Nazeeh's Little Corner on the Web » News

What am I up to these days?

nazeeh — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 04:39:05 +0000

Just thought I’d drop a quick update on what I am up to these days :) First off, not sleeping much thanks to the arrival of my 3rd kid! Got me a second girl! My poor boy will have it hard with two sisters ganging up on him! Work is keeping me very busy as well. Lots going on which I, naturally, can’t talk about :(

I am also working on my super simple WP7 app which I released a version off a while ago. It’s an app to view your StarCraft 2 profile and pin it to your screen. It’s stupid simple. I wrote it in like an hour. So don’t expect to be impressed! The app is called SC2 Profile and can be downloaded from here.

As far as gaming is concerned, I am still heavily immersed in StarCraft 2 (of course). I suck, but still love watching it and playing occasionally. I get friends telling me that I probably should try my hand at Poker since it shares the essence of StarCraft, but I am not sure I am that interested I also spend a LOT of time in League of Legends! I love that game!

Anyway… just wanted to drop a quick note as proof that I am still breathing

Back to blogging–for realz!

nazeeh — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 01:43:34 +0000

So! I am back! No, really! I mean it this time. Well, my intentions are to be back at least. I’ve been away from blogging for quite a while. A few updates are in order! I am no longer on the XNA Game Studio team. I haven’t been ever since we announced Kinect (aka Natal). I joined that team from the beginning and have been working there ever since.

Kinect has been quite the ride! I loved working on XNA Game Studio from day 1. Kinect was an amazing follow up to that awesome project. Helping to create tech for Kinect was the most fun thing to date for me. It was hard though. Very hard. Lots of late nights, lots of weird problems to have to figure out, etc. I wasn’t even working directly on the skeletal tracking code, but I worked a lot with the gurus that did. It wasn’t easy following what they were talking about sometimes.

I have learned a lot the past few years working on Kinect. So I thought I’d come back to blogging and start writing about everything I enjoy, not only game development. I want to write about:

Coding
Games I play
Life
Random stuff

So hang tight and let’s see where this goes I am not even sure there’s anyone reading this blog anymore! But if you still are, let me say “thank you old friend!” and if you’re new, stay a while! This place doesn’t suck that bad

New Year = New Theme!

nazeeh — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:45:07 +0000

A bit of a belated “Happy New Year” to everyone! I decided to do some maintenance work on my blog that I’ve been putting off for a while. The visible part is the new theme I got going on here. Next on the list is getting some more content on! I am working on it :)

Sorry for the delays :(

nazeeh — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:58:47 +0000

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 :)

Links to XNA GS Team Blogs

nazeeh — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:55:53 +0000

Hey everyone! Just a super quick post that I have added a list of links to all the XNA GS team member blogs I could find. You can find the list on my front page on the right side column towards the bottom. I will be updating it with any other blogs I know of.

Dude…where’d you go?!

nazeeh — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:37:55 +0000

Some of you may be asking… where did I go? Why no new posts? Or…maybe you’re not asking that, but I’ll go with my first thought! I am still here totally alive and kicking. Got back to work from the holidays and been kind of busy ever since. That doesn’t mean that I forgot about my blog though. Now that we’ve been through enough basics to qualify us to write a game, I’ve been thinking of one to blog about. Here’s what I am thinking about…

One of the things I tend to see a lot on our forums is people asking for more tutorials and posts about how to actually write a game vs how to use the framework to do standalone things. There are plenty of posts and articles on the net on how to draw models, textures, etc. But not very many that will walk you through writing your own game and structuring it. That is what I am about to tackle with my next series of posts.

I am thinking of putting together a series of posts detailing how to write a simple 2D game. The posts will talk about concepts such as:

Designing your game from a gameplay point of view.
Designing your game code structure.
How to use some of the cool concepts in XNA GS such as components and services.
Learning some more cool effects like background scrolling, etc
How to design a level and have your game load it up and use it
Maybe even touch a bit on 2D effects using slightly advanced topics such as shaders
and more…

Through this exercise, I am hoping that all the concepts would be very clear through seeing them in action step by step in an actual game that we build together.

So that’s what I’ve been up to for a while now. I am starting to work on it now (like really now) and am hoping to have some posts up during this week or so. Stay tuned :)

Happy Holidays Everyone!

nazeeh — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 21:28:14 +0000

Just wanted to make a quick post wishing everyone Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a great time celeberating! More tutorials coming your way soon :) In the meantime, enjoy the holidays!

The Importance of Backups

nazeeh — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:48:59 +0000

Sigh… I should have known better. I am quite the trigger happy kind of guy when it comes to deleting stuff. By mistake, I deleted the database that was holding my blog thinking I was deleting something else. I hate when I do stupid stuff like that.

Always backup important stuff like that! Specially databases for sites you own on the net. From hackers, ISP blowing up, to your own stupidity… you’ll be happy you had that backup when you need it.

Now to rebuild what I had in here…

p.s. Worse news… I had an earlier backup of my posts… I deleted the file for no reason. Somebody..shoot me…