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I recently left the CTO position to return to contract programming. The job was 90 miles from my home, so the travel was taking it's toll on my sanity and I hated being away from the family so much. It was an amicable split. They just weren't ready for me yet. I was hired on to do scalability work for their website, but the company is so dynamic and growing so fast, that I spent most of my time working on new features to support our current customers and to woo new clients. I'm leaving them in good hands, though. Just before my departure, we hired a really sharp architect. I hope to work with these guys again in the future. They're a great bunch of folks. My current source of income is a contract with my home state's Department of Education. The new project is more in line with the technical challenges that drew me to the CTO gig, and the hours are such that I get to spend a lot more time at home with the little lady and rugrats. With all this new-found free time, I'm getting the itch to create again. I'm working with an artist buddy to create general programming and art content for a site that will parallel codetopia.com, and we'll be announcing it when it's more presentable. I hope to do more art, and he hopes to do more code. So far, it's a very motivating arrangement. If things go as planned, I may even start work on a new, multi-volume XNA book that's been brewing in my noggin for a while. My artist buddy would be heavily involved in that project as well. That's a big commitment, though. If you think the first book was crap and you want to save me a year of torture, please speak up now. :P -- joe
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The conversion of my book's examples to XNA 2.0 is complete! ![Party!!! [<:o)]](/cs/emoticons/emotion-19.gif) The files have been posted to the download section. I still haven't had a chance to create the fancy new portal on this site to host the book stats in one place, but I was able to add some info about the conversion process on each chapter's download page. And I was able to get the code online just in time for the weekend (hobby-coding prime time). Enjoy! You can access the entire list by clicking here. Or you can select a specific chapter, below. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm holding off on the conversion of the content pipeline example (chapter 26) until i've had a chance to review the XNA 2.0 changes that affect those APIs. I want to make sure that the example shows the "right" way to do things, and isn't just a straight conversion of an old process. Please let me know if you have any problems with the new code. These projects were created in Visual C# 2005 Express Edition, and they all target the Windows platform, but the source code which they contain is cross-platform. If there's enough demand, I'll post the Xbox 360 projects as well, but the new XNA Game Studio 2.0 provides a conversion tool for just that task (right-click the project within the Solution Explorer to see the new menu option). Also, I have permission from the publisher to post the original source files (the XNA 1.0 / XNA 1.0 Refresh projects), but I didn't think many folks would still be using the older APIs. If there's enough demand, I'll post those projects as well. Thanks for your patience, guys! Enjoy the code, and let me know if you find any issues or need any help. Oh, and if you're reading this blog post and you're asking yourself, "Book? What book?" -- click here to see what the fuss is all about. You can read Chapter 07 here, and Chapter 18 here. If you like what you see, please feel free to buy a copy of the book here. -- joe P.S. I don't know why I wasted time on this, but I also updated the Welcome.exe application (the autorun from the book's CD-ROM) to fix a couple of bugs. I also added some logic to detect XNA 2.0, and cleaned up the logic that detects XNA 1.0 and XNA 1.0 Refresh.
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Sorry for the delay in getting the XNA 2.0 conversion wrapped up.
I'm done converting the book's code to XNA 2.0. I had several real-life roadblocks that slowed me down, and I tried to clean the projects up a little as I converted them. I did not use the conversion tool, I actually created the projects as if I were writing the example games from scratch, so it took a little longer.
I'll try to post the source files tonight. I don't know if I'll get a chance to clean up my text that describes the XNA changes that affected each chapter's example, though. That may have to wait until the weekend.
Thanks for your patience!
-- joe
P.S. Actually, I lied. I've converted all of the examples but one -- the content pipeline example (Chapter 26). I want to take some time to review the changes in the Content Pipeline APIs to see if there's anything that I can be doing better there. I know of a few organizational things that I've wanted to change since day one, and I'll be making those changes when I convert the source.
My changes should make for a cleaner code base that's easier to follow, but the example may not jive with the chapter text after the changes have been made. If I feel that to be the case, I'll write an article to highlight the changes and explain why I made them.
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With the release of XNA 2.0, I've received a couple of questions about how the changes affect the examples in the book. I decided to ask the publisher for permission to release the source code from the book, in it's entirety, so that the transition from XNA 1.0 and XNA 1.0 Refresh to XNA 2.0 would be effortless for the readers. Five minutes ago, I got the response. They've approved! I'll be posting a chapter-by-chapter summary of how the XNA 2.0 release affects the text for each chapter. And, I'll be posting the COMPLETE source from from the book to this site. I'll provide the existing code for anyone who hasn't yet made the move to 2.0, as well as the converted code and project files. On another happy note, on Sunday, December 30th, my book hit #1 on Amazon's sales rankings for the "Game Programming" category. That was completely unexpected, and quite the morale boost. I want to make sure that I clearly set expectations on the content that I'll be posting in the coming days. - I will be posting the complete source code from the book (as 1.0 Refresh and 2.0 projects).
- I plan to post a chapter-by-chapter summary of how changes in XNA 2.0 affect the text for each chapter of the book.
- I will not be posting detailed content on any new features that were introduced with the release of XNA 2.0 at this time. I have some articles planned for those topics [e.g. networking] that I'll be releasing in the coming weeks, but I want to focus on the book-specific content right now.
Thanks. -- joe
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This evening, I was checking google again to see if any reviews of the book had popped up. No such luck. No reviews have been posted on any of the online book resellers (which I could interpret as a good or a bad sign). Heck, even the single listing of my book on eBay didn't include any comments about the quality of the title. There were a few little tidbits that jumpped out at me from the search results, though. It looks like BusinessWeek's website has run what amounts to a reprint of the article that Edge magazine ran on XNA recently ( Develop It Yourself). The 360-specific stuff starts around page 3, but the sidebars seem to be missing in this version. (i.e. they cut out half of my comments ![Stick out tongue [:P]](/cs/emoticons/emotion-4.gif) ) While these comments weren't on my book's Amazon, BaM, or B&N profile, they are flattering... I swear, neither of these people are related to me, and I didn't pay, blackmail, or otherwise solicit their comments. ![Big Smile [:D]](/cs/emoticons/emotion-2.gif) And finally, J.R. Nip (a.k.a. Chris Meyer) wrote a fairly thourough review of my book on gamevortex.com. Many thanks to all those who took the time to post comments on the book. I really appreciate it. And thanks to all those who have emailed me their comments, too. It's nice to see that someone is actually reading the thing. ![Wink [;)]](/cs/emoticons/emotion-5.gif) -- joe
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If you've had trouble finding my book in the bookstores, welcome to my world. I work about 90 miles from my home, so I have ready access to six or seven of the retail chains that carry it, but I have yet to see it on the shelves. Admitedly, Alamaba isn't exactly a hotspot of game development, but I've seen the other XNA titles in my local stores. REPRINT
A couple of weeks back, the publisher told me to put a rush on my corrections for the reprint. Apparently, the book sold out within the first month. That may help to explain it's absense from the bookstore shelves. The good news is that the corrections that I listed on my site have been incorporated into the reprint. I also renamed the directories on the CD-ROM based on reader feedback to make matching each chapter's text with its example code easier. EDGE MAGAZINE
In an earlier blog post, I mentioned that I was quoted in UK's Edge magazine. Well, that issue has finally made it to the US magazine racks. Check it out the next time you're in B&N!
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I just posted the list of errors and typos that I found when reviewing the printed book. You can view the list here. Feel free to post any errors that you discover as replies to that same thread, and I'll update the original post to reflect the latest feedback. I got permission from the publisher to post the full text and source code for Chapter 7 (the one on GamePad input). As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, that chapter was included on the Dr. Dobb's website a while back. My day job is demanding a good bit of my time now, but I'll try to get the files posted to this site tonight or tomorrow.
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I traded emails with the popular UK gaming magazine, Edge, recently in an interview-style exchange regarding XNA technologies. I, along with several other folks from the XNA trenches, was quoted in the article as it attempts to provide an overview of hobbyist development, managed code, and the future of XNA game development. Overall, I think the article was quite nice. The email exchanges made me a little nervous at times. There were some concepts that I didn't feel I was getting across -- the writers aren't game developers (they're writers and avid gamers), so it was hard to pick terms that weren't ambiguous between our two fields. In the end, I think they did a really nice job of compiling the information from all their sources and creating an article that covers a lot of material while still keeping the reader's interesti. I was quoted twice, right beside several folks in the XNA community that I have a lot of respect for. I don't think I sounded too idiotic, but you can judge that for yourself when the article hits shelves in the USA in October 2007. [ I have a British buddy that let me read his copy -- they get issues a full month earier in the UK than we yanks do.] The article covers more than just XNA. In fact, I'm interested in taking a closer look into this "wii ware" that they mention.
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It looks like Dr Dobb's reprinted chapter 7 from my XNA Book in the September 2007 update to their website. I don't know if it will make it into their print magazine (or if it already has). I didn't see it during a quick glance of my last two issues. You can read the article here. I didn't get a chance to review the content. There's only one problem that jumped out at me when I was looking over the page -- they converted the minus sign in the text to two minus signs. I'm guessing that the publisher converted my minus signs to one of the fancier dash symbols, and that the magazine has an automated conversion process that replaced that special symbol with two HTML-friendly minus signs. Strange. The code didn't seem to get mangled, though. So that's good. I've put in a request with the publisher to post the source for that chapter, since the text is out there now. Once they reply, I hope to add the files to the download section. I'll post another blog entry to announce the update. It's a little strange that Dr. Dobb's reprinted chapter 7. They requested chapter 12 (Xbox 360 Considerations), which we sent off to them quite some time ago. I never really thought that 12 was a good fit for their readership -- it's more focused on setup and configuration, with a little techy info mixed in. I'm glad they went with a more generally-useful (broader appeal) chapter.
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I got permission from the publisher to post one of the chapters (and its source code) for public download. I selected chapter 18 because it demonstrates the basics of an XNA game. The game displays user prompts, tracks and displays scores, supports two human players, provides four different CPU players, uses threading to process AI on a worker thread, and it strikes a good balance between being simple for beginners and not boring the heck out of folks who've already dabbled in game programming. You can download the source code for this chapter here. You can download the text for this chapter as a PDF document here. As with all the examples in the book, the ZIP file contains solution and project files for both Windows and the Xbox 360, and those project files reference a single set of source code files. Please let me know if you have any problems with the code, or if you have any feedback.
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I got my copies of the book this past Wednesday, and I've already received reports of folks getting their pre-ordered copies in the mail. I'm reading through the hardcopy now to identify errors that will be corrected in any reprints. I'll post them in the XNA Book Errata forum. I've read through chapter 18 (I'm on page 461), so I may be able to post everything that I've found by this weekend. No major errors so far.
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Still learning how everything works. Will post an update on the book soon.
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