The recordings for the session I gave on XNA Game Studio 3.0 and the XNA Framework to the Facebook .NET Programmers Group have now been posted.  In this session, I give an overview of XNA Game Studio 3.0 and the XNA Framework while building a simple Space Invaders clone named Alien Attack.  This game is gone into even greater detail with more features in chapter 1 of our Coding4Fun book.

You can find a quick, low-res, streaming version below, or you can download and play the recording at a higher resolution in Microsoft Office Live Meeting.  I had a great time presenting the topic and hope to speak to the group again in the future!

Meeting #13 - Coding4Fun: Designing a Video Game using XNA Game Studio 3.0 from Muneeb on Vimeo.

I will be giving a session on Tuesday, June 2nd at 6pm EST to the Facebook .NET Programmers group on XNA 3.0.  This is an online session and everyone is welcome to attend.

Topic: Building a Video Game with XNA Game Studio 3.0
Abstract: This session will demonstrate how to build a very simple 2D game (a Space Invaders clone) using XNA Game Studio 3.0. Attendees will learn how to effectively use the content pipeline, import 2D sprites into XNA, manage input from the keyboard, mouse, Xbox 360 controller and Zune, manage game state, and debug the resulting game. The sample code will be built on a PC and run on the PC, Xbox 360, and Zune platforms when complete.
Date: June 2nd, 2009
Time: 6PM Eastern | 10PM GMT/UTC - Get local event time in your city: http://tinyurl.com/l9hq65
Add to Outlook: http://tinyurl.com/mpp5of
RSVP and Event Details: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=49178981206
Live Meeting Link to join meeting: http://tinyurl.com/ago484

I’ll …

It’s time to announce the winner of my contest to win a copy of our Coding4Fun book!  15 people entered the contest via my forum.  I assigned each of them a 0-based index in the order in which they submitted their entry.  The final list was:

• leif902 = 0
• jcauble = 1
• krakerjak = 2
• RoryBecker = 3
• amrkamel = 4
• anonymous = 5
• Arrowofdarkness = 6
• qiuliocc = 7
• hanan = 8
• Amira = 9
• helpware = 10
• michaelb = 11
• FunnyX = 12
• John Bisschop = 13
• juanformoso = 14
• bringo = 15

Now, I did say you had to sign up using a valid user account, but the anonymous person linked to their blog which had contact info, so I decided to allow their entry in the mix….

To pick the winner, I wrote up a single line snippet in the ever-popular Snippet Compiler, pressed F5, and the result was…

That’s number 11, which indexes to michaelb and his winning post!  Thanks to everyone that entered for their support and kind words!

I’ve decided to setup a simple contest to give away a free copy of our book, Coding4Fun: 10 .NET Programming Projects for Wiimote, YouTube, World of Warcraft, and More.  Entering is simple.  Post a reply to this forum post located at:

https://brianpeek.com/forums/p/1012/3258.aspx

And to make it a bit more interesting, here’s a topic for your post:  How have you coded for fun?  Write up a couple sentences on any fun project you’ve tackled at some point in your spare time.  I won’t disqualify you if you don’t, but I’d love to hear about your projects, and I’m sure others would too.

Make sure you are registered on this site with a valid email address and are logged into your account so I have a way to get in touch with you if you are the winner.  No, this isn’t some elaborate scheme to harvest email addresses…

Entries must be received by Saturday, February 28th at 11:59pm EST.  One person will be randomly selected and contacted shortly thereafter …

This week, Dan Fernandez and I had the opportunity to be on the .NET Rocks! show with Richard and Carl.  We spent some time chatting about our Coding4Fun book (available at fine booksellers everywhere!) and several extremely interesting projects Richard and Carl have created in the past, including an anthromoporphic remote-controlled car, and a parrot who enjoys extremely right-wing politics.  I think you’ll just need to listen to the show to understand what those are about…

At the very last minute before Scott left for Africa, Dan Fernandez and I were able to do a quick episode of Hanselminutes to promote our book.  Have a listen to learn a bit more about our book, the projects it contains, how they were developed, and some issues we ran into when trying to use some technologies in a way they weren’t intended to be used.  Head over to the main site to stream the show in your browser or download in a variety of other formats.

I received my first copy of the book on Friday afternoon and it looks great!  It is now also listed as “In Stock” on Amazon.  Additionally, there is now a Google Preview of the book If you’d like to see a preview of the book, you can do so by clicking the Google Preview link below, or navigating directly to the Google Book Search page for this book.

We have also been busy updating the book’s main site, www.c4fbook.com, with source code, color images, project links, etc.  It’s not complete, but we should have it wrapped up in the next few days.

I can’t think of a better holiday gift for the geek in your family than this, but, I may be a bit biased…

I’ll be presenting a session on building your own holiday musical light show using Phidget boards and .NET at this month’s Tech Valley User Group.  I’ve previously written an article about this topic on the Coding4Fun site, and there will be a full chapter on this in our upcoming “Coding4Fun: 10 .NET Programming Projects for Wiimote, YouTube, World of Warcraft, and More” book.  Here are the session details…

Hope to see you at the session!

We finally have an official cover!  This is likely exciting to no one but me (and Dan)…

Dan and I are working on the very final round of edits and formatting.  The book goes to the printer next week and it should be available the first week of December according to Amazon.  So what are you waiting for?  Order now!  :)

And be sure to visit our book’s website.  The chapter items will be filled in as we near the official release so you can get a head start on the book’s content.

Well, PDC2008 is over.  I had a lot of fun, met a ton of interesting and fun people, and learned about a lot of exciting new technologies.  I hope to make it back out there next year.

Our PDC2008 session video has been posted up at Channel 9 along with the PowerPoint slide deck.  In this session you will learn about four of our current projects:  WiiEarthVR by myself, InnerTube by Dan Fernandez, TwitterVote by Clint Rutkas and BabySmash by Scott Hanselman.

If you’d like to check out the video, you can watch it “live” or download the deck and video in various formats with the following links:

• Channel 9 session page with video and slides
• WMV-HD
• WMV (not HD)
• Zune
• PowerPoint deck

Source code for all projects will be available soon and I’ll provide an update when it’s available.  WiiEarthVR will also have its own Coding4Fun article within a week or two.  InnerTube and TwitterVote are also featured in depth in our new book, “Coding4Fun: 10 …

Anyone heading out to PDC2008 this year?  I will be in attendance with (hopefully!) a new Wiimote project and perhaps a few old ones as well.  More details on that when the project is a tiny bit further.  We will also be giving away a free chapter of our new book “Coding4Fun: 10 .NET Programming Projects for Wiimote, YouTube, World of Warcraft, and More” to lucky PDC attendees at the O'Reilly booth.

I will also be co-presenting a lunch session at PDC:

Title: Coding4Fun: Windows Presentation Foundation Animation, YouTube, iTunes, Twitter, and Nintendo's Wiimote
Date/Time: Tuesday, October 28th, 12:45pm-1:30pm
Speakers: Dan Fernandez, Scott Hanselman, Brian Peek, Clint Rutkas
Room: 403AB
Abstract: Spend time with Coding4Fun authors as they walk through some DIY Development projects: TwitterVote, Wiimote, InnerTube, and BabySmash.

You can add this session to your agenda by visiting the PDC site and searching for “Coding4Fun”.

If anyone will be …

Now that we have finished writing the book, we finally have an official title and chapter listing.  Someday we may even have a cover.

The title has morphed into Coding4Fun: 10 .NET Programming Projects for Wiimote, YouTube, World of Warcraft, and More and the final chapter listing (not necessarily in this order) is:

• Alien Attack: Create a 2D clone of Space Invaders with XNA for the PC, Xbox 360, and Zune
• LEGO Soldier: Create an action game using Popfly with a custom-built virtual LEGO character
• World of Warcraft RSS Feed Reader: Use WoW's customizable interface to have feeds pop up while you're gaming
• InnerTube: Download YouTube videos automatically and convert them to a file format for off-line viewing
• PeerCast: Stream video files from any PC
• TwitterVote: Create custom online polls on Twitter
• WHSMail: Build a website with ASP.NET for Windows Home Server that lets you view the messages stored on a computer with Outlook
• "Wiimote" …

I was contacted by Boon Jin Goh recently about his super awesome Wiimote Smoothboard application.  Boon Jin took Johnny Lee’s original Wiimote Whiteboard app and added a ton of functionality.  What was a proof of concept or tech demo is now a fully functional electronic whiteboard capable of being used in a real environment.  Here’s a video showing functionality from the 0.1 version of his app, which has had several updates since.  Definitely give it a try if you’re looking for a very capable electronic whiteboard.  Great job!

Also note that both Johnny Lee and Boon Jin have contributed to our upcoming “Coding4Fun: 10 .NET Programming Projects for Wiimote, YouTube, World of Warcraft, and More” book (yes, the name changed again) with a chapter dedicated to the Wiimote Whiteboard.  This chapter will teach you how to build Johnny’s original whiteboard with the Smoothboard’s spiffy smoothing algorithm added in.

The book I am co-authoring with Dan Fernandez for O'Reilly, currently titled "10 Coding4Fun Projects with .NET for Programmers, Hobbyists, and Game Developers", is already up for sale at Amazon!

I'm trying not to be a totally shameless shill, but this is exciting.  Feel free to get your pre-order in early.  :)