Virtual Realm

Modern Warfare2 Launch Trailer

Mykre — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:54:43 GMT

I have a feeling that it is going to be a long week next week with several late nights.

Teamxbox.com have just posted the Modern Warfare 2 Launch Trailer, this is one I am looking forward to and yes I am going to the Midnight Launch.

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/21402/Modern-Warfare-2-Launch-Trailer/

Expression Encoder – Enhancing Audio

Mykre — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:57:34 GMT

I was preparing some videos ready for our holiday this week and found that some of the videos where in a format that would not load onto the Zune, also some of the audio was all over the place. Now as I spent a bit of time with Andrew Parsons on Friday going over some Expression Products and some XNA Code, I got inspired to dig into Expression Encoder and see if I could clean up the audio on these videos.

The first stage was to create a new Encoder project and import my Videos into the project. This step does not take much time, but the application will need to look at the internals of the video.

When this is done you have the ability to really play around with the video. This includes the format, the content, as well as the audio. In the case of this little article all I am going to do is play with the audio.

Import a New video into the project.

In this example I am just going to use the wildlife video that is one of the Samples installed with the operating system install.

Next if you look at the set of tabs on the far right of the screen you will see a collection of tabs which look like the following.

The Third tab “Enhance” is the tab which we want to open. What we are going to do is Level the volume as well as raise the level. To do this have a look at the Pre-Processing Tab and then the Audio Section.

At this point we need to check on the Volume Levelling option, and I would like to adjust the volume to a level of 2. When you do select the volume levelling option you are going to ally some normalization to the audio layer, this will adjust the volume levels of the tracks so that they all are at about the same level. The volume value will increase or decrease the overall volume level of the tracks.

The next step is to play your video and make sure that the levels and pre-processing is all correct, once this is done encode your video and enjoy listening or watching you work.

XNA 7 Day Challenge – Dual

Mykre — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:32:36 GMT

Got a quiet evening planned and I thought I might try and get some code dropped for my entry in the XNA 7 Day Challenge. While doing this I jumped in and had a look at some of the YouTube videos for XNA to see what is going on.

In my search I can across this video…

I really like the idea for the game, hopefully the author takes it further then the challenge. This shows that the small challenges can bring out some different ideas.

http://xna7day.com/

Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7

Mykre — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:45:42 GMT

For a while I have been thinking of upgrading my desktops hardware, but have never gotten around to actually doing it. The problem is that over the last week my Vista install on the desktop has started to do some strange things. So on Friday I decided that I was going to do something about it. The plan was to upgrade the operating system to Windows 7, clean up the install then start planning the hardware purchases

The first thing that I needed to do was clean up what I currently had, this included removing some old software installs as well as backing up the system. When sitting down and looking at the installed programs I was surprised at how much crap I had installed on the system. Doing the uninstall of the software took a good portion of Friday night (I was glad there was something to watch on TV).

Next I went through a full backup of the system, including the storage drives I have.

On Saturday I downloaded the Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser and went through the motions with that. The good thing is that everything that was left installed, including hardware, passed the test.

Onto the upgrade, the process was actually really simple and painless to complete.

After the upgrade was completed I did find that several things did not upgrade fully or at least needed some work. In the end I decided to reinstall a lot of the hardware that I had attached. This process involved removing the hardware uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling the devices. I know that several devices where working but this seemed to clean them up. In the case of my wireless usb device I found that the drivers supplied by the supplier worked fine, but the built in ones that shipped with windows 7 worked better. So one tip there try the built in drivers over the windows vista drivers as they may work better, then do a windows update to download the latest drivers.

It has been a good couple of days now and it looks like it is running ok, the only real issue I have is the problem with shutting down the desktop. At the moment the system does not seem to complete the shutdown process and I have to do a final button push before it shuts down completely. I will have to look at the motherboard drivers this week.

Dysnomia – Demo of an XNA Game

Mykre — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:06:00 GMT

While spending some time getting ready for an upgrade to my Desktop I came across this demo of a new XNA game.

A video showing the third area in the game, the Medical Labs.
As always, the content of the video is not representative of the final product!
Dysnomia is the working title of Team Mango's second XNA game for Xbox Live Indie Games. You can follow development progress at http://www.fatweb.org, and visit the official Team Mango site at http://www.team-mango.com
Become a fan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Team-Ma...
Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/teammango

New Kissy Poo release for XNA

Mykre — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:30:00 GMT

The Kissy Poo team have released another version of their XNA game for play test, If you would like to give the game a go drop on over to the Creators Site, or follow the directions on this post.

Kissy Poo is a game for young kids being released soon on Xbox live Indie Games
Pre-release website http://kissypooisland.com
Become a fan on facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/KissyPo...

Code Project – ZuneHD Level Application

Mykre — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 01:26:25 GMT

Over on Code Project, Joel Ivory Johnson has released a new article that will introduce you to the world of XNA Development and the ZuneHD with a simple Level Application.

I received a ZuneHD the day after release. All of the Zunes are user programmable via the XNA framework. So in the “Because I Can” category, I decided to make a level program. After making the program, I found that some others wanted the source code and know how to get the XNA framework on their computers. I already had some text that I had written on programming the previous Zunes, so I’ve taken that text, added some information on the accelerometer and multi-touch panel to it, and the result is this document.

Here is the direct link to the article.

Integrating OpenId in an ASP.Net MVC Application

Mykre — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:56:06 GMT

Over the last few weeks I have been playing around with ASP.Net MVC applications, this morning I found a great article on Integrating OpenId into an ASP.Net MVC Application.

OpenId is a single sign-on scheme – the idea is that you keep your login and profile information in one place so that you don’t have to login at every Web location and create new user credentials on each site.

The #1 request I got on the CodePaste.net site - which provides a quick and easy way to publish and share code snippets publicly - has been to implement OpenId for authentication rather than the custom username/password login that’s been in use up until now. OpenId is a centralized login/authentication mechanism which handles authentication through one or more centralized OpenId providers. These providers live on the Web and are accessed through a forwarding and callback mechanism – you log in at the provider’s site and are then returned to the original starting Url with an authorized user token that uniquely identifies that user to the original site.

Here is a Direct link to the Article.

Blender Tutorial – Modelling a Smooth T-Joint

Mykre — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:16:57 GMT

The guys over at Blender Newbies have produced another great video tutorial, this one takes you through the process of creating a smooth T-joint using Blender 3D.

In this Blender tutorial, we'll be taking a look at how to model a smooth t-joint connection. This technique is something you might want to consider when simply intersecting two cylinders doesn't quite give you the appearance you need.

Here is the direct Link to the Tutorial.

Network State Management – Starter Kit

Mykre — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:42:07 GMT

I had a quiet afternoon this week end and started working on a couple of small XNA Projects, but as with all of my smaller projects I seem to always start with one of the State Samples provided to us from the Creators Club.

To help with this I spent a little bit of time and converted the Network State Management Sample into a starter kit. All you have to do now is download the Starter Kit file double click on the file and it will install the template into your Visual Studio 2008 system (This will also work with Express). Once down when you start your next project you just use the Network State Sample as the base application.

Download Link: Network State Management – Windows.vsi

This starter kit has been modified so that the namespaces and such will change to the name of the project that you select.

Over the next Hours I will add the Xbox 360 Version of the Kit.