Nazeeh’s Little Corner on the Web

After tormenting you with an interview with Shawn’s cat, it’s only fair that we talk to the man himself. Today, we are going to know more about "teh Shawn" as he’s known to us now at the office. Shawn is the man responsible for quite a few of the nifty parts of the XNA Game Studio product in general. Hate it or love, Content pipeline was one of his first contributions, one of many many to come. The man needs little introduction, so … I give you, Shawn Hargreaves! Read more...

So… after a while of inactivity, busy at work, got a new baby girl, I am back with yet another team interview! This one is a bit different though. You see, this interview is not with an actual team member, but with a legend that lives within our environment. A legend that I’ve come to HATE. Shawn Hargreaves, one of our developers, owns a cat. He loves this cat. So naturally, he puts that DAMN cat in every sample he possibly can. I’ve seen that cat so many times, I can’t stand to see it anymore. That’s when he added her to his Audio3D sample with sound. Today… we talk to that cat. Read more...

So! Wanna try writing a few games on your Zune V1 and 2 device? Maybe even have it be a multiplayer game as well? Or maybe you just want to write a nifty frontend to your music library! All of that and more can be done with the newly released preview of the upcoming version 3.0 of XNA Game Studio. Read more...

Isn’t is sad and annoying when good games just don’t get the attention they deserve? This is something I have noticed quite a few times. Games that are pretty well done, and in some cases have very cool and innovative ideas, just simply die away. Some refer to them as “Sleeper Hits”. It seems to happen quite often actually. Here’s my list of games I thought were really cool and should have been successful, but somehow they just died away… Read more...

Hey everyone! Back again with yet another interview with one of the XNA GS team members. Today I bring Scott Darnell! Scott has worked on some very key areas of the product and has gone down to areas of the code where the sun really never shines :) Check out what he had to say! Read more...

Hey guys,Just wanted to drop a quick note to apologize for the delay in my posts. For the tutorial series, I’ve been quite busy at work and haven’t gotten around to finishing the next one in the series. I don’t want to rush it out just to have it posted. Not saying it’s going to be awesome or anything though ;) As for the Team Interviews, I have a couple of people lined up and I am waiting for them to get back to me with their answers. Apparently the people around here suddenly have “work” to do… pfft…. Anyway, I promise to get you guys some stuff as soon as I can! Thanks for reading :)  Read more...

Some of you may not know that Game Developers Conference is happening now, and we are super excited about it! The XNA GS team is making two very very cool announcements: Zune is a new platform for game development and the ability to publish your games online for consumption through Xbox Live marketplace! This is so exciting, I am lost for words! Let me try though. Let me walk you through the two major announcements. Read more...

Hey everyone! I am back again with yet another interview with a member of the XNA GS team. Today I bring our very own Aaron Nonis! This dude is actually responsible for me being on this team in the first place! My wife worked with him in his previous team and through him I moved to the XNA GS team. Anyway, I’ll save that for another post! I am really excited to bring you Mr.Aaron NONIS! Read more...

Yep! Yet another team interview is done! Today I bring you Eli Tayrien, the dude that drove me NUTS with his choice of music (we shared an office for a while). I guess I drove him nuts with mine too… he’s not into Metal (pfft). Eli is a super fun person to work with and I am very happy you guys will get to know him a little more. On with the interview! Read more...

In my last post in this series, I talked about the GameStateManagement sample. I got a few comments asking that I upgrade it to include the newly threaded Loading.cs that was introduced in the Networking version of the same sample. So, I did that and bundled the whole thing in a template so you can always have it to start new projects with. Read more...