There was a thing in the paper last week about writing really, really, short stories. I thought I’d have a go. With apologies to Arthur C. Clark…..
I asked “How do you manage to avoid being found out?”. The wizard smiled and said “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology".
Micro-Mart, a weekly UK magazine about computing has a really good item about XNA and Indie game development in it this week. Starts at page 92. Well worth a read (as is the whole magazine actually).
Of course I’m only really telling you about it it because I’m actually mentioned (and even quoted) in the article.
I’ve been busy with some XNA stuff for the last forever or so. But when I’ve done with the current crop of courseware I’m definitely going to rescue Trip Hazard from his present predicament.
Definitely.
A man from UPS dropped of a big box today. In it were 10 copies of my latest book. One of the many nice things about writing for Microsoft Press is that they give you 10 free ones.
I’ve been through the text and not found any mistakes so far, which is rather nice.
Oh, and for the student who won the Super Geek Word search at the Summer Bash, your prize has now arrived……
If you can’t solve a problem, just go to bed. I should have done that yesterday (although it would have meant I was in bed at 11:30 in the morning I suppose).
Anyhoo, I got up, had breakfast, and then made XNA networking work perfectly.
It turns out that there is something in the WiFi configuration at my house that stops network gameplay from working. I had connected all the devices by wires, but had left the WiFi turned on, which seemed to confuse matters. Replace wireless connections with wires everywhere and everything works.
I now have a working lobby system, proper host and client gameplay, sample programs and a completed Chapter 16. And, since that is the last chapter in the book, I guess that means that I can return to real life and start doing other things that have been piling up a bit. But I think I’ll have some time off the computer for a bit.
The smartest thing I did last year was to give something away. The result of putting the "Famous Yellow C# book" up on the blog has been a huge increase in traffic and thousands of downloads over the last few months.
Loads of people have been in touch saying how useful it has been to them. A number of courses are using it as one of their texts and it has even made its way onto the digital bookshelf of some leading software manufacturers. And of course quite a few new typos have been discovered....
I got a query today from someone who is moving from Java to C# and I remembered that some time ago I wrote some notes about this. I put them up on this site ages ago, but I've tidied the text up, converted it to pdf and put it in a coloured cover (this time orange). You can find the new material alongside the Yellow book on the same site:
I've made some tiny changes to the text, and fixed some typos. It never looks good if you get the words wrong in the introduction.....
I've now taken advantage of the Amazon Connect service to add a little bit of Rob to the pages of Amazon.com. Hapless viewers of information about my books on the Amazon site will also get excerpts from these hallowed pages, as well as a link to my new Amazon blog with book related content.
To celebrate this I've uploaded the second section of Simple Simon, an XNA pattern matching game which has nothing to do with pies, to verysillygames.com.
Well, actually, not here. They are at VerySillyGames. These are actually the PDF files for chapters 1 and 2 that went to the printers. I've also included all the sample code so that you can make yourself a moodlight. I've posted them in celebration of the fact that the book is now being printed, ready for a release towards the end of Feb.
It always helps to read what you've written. Last night I finished the final chapter of the XNA book. And then I read through it. And then I threw it away.
It was very worthy, concise and carefully written. It gave as good an explanation of component based development as you can get into 35 pages. But by gum it was boring.
So I've ditched it. Risking the wrath of my editor I've embarked on a rewrite to make it more interesting. Rather than class diagrams we are going to have "Hide the Controller", "Pell Mell Pelmanism", "Simon Says Party" and "Bread vs. Carrot".
Art was never my strong point.
I'll explain the code that makes the programs work, whilst giving people some very silly games to play.
Much more fun.
I'm presently finishing off "The XNA Book". I'm just doing game state management and I needed to come up with a title screen for one of the sample games.
I hope you don't think that it is too cheesy..
Learn how to do this....
I've just been sent a question about an article that I seem to have published. I sent it over to the OpenNET people and they put it out in August this year. It is all about Image Processing in C# on a mobile device. If you want to take a look, get the code and get the articles, take a look here:
I've put my first XNA file on VerySillyGames. It is just a silly screen display. The source code will be provided when the book is released. It is a nice example of how you can get really good graphical effects almost by mistake. You can find a runnable version of the program for the PC at www.verysillygames.com. It is optimised for 1280 x 1024 displays on a PC with the XNA framework installed. An Xbox version will be available later.
I've added rotation to the original program, let me know what you think
If you are lucky enough to be a student at Hull you can join the VerySillyGames.com development effort, where we are going to take some of the silly game ideas and try to make them real. This time next year we'll all be millionaires. Oh yes.
I'm very aware of the fact that I've not written another episode of Trip Hazard for ages. He's just shot the mayor, and things are not looking good. I must stress that the reason I've not done any more is not because I've written myself into a corner. Oh no. Does anyone want any more?
Whilst digging around on my hard disk for some files I came across the notes I wrote for my Workstation Technology course in 1995. I thought it might be fun to pdf them and put them on this site. You can find them here. It is interesting to read them and see how much has changed.
And how much hasn't...
And just to prove that I'm still working in the present, I've put up another chapter in the XNA book.
I've started waking up in the night every now and then (last night it was easy because number one son and daughter got up at some ungodly hour to go to London). Quite often I find it hard to get back to sleep, but this is sometimes a bonus because I do have some of my better ideas at that time (or perhaps it is because my critical faculties are asleep at that time as well).
Anyhoo, last night I had a neat idea for the "Flashlight for the Fiftieth Century" (US version) or "Posh Torch" (UK version) that I'm developing as a worked example for the .NET Micro Framework book I'm presently writing. Yesterday I got a GPS interface sort of working. As I was lying in bed it occurred to me that it would be nice to add some mapping features to the software. So now I'm going to download some map images so that the device can have a "you are here" kind of display for certain areas.
You may not know I'm writing a book (there must be some people left on the planet that I've not told yet). Anyhoo, I am. Writing a book. (makes a change from colouring them in I suppose)
The book is about embedded development using the .NET Micro Framework. This is something I'm very excited to be involved with. I reckon the framework could do wonderful things for the process of writing code for very small processors (the kind you find in remote controls and other small computer controlled devices). It makes embedded code more reliable and easier to write. Wonderful stuff.
If you want to read bits of the book before it gets printed, and even pass comment on them, you can take a look here.
Have you been shot at, gassed, beaten up, had your girlfriend kidnapped, been fitted with a TV camera and made to shoot the mayor?
Thought not.
Trip Hazard has. New installment coming soon.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
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