Buzzrick's TileEngine Game Platform

Getting a Console App to talk to SharePoint 2010

Buzzrick — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:08:13 GMT

I've recently been trying to build a console application to talk to SharePoint 2010. It's a simple task that we've all been doing with SharePoint 2007 but I couldn't for the life of me get it working for 2010.

You know the drill: you grab an SPSite object, then from that get an SPWeb object to work with, like this:

 using (SPSite spSite = new SPSite("http://demo2010a")) { using (SPWeb
spWeb = spSite.RootWeb) { Console.WriteLine(spWeb.Title); } }

A collegue of mine, Chaks, has the answer to getting this working with SharePoint 2010. SharePoint is now a 64bit platform!

So to get it working just set your Build Target Platform to x64 in your project properties

Chaks' original post is here

An Azure Server Container

Buzzrick — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:21:31 GMT

I'm currently working on a Windows Azure project. A collegue of mine who is oOur Technical Lead on the project (Peter Jones is currently up at PDC showing some of the stuff we've been working on.

He got the chance to see some of the Azure Server containers running. These things are basically like a shipping container racked out with hundreds of servers. Apparently they can get one of these racks up in running in 4 hours of it arriving at it's deployment location!

Pete got a short video clip of what the server looks and sounds like. That is some heavy hardware.

Service Back Online

Buzzrick — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:35:12 GMT

Sorry for the downtime everyone.

My host computer was wiped, and I had major trouble trying to restore the backups. I eventually found out that the backup system didn't back up the DLLs required for the web applications that I use, so I had to restore some parts from an old offline backup.

Hopefully I haven't lost too much content (although I already know that I've lost some stuff from my SoapDragon Games site)

When World of Warcraft Social interaction clicked with me

Buzzrick — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:17:21 GMT

My experience with when World of Warcraft social interaction clicked with me (AKA How I became Addicted to WoW)

A Pale Blue Dot

Buzzrick — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:17:24 GMT

Awesome

> > >

Straylight studios gets Deloitte Fast 50 Awards

Buzzrick — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:54:52 GMT

Straylight Studios (where I work) has just received 3 awards in the Deloitte Fast 50 awards, including the 33rd fastest growing company overall, the fastest growing new entrant in Otago/Southland, and the fastest growing technology company in Otago/Southland.

Head over to our company blog for more details.

Fallout 3 Countdown

Buzzrick — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:55:07 GMT

Fallout 3 is at the top of my "Can't Wait" list. It's due out in just over a month.

(If you want a copy of the Fallout 3 Countdown widget on your site, head over to PlanetFallout.gamespy.com for the HTML)

Also at the end of next week the Opposing Front's expansion for Company of Heroes is due to be rereleased in New Zealand for NZD$20, so I'll be getting that too.

Getting the full download of Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Buzzrick — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:07:32 GMT

The installer for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is a tiny file, just half a megabyte. It is a just a bootstrap application which downloads the actual files required to perform the update. We have a bunch of development machines here in the office at Straylight Studios, so we don't want to have the bootstrap installer downloading all of the content for each and every machine.

If you want to download the entire service pack content then you can call the installer with a /CreateLayout commandline flag, and the folder where you want to download the files to. I think the full contents are over 800Mb so the download will take some time.

VS90sp1-KB945140-ENU.exe /createlayout \\server\share

UPDATE:
I've also just found an ISO image version of the service pack. This may be simpler for everyone

Understanding memory usage for 32bit and 64bit windows

Buzzrick — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:14:54 GMT

Mark Russinovich (one of the old SysInternals team, now part of Microsoft) has posted an extremely interesting article about memory usage on windows systems. It goes very deep into the details of how Windows allocates and accesses memory, and explains more about how the 4GB limit works on 32 bit systems.

Go and check it out here.

I currently use 32 bit (x86) Windows Vista for my home machine, and I've been wary of using a 64 bit OS for a while because of driver issues, and software incompatibility problems. However I've been using 64 bit (x64) Windows Vista for my work machine since I started at Straylight Studios (which I must blog about soon), and I believe that it is coming time for me to make the jump at home, certainly for my next computer which I'm saving up for.

The main issue with a 64 bit version of windows is driver compatibility. Older hardware may not have 64 bit drivers which makes them unusable, however pretty much any new hardware which is built in the Vista era should have 64 bit drivers.

Internet Explorer Issues

Also, in the past I've had the perception that there is problems with 32 bit software compatibility on 64 bit Windows. I say perception because I'm slowly learning that there are not that many problems. I'm quite fond of the IE7Pro plugin for Internet Explorer and for quite a while I had real issues installing it. I kept installing it but the icon didn't appear in the bottom right corner of the browser window and none of the functionality worked. It took me quite some time to figure out that it had actually installed okay, but I didn't realise that Vista x64 has two separate copies of the Program Files folder; one for 32 bit apps, and one for 64 bit apps. It also has two copies of Internet Explorer; one 32 bit version and one 64 bit version. I had installed the 64 bit version of IE7Pro, and was defaulted to running the 32 bit version of Internet Explorer.>

So the solution was to either default to the 64 bit version of Internet Explorer, or to install the 32 bit version of IE7Pro. I tried running the 64 bit version of Internet Explorer but I soon gave that up because a lot of the IE plugins such as Shockwave Flash (which is required for a large percentage of video sites on the internet) don't like running on that version. I then installed the 32 bit version of IE7Pro (you can install both versions side by side, so long as you use a different install folder for each) and now I have it working perfectly well. There is a minor issue with the crash recovery functionality of IE7Pro on this configuration, but the development team are aware of it and are currently working on a fix.

Windows Explorer Issues

The only other outstanding problem that I've been having with Vista x64 is with Windows Explorer plugins. More to the point, the plugins and programs work just fine, but some installers don't seem to be able to set up the context menu items for files and folders. I believe (although I may be wrong) that this is purely an installer issue.

For instance the Agent Ransack file search program that I use does not correctly set up a right click context menu, however the application works perfectly fine. If it becomes a major annoyance for me then I'll just set up a context menu by hand in the registry editor, but for now I'm happy with it.>

On the other hand the TreeSize application (for showing you how big each folder is hierarchically) installs a right click context menu just fine, as does the Bulk Rename Utility (BRU) (an application for bulk renaming large amounts of files in a folder).>

Critical mass

I believe that there is also a certain amount of critical mass required for 64 bit. Once more and more people start using it, more and more developers will start developing for it. So lets start using it everyone.

I'd love to hear your comments on your experiences with 64 bit Windows, both good and bad.

TileEngine Downloads fixed.

Buzzrick — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:25:30 GMT

People have been telling me that they can't download my latest TileEngine Tech Demo, and I found out that it was due to the permissions model changing when I upgraded the Soap Dragon website recently. I have found the issue now so you should be able to download it fine.

You will still have to register to get access to the Tech Demo downloads however.

Updated TileEngine technology demo available (v0.6.3)

Buzzrick — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:07:27 GMT

I've posted an updated TileEngine Technology Demo to v0.6.3 for dowload on the Soap Dragon Games website. The new version look very similar to the old v0.2.3 one but there are a lot of changes behind the scenes, including heaps of scripting updates, dialog box handling, dynamic buttons (which can be created in lua script), multiple player actors and switching between them, and a bunch of other improvements.

It also includes a (semi) working map editor, but you need to know some script commands to make it work.

Jump over to the site and download it. I'm keen to hear any feedback that you have about it.

Moving in to the Game Development industry

Buzzrick — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:02:24 GMT

My head is spinning.

Last week the guys from the game development house Straylight Studios contacted me and offered me a job as a senior programmer. I've been talking to them for a while about the possibility of working there, but I thought that it was a bit of a shot in the dark.

So anyway I have accepted the job. Hell, how could I not accept. Game development has been my hobby since I was about 8 years old, and it is my ultimate career choice. They could have asked for me to work for free and I would have jumped at it (well, not actually, I still have a family to support).

I'm starting on the 21st of April, which is just in time for their company reboot. I've been told which project I'll be working on initially, but I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to comment on publicly just yet. I do know that I'll be using C++, C# and Lua.

I was a bit worried about how it would go down with everyone at eMedia (where I current work as a web developer) because it's going to make things hard for everyone until they can find someone to fill my shoes, but everyone has been REALLY supportive.

Gary Gygax passes away

Buzzrick — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:07:47 GMT

As various sources around the web are reporting the death of Gary Gygax. Gary was of course the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons

I've never really thought about it before but this guy was actually a major influence in my life, from playing D&D at high school, to when I started playing with computer game development I used to base all of my code on good ol' 3d6 dice rolls rules out of the D&D rulebooks.

A salute to Gary. You have left a mark on our world and we thank you for it.

IIS service can't start after Vista SP1 installed

Buzzrick — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 06:41:56 GMT

I've just recently installed Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, since then I my IIS services won't start. It wouldn't start because it relied in the WAS service (the Windows Process Activation Service) which also wouldn't start. I finally found a solution:

Open an elevated command prompt window (Go to Start->All Programs->Accessories, right click Command Prompt and select run as Administrator)
Type "cd %Windir%\system32\inetsrv\config"
Edit the applicationHost.config file (type "notepad ApplicationHost.config")
Find the "system.applicationHost" sectionGroup and add a configHistory section.

Before I had done this my system.applicationHost looked like this:

 

<
sectionGroup name="system.applicationHost">

     <section name="applicationPools" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="customMetadata" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="listenerAdapters" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="log" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="sites" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="webLimits" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

</sectionGroup>>

With the added line it looks like this:

 

<
sectionGroup name="system.applicationHost">

     <section name="applicationPools" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="customMetadata" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="listenerAdapters" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="log" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="sites" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="webLimits" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

     <section name="configHistory" allowDefinition="AppHostOnly" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

</sectionGroup>>

>

Once this has been saved then the WAS service would start okay, and hence
IIS is now running. 



I hope this information is useful to someone.>



ASP.NET MVC framework .NET usergroup event in Dunedin
Buzzrick — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:27:12 GMT

We have another Dunedin .Net User group event coming up next Wednesday (27th Feb)


John-Daniel Trask from Mindscape is
coming down and will be introducing the ASP.NET MVC framework from Microsoft which
allows developers to create ASP.NET solutions without using standard webforms that
they’re used to. 


This new framework empowers developers to more easily create robust solutions based
on solid design patterns. 


This talk will start by introducing the MVC pattern and then dive into the specifics
of the framework so even if are new to using the MVC design pattern you will be able
to understand what is being discussed. 


Finally, he will cover unit testing and mocking to validate your solutions. 


 


The MVC pattern is becoming more and more common in development, so I highly recommend
that everyone comes along and check it out.  Scott Guthrie has a great blog entry
discussing the MVC
framework.


The presentation will be at the Centre for Innovation on the university campus, and
we'll be starting off at 6pm.


Register online at on the dot.net.nz
website




Summer Road Trip 2008
Buzzrick — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:42:22 GMT
Yesterday we had the Microsoft Summer Road Trip event here in Dunedin for the launch of Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008...


XNA Game Studio 2.0 and Visual Studio 2008
Buzzrick — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 23:06:12 GMT

There's a pretty good article over on CodeProject discussing how to get an XNA
Game Studio 2.0 project working in Visual Studio 2008.  It also quickly goes
over how to get an XNA project hosted in a Windows Forms application.


Take a look at http://www.thecodeproject.com/KB/game/XNA_And_Beyond.aspx




Visual Studio 2008 Released
Buzzrick — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:52:16 GMT

As I mentioned earlier, Visual Studio 2008 has been released, as well as the final
release of the v3.5
.NET Framework.  MSDN subscribers can download Visual
Studio 2008 (both the Standard and Professional versions) already, or if you're
not a subscriber you can choose from the free Visual
Studio Express Editions.


I don't expect to see much of a change because I've been running the beta versions
here for about 6 months as my main development platform, but I'm looking forward to
some stability improvements.  One big change that I like is that the Professional
edition now supports Unit Tests (VS2005 Pro didn't).


I just wish there was a way to run .NET v3.5 websites on a windows 2000 server :-(


 




XNA Game Studio 2.0 beta
Buzzrick — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:42:29 GMT

You've probably already heard this from a hundred blogs across the planet already,
but there is a beta
release of XNA Game Studio 2.0 available.  The official announcement on the
XNA blog is here. 
They also have a full list of what's
new on the official site.


The biggest changes include support for Visual Studio 2005.  You don't have to
run it on Visual C# Express anymore.  Unfortunately there is no support for Visual
Studio 2008 which was released yesterday, although I imagine it will be supported
by the time it comes out of beta.


It also includes support for the new multiplayer APIs so you can set up your games
to play over system link, xbox Live (you need an XNA Creators Club membership for
that), as well as over a local network.




Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX SLI
Buzzrick — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 01:07:13 GMT

My wife must love me.


I was checking out trademe the other day and happened across a very cheap factory
recertified MSI
Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX video card, pretty much identical to the Gigabyte one
that I currently already use, for only $200NZD.  The normal retail for this is
over $500NZD.  I thought to myself that it would be bloody nice to set up as
SLI in my system, but I didn't have the pocket money, and we are going into a financially
tight time coming up to christmas with the kids so I just thought that was the
end of it.


My wonderful wife disappeared and came back half an hour later and said that I could
buy it; she had shuffled some money around so that we could buy it out of the
family account.


So now I have a great twin 7800GTX SLI rig.  It's awesome.  My 3DMark scores
have almost doubled, and I can bump up to almost maximum video quality settings in
most games.  


I'm just loving playing Half-Life
2 Episode 2 with full shadows and no noticeable slowdowns.  Half Life creeps
the sh!t out of me at the best of times but now it's even better especially when you
see the shadow of a Headcrab Zombie coming around the corner.  I also like when
you're holding something up with the gravity gun (like a circular saw blade with a
Zombie's name on it) and the flashlight on, and getting accurate shadows on the walls.


I initially had some a problem with the computer shutting down when an intensive graphics
application started, but I juggled my power connections around so that the two video
cards get enough power.  I definitely recommend a good quality power supply if
you are setting up an SLI rig.


The only issue that I have now is that with some games (well, only one in particular)
when you exit the normal Windows Vista screen doesn't reappear.  It just remains
black.  I can blindly run a reboot command, and as soon as the reboot starts
the screen will reappear before windows shuts down, but it's still a pain in the arse.


Anyway, I know that my wife doesn't read my blog, but thanks sweetheart!  She
definitely must love me if she's helping me buy something which can only make me want
to spend MORE time on my computer.


 




Interesting new gameplay on PS3 (Eye of Judgement)
Buzzrick — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:11:58 GMT
IGN has a great video review of a new game coming out on Playstation 3 called "Eye of Judgement".  It's a card based game like M:TG, but it uses the new eyetoy to control it.  I'm not usually into card battle games but this looks like quite a bit of fun.


Sharing solutions between Visual Studio 2005 and 2008
Buzzrick — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:53:29 GMT

If you are running both Visual
Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 (beta 2 at the time of writing) then you may
wish to load solutions with both IDEs.  Unfortunately the Solution files are
a binary format which differs between VS2005 and VS2008, however the Project files
are a text format which is backwards compatible.


So what I do is I copy the VS2005 solution files (.sln, .sou, .vsscc and .vssscc)
and append "_VS2008" to the end of the filename, so for example you would rename "myapp.sln"
to "myapp_vs2008.sln" etc.  Then I load this new solution into VS2008 which will
convert it. 


 

Then you have two solution files, one which is loadable in VS2005 and one which is
loadable in VS2008.  I often use this in my development environment where most
of my developers are still using VS2005, but I use VS2008 B2, and we can collaborate
using both versions.




Playing Battlefield 2 Online on Windows Vista.
Buzzrick — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 01:04:52 GMT

I bought Battlefield
2 last week after playing with a demo. I was keen to get online and play with
real people


Actually, I bought the Battlefield 2 Deluxe version which includes the Special
Forces expansion as well.


I got home and installed it on my Windows Vista machine, installed the latest 1.41
patch, and rubbed my hands in glee as I tried to connect to a server...




Invalid CD Key




I was shattered.


I googled for a few hours trying to figure out a solution. Was it a firewall issue?
Was it a router issue? I tried all sorts of solutions. The single player game ran
just fine, it just wouldn't accept my CD keys when I tried to play online.


Eventually I found that I needed to run the game as an administrator to get it to
work.


I also changed the compatibility mode to run as Windows XP SP2, but I'm not sure if
that is actually required.


So I'm finally playing online and working my way to unlock my first extra weapon (going
for a new sniper rifle).


If anyone sees me online (I'll be playing as "Buzzrick") then give me a shout. Or
shoot me. Or something




Lua v5.1.2 released
Buzzrick — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 21:20:11 GMT



Lua 5.1.2 is now available at http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.1.2.tar.gz


This new release fixes all of the known documented bugs from v5.1.1 (see the list
at http://www.lua.org/bugs.html#5.1.1).  
Thanks to Luiz and all the other contributors.


Hopefully I'll be able to get my Vault source safe repository back online soon and
get this release built into my TileEngine platform.  Unfortunately SourceGear
Vault isn't supported on Vista yet, so i'm going to have to install it on a spare
WinXP box that I have.  Apparently SourceGear are planning an update to v3.5.2
in a month or so with Vista support.  There is a thread about this on their forums
here: http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=7048


 




Motherboard back again
Buzzrick — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 21:24:34 GMT

I finally got my motherboard back from being sent away for warranty repair (see here)
and i'm not at all suprised to see that even though the board was marked as "repaired",
it is just the same as before.  In fact now i'm having some weird issues where
Vista gets into a state where the UI seems to be responsive but no applications actually
seem to get their messages about mouseclicks or anything.  It's annoying as hell. 
I have to physically reboot the machine to recover.




The Ballad of Black Mesa
Buzzrick — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 01:36:14 GMT

Someone has made an awesome music video with Half life 2 and Gary's mod.


I just thought that I'd share it with everyone.








Physics and AI for Star Wars game
Buzzrick — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:50:09 GMT

Ozymandias (Andre Vrignaud) has posted links to some awesome YouTube footage showing
off a bit of the "Digital Molecular Matter" physics and Euphoria AI being used in
the upcoming Star Wars game Star
Wars: The Force Unleashed.  It is absolutely awesome.  It is still in
the tech demo stage, but I can see a day when we are all using plugin modules to accomplish
these results.


Head over to Ozymandias
blog entry to view the tech demo videos.




A bump in the road
Buzzrick — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 23:09:54 GMT

It's been a while since I've posted so I figure I should keep everyone in the loop.


I was planning to get a whole lot of work done over the christmas break, but ended
up spending heaps of time with my wife and kids, which was probably more fun anyway.


Getting back to work was hectic because we are in new offices so I've been rebuilding
the network and trying to keep up with coding jobs as well.


Last week I installed Vista on my home machine which runs great, short of the lack
of drivers for either of the available ADSL modems that I have.  I ended up having
to revert to building an old computer and running it without a monitor as a gateway
machine.  It is appropriately named R2D2 on my home network.


During the period of installing Vista and trying to get the ADSL modems working on
it I had to reboot lots of times.  Unfortunately I'm having further issues with
my Gigabyte
GA-8N-SLI Pro motherboard (see here and here).  


The problem that I am having is that when I turn the computer on it will power up
for a couple of seconds and then reboot (you can hear the drives recycling and the
fans resetting), then powers for a couple of seconds, then reboots, etc.

 

This will happen anywhere from 4 times or more. I've seen it cycle more than a dozen
times before, but I usually turn it off again before it does it too many times for
fear of causing permanent damage to the computer. If the rebooting does stop then
it won't load up the video card (a Gigabyte 7800GTX card) and the computer will continue
to load into windows but without the video card working. At this point I have to turn
it off again to try again.


This happens at least 19 out of 20 times that I turn it on. Getting the
machine to boot up is a labourious task because of this; it can take over 30 minutes
or more to get it to turn on successfully.  This definately made installing Vista
a problem, especially due to the fact that I needed to open the box a bunch of times
and twiddle with the internal PCI ADSL modem.


Usually I avoid the problem by not turning off my computer, but after
last week I decided to get something sorted out about it.


I think it must be an incompatibility with the motherboard and my Pentium D 830
CPU, which is supposed to be supported but I'm not entirely sure.


Unfortunately the only option to get it sorted was to send it back to the supplier
in australia, and it could take a couple of weeks to sort out, so once again I am
without a decent computer to code on.  On top of that my source code repository
(running on SourceGear Vault)
is on that computer so I can't even code on my laptop.


I have been doing a bit of work creating tilesets however, so during this downtime
I might attempt to get a better set of graphics for my TileEngine prototypes. 
I've been working on some cave wall tilesets, plus some better brick walls, and also
some road floor tiles and roadsigns etc.

>>


DirectX 9 December 2006 released
Buzzrick — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 03:49:33 GMT

Just days after Microsoft released XNA Studio Express they have now released the December
2006 DirectX SDK.


Head over to the Direct
Download page and grab it.




XNA Studio Express has gone live
Buzzrick — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:30:35 GMT

Well this one snuck up on me a bit.


I came in this morning and found that the Microsoft XNA team had released XNA Game
Studio Express v1.0!  Head over to http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/gse/ to
grab it.  It is still free of course, however if you want to create games for
your Xbox 360 then you'll need to subscribe to the XNA Creators Club from the Xbox
Live Marketplace on your Xbox 360.  You will need an active Xbox Live silver
or gold subscription to do that.


Looking at the system requirements it appears that you still need Microsoft Visual
C# 2005 Express edition installed, which surprised me a bit because one of the most
requested features that I was aware of is the ability to use other editions of Visual
Studio 2005.  For instance I have Visual Studio 2005 Professional, and I usually
use either Visual C++ or Visual Basic; I haven't delved into C# nearly as deep as
the other two languages.  From the readme:

XNA Game Studio Express is designed to work only with Microsoft Visual C# 2005
Express Edition. Other members of the Visual Studio 2005 line of products, for example
Visual Studio 2005 Professional, can co-exist with XNA Game Studio Express on the
same computer. However, you cannot access the functionality of XNA Game Studio Express
from these other products. 

Other than that, I'm sorry that I haven't had many updates lately.  Things have
been pretty hectic around here;  we recently moved offices at work, renovations
on the new kitchen at home are just about complete, and it's Christmas time etc.


I'm off on holiday next week so I'll hopefully be able to get back into development
on my TileEngine.  It has progressed somewhat, i've been working on some new
tilesets for a Christmas themed game for the kids.


 




Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta 2) Available
Buzzrick — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:27:09 GMT



The XNA team have just released Beta 2 of Microsoft
XNA Game Studio Express for download.  For the direct download page download
it here. 


The new beat includes the content pipeline functionality that we've all been waiting
for.  There are quite a few changes between Beta 1 and Beta 2 so anything that
you've built with the first beta will need a few modifications to work, however they
say that the changes between Beta 2 and release should be much smaller.


For a lot more details on what has changed, head over to the XNA
Team Blog and read Mitch
Walker's post.


The readme
page notes that you'll still need to run it on Visual C# Express, and it still
doesn't run out of the box on Vista.  It is well worth reading the readme before
you start because there are some important setup issues:

1.1.1. Uninstall XNA Game Studio Express Beta1 Before Installing
XNA Game Studio Express Beta2



You must uninstall XNA Game Studio Express Beta1 before installing XNA Game Studio
Express Beta2. You can uninstall XNA Game Studio Express Beta1 using the Add or
Remove Programs applet in Control Panel.


1.1.2. Visual Studio 2005 Reports "This Project Type is Not
Supported", After Uninstalling XNA Game Studio Express Beta1



Uninstalling XNA Game Studio Express Beta1 causes ProjectAggregator.dll to be unregistered.
As a result, if you have SKUs of Visual Studio other than Visual C# Express installed
on the same computer, they may report that some project types are no longer supported.
Examples of such SKUs are Visual Studio 2005 Standard and Visual Studio 2005 Professional.


To workaround this issue, give the following command at a console command prompt to
re-register ProjectAggregator.dll.

 regsvr32.exe "%vs80comntools%\..\IDE\projectaggregator.dll"

This issue is fixed in the Beta2 release of XNA Game Studio Express; uninstalling
Beta2 will not cause this issue.


1.1.3. Run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition at Least Once Before
Installing XNA Game Studio Express



You should run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition at least once before installing XNA
Game Studio Express. Otherwise, features of XNA Game Studio Express may be missing
from the user interface. For example, the XNA Game Studio Xbox 360 item in Tools
| Options dialog may be missing. If you encounter this issue, we recommend that
you do the following: 



Uninstall XNA Game Studio Express. 

Run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition. 

Exit Visual C# 2005 Express Edition. 

Reinstall XNA Game Studio Express. 



1.1.4. Register Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Before
Installing XNA Game Studio Express



You must register Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition before installing XNA Game
Studio Express. To register Visual C# 2005 Express Edition, click Register Product on
the Help menu. 


1.1.5. Close Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Before Installing
XNA Game Studio Express



Before installing XNA Game Studio Express, close any running instances of Visual C#
2005 Express Edition.



 




Visual Basic 2005 and XNA Studio
Buzzrick — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:02:34 GMT

For all of you VB.NET developers out there Alan
Phipps has a really good tutorial on how to get XNA studio up and running on Visual
Basic 2005.


Take a look at his
XNA/VB.NET tutorial.  Good work Alan




New Visual Studio Powertoys includes C++ code Snippets
Buzzrick — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 04:53:47 GMT

Yesterday a new bunch of Visual
Studio 2005 IDE enhancement powertoys were released.  The pack includes 5
powertoys, most of them are pretty average, but the last one is something that I've
been wanting since VS 2005 came out:


Source Code Outliner : The Source Outliner tool is a Visual Studio
extension that provides a tree view of your source code's types and members and lets
you quickly navigate to them inside the editor.


This doesn't appear to work with C++.  I haven't installed the powertoys on my
work computer yet, so I haven't had the chance to see how well it works with VB.net
and C#, or how much use it is.



Indexed Find : The Indexed Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that uses
the Microsoft Indexing Service to provide improved Search capabilities to the integrated
development environment (IDE). It sends the results of a search to the Output Window.


I've never been much of a fan of the indexing service, especially when it comes
to finding files on the filesystem.  I think that the default find functionality
in Visual Studio 2005 works perfectly well as it is.  If I really need
to find something on the filesystem (when it isn't isn't in an open VS solution) then
I'll use the exellent Agent
Ransack tool (which is free btw), and I have it installed on every machine
that I use.



Super Diff Utility: The Super Diff Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that
compares text files. It uses color coding and graphics to show the difference between
the files in deleted text (red), changed text (blue), inserted text (green). 


I haven't tested this very much.  It's a nice tool, but I haven't seen much to
write home about.  It is a good replacement for the windiff tool from the Windows
Resource Kit, I'll probably start using it a bit, but I already use the perfectly
functional compare functionality within Visual Studio.  Unfortunately it doesn't
integrate with Source Code Control providers, so for that I use the Vault Compare
tool which comes with SourceGear
Vault (my source code control provider of choice).



Event Toaster Utility: The Event Toaster tool is a Visual Studio extension
that notifies users about specific events within the Visual Studio IDE.


This is a weird one... who dreamed this up.  I can only say that it would be
useful for very large projects.  It allows you to be alerted when any of the
following events occur:  Build Completed, Code Analysis Completed, Entering Break
Mode, Execution Session Completed, Document Opened, and Document Saved.  The
ways that you can be alerted is via customisable sounds, or taskbar notifications,
or you can run a command or macro on any of these events.


It could be useful for me in the future, but at this stage I can't see me using it.


Visual C++ Code Snippets:The Visual C++ Code Snippets tool lets you
insert snippets in your code by using a pop-up menu that contains programming keywords.
VB.NET and C# languages have this functionality in Visual Studio 2005. 


This is the powertoy which has me all excited!  We finally have code
snippet functionality for C++.  Try these out for size:



Drag over a block of code, right click on it and select "Surround with..." to be provided
with a bunch of different control blocks, such as a try block or a while loop.  

Type "tryf" and press tab to create a complete try/catch/finally block 

Type "attribute" and press tab to create a full class attribute (based on the attribute
guidelines on MSDN (this is for C++/CLI). 

Type "prop" and press tab.  This will create a class property.  I've modified
this because I'm not familiar with the format that it produces (is it C++/CLI?),
to create a class with a __declspec statement as per this
page on MSDN. You can download the modified property snippet file here: prop.snippet
(1.22 KB)



You can of course create your own code snippets.  Just copy any of the default
snippet files from the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\Snippets\1033\Visual
C++" folder into your custom snippets folder at "C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\My
Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Code Snippets\Visual C++\My Code Snippets" and modify
them to suit.


Anyway, go and download
the powertoys for yourself and have a try.




Isometric Coordinate Calculation tutorial formula errors
Buzzrick — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 22:29:21 GMT

Michael Thomas Daniels has just helped point out that some of the formula on my
Isometric Coordinate Calculation tutorial were broken.  It turns out that for
some reason the HTML editor on the site was stripping out the '+' characters. 
I fixed the error in one formula and then immediately noticed that the plus symbols
in another formula had disappeared.  


I've fixed them all now, but I'm going to have to keep an eye on it when I make any
changes in the future.  


Thanks Mike for pointing it out.

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1.1.3. Run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition at Least Once Before Installing XNA Game Studio Express

1.1.4. Register Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Before Installing XNA Game Studio Express

1.1.5. Close Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Before Installing XNA Game Studio Express

Visual Basic 2005 and XNA Studio

New Visual Studio Powertoys includes C++ code Snippets

Isometric Coordinate Calculation tutorial formula errors