April 2006 - Posts
If this announcement really does mean developers could write games from the Xbox 360 using C#/.NET, I think that would be a fanastic move for Microsoft.
Especially if they price the development kit/marketplace around one-person/small teams of developers, like the old Spectrum/Codemasters/Matthew Smith days. Using the same simple micro-payment/credits from Xbox Live to allow these independents to make a few dollars per game per user.
They might produce the next Geometry Wars game - see someone score over 2.1 million!
Also on the Experience User Centered Design site, they have some design discussions around the Xbox 360, including some early prototypes for the dashboard UI:
Couple of arguing posts on the Windows Vista UI changes, comparing the start menus, control panel etc.
We'll just have to wait and see...
The AppDev: Something You Should Know is a great blog to read/subscribe to, it has loads of useful developer tips and tricks, from digging deeper in GetHashCode to Compression example in .NET.
Also Nicholas Allen's Indigo blog delves into some of the often abstracted away parts of the tcp/ip communication stack; from layers, protocols, framing and NAT translation.
Lastly via Sebby, I found this threading chapter (PDF) from Practial .NET 2 and C# 2 which is a really good introduction to synchronization and threading techniques - it is always good to refresh on the .net framework and the new classes available and Mike Taulty recommends as well. Based on this chapter alone, I think I'll be buying the book.
I recently came across a 3D design product called SketchUp. It was recently bought by Google, probably in some part due to the Google Earth plug-in which allows you to export your models.
You really should download the trial version and just play about with the modelling tools for a while, the push/pull tool feels so naturally - and even though it is similar to how 3DS Max, etc. work, I was able to follow the tutorials easily and produce some cool results.
One of the most fun, natural to use applications I have seen in a long while.
