XNA Game Studio 2.0 on Visual Studio 2005 Pro, and should compile fine in that. To use it just follow the instructions in Usage.txt, which explains how to use the program and also that there are more than enough comments in the code to understand its workings.

If you have any questions, you can use the contact link at the top right, and get me via that, or you can contact me via the forums at www.thehazymind.com/smf, probably best via PM there though, since its not my board. Of course you can also leave comments here. :)

Link:

PostProc2Sample.zip [28kb] (Requires XNA 2.0 and either VS2005 or C# Express Edition 2005 installed, with XNA GSE 2.0 installed over that. - The archive only contains source code to minimize filesize, if you need a binary I will upload that.)

BlogEngine.net 1.3 Released

Chr0n1x — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 22:01:52 -0900

The software I use for this blog got a minor version update today, from 1.2 to 1.3, pretty fast for about 2 1/2 months of work, and a good list of new features and changes. I have taken the time to upgraded to 1.3, must have done something wrong since there were issues with roles and users not transferring right, but that is stuff you don't need to worry about.

This software is a great piece of blogging software written in asp.net 2.0, and with plenty of features being added all the time, as well as a reasonably stable codebase that can be pulled from the CodePlex repository for it.

I am almost done with a basic sample for my Post Processing class, I just need to finish the shader and add some more comments, then pack it up. It should be up here shortly, then I will drop it into my HMEngine branch and work on implementing it in that project as well. So far it is pretty powerful, I just need a nice little usage guide to explain how to put it to use properly, that will come with the sample.

Malformed HTML causes anger

Chr0n1x — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 05:05:00 -0900

I decided to start up and try and complete a project I had put on the backburner about a month ago for myself, which pretty much involved downloading the content of a webpage for offline viewing and storing it in a database. I also took this time to get into WPF and further my explorations into LINQ.

Those aspects were easy (WPF is damn nice, and LINQ makes database access soo intuitive and easy) however when it came to parsing the HTML, another problem arose. I headed back to my old faithful tool for .Net2 called HtmlAgilityPack. Now this tool I have used before, and it has been great, taking even malformed HTML and turning it into XML for use in applications.

However this is where the issue arose, the nature of the website and content required me to parse a selection box on the page to grab every chapter of the content, so that I could download the rest in the background, and also so that the program knows what to download. Now since the site is not XHTML compliant, it could get away with not placing an ending tag to correspond with each <option> tag. Seems the HtmlAgiltyPack also doesn't do this right at all, and now I am stuck with finding something to do it, at least fix it, or I might have to revert to writing up a custom rewriter with that for Regex. (euurgh - tedious)

On the XNA front, I intend to get that sample done really soon, just thinking of something to make it interesting, and then I might have some more things I can get cranked out over these holidays.

New blog + File dump from old blog

Chr0n1x — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:19:00 -0900

Again with the new blogs, but anyway, phpBB is too big for just blogging, since this is a personal blog there isn't any reason to have a full forum behind it.

So thanks to the BlogEngine.net people, I have a nice little blog to put my stuff with all the features, and in .Net as well. :)

So basically my plans for my time during the holidays now is to create a sample for my ported Post Processor for XNA2.0 (See file dump below for 1.0Refresh version), and also get that integrated into the Hazy Mind engine, with a new tutorial for that.

After that, work on some projects I have been slowly making my way through, they may/may not appear on here, and also get around to learning the graphical content creation aspects of game development, so that I can get content for my XNA games done.

So basically this blog will contain not only XNA and programming related stuff, but also my own personal items, gaming related etc, if you want to focus, there are categories for that. ;)

In other news, Nemo Krad released his XNA game Breakthrough for both Windows and the Xbox360, this is a new take on the old Breakout/Arkanoid classic, but in 3D, so the ball can move in X,Y and Z, and there are powerups etc, and some nice shader effects. Check it out over at http://darkomengames.co.uk and give it a try.

Now for the file dump, this is basically all the files I uploaded for my old blog (not much) that people might still want to grab, since I do not want to go and recreate the old posts for them.

Post Processor (1.0 Refresh)

and thats about it, the screenshots from Halo 3 I see no point in putting back up.

So subscribe to the RSS feed and there should be more up here soon.