Kurt Shintaku's Blog

[this is a republish of MSDN UK’s newsletter article]

XNA Game Studio
Platform games, shoot-em-ups, racing games, and adventure games. Peek this and poke that and the next generation of software developers were born. But why don’t people write games for fun anymore? Perhaps games and their programming languages went in different directions, we all grew up and wrote database applications. Writing simple games became hard and the immediacy and fun just got drowned out in the API calls and lines of C++.

Move forward a couple of decades, and enter XNA Game Studio. The founding principle behind XNA Game Studio was to enable people who like coding for fun to create and share great games. Games can be written once and with minimal changes be deployed to run on Windows or the Xbox 360. Version 2 of XNA enabled the creation of networked games over Xbox Live and with version 3 (currently in CTP) games can now target the Zune!

XNA comprises a collection of code frameworks that simplify the game creation process. Namespaces for handling player input, storage, sound, maths, networking, and of course, graphics are provided – the latter provides 2- and 3-D handling, including sprite management and collision detection. Key to the framework is two core infrastructure elements – the Game Class, and the Content Pipeline.
The Game Class provides a convenient set of event handlers that constitute a typical game loop – get input, update the game state, update the screen. You insert your game code in the handler routines, and XNA does the heavy lifting.

The Content Pipeline is key to how XNA can provide both independence between deployment devices and handle game resources from multiple sources. When a game initialises, the game resources (such as sounds, meshes, textures etc.) are loaded into the pipeline. During game play, you can access your resources from the pipeline as needed – and because XNA uses generics, you can ensure type-safe access as well.

As well as the Framework, XNA provides a set of extensions to Visual Studio to allow remote deployment and debugging of your game to an Xbox 360, or Zune. Currently v2.0 supports Visual Studio 2005, and the 3.0 CTP supports Visual Studio 2008.

Finally, bringing the whole community together is the XNA Creator’s Club where you’ll find everything you need – from discussion forums to complete game source. More recently we launched the Creator’s Club Online where you can share your games with the community or peer-review and download games from other XNA fans.

Getting started with XNA couldn’t be simpler – especially since everything you’ll need to write great games for Windows is FREE, and available for download. Everything you need to know about creating your first game can be seen in the Quick Start guide.

C’mon – what are you waiting for? Me? I’m off to play snake…

Andy Sithers
Academic Evangelism Manager
XNA Team Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2008/05/07/announcing-xna-game-studio-3-0-community-technical-preview-ctp.aspx

There’s had been a lot of discussion about Jim Gray, one of Microsoft’s best and brightest minds in database development.  (Jim was the target of a massive search & rescue after failing to return from a sailing trip on time – I wish his family the best.)

Jim is recognized as the world’s thought leader in database development.  Formerly an IBM Researcher, Jim has been very important in the development and advancement of SQL Server technology at Microsoft.  The rearchitecture of SQL Server from 6.5 to 7.0 and beyond was driven by Jim Gray’s guidance.

In fact, Microsoft has a lot of famous employees within it’s ranks.  I’ve even met a few folks that wrote the very software that I used back in the BBS days.  Here’s a short list of some of the folks that I’m aware of.  I hope you find this interesting:

• Alexey Pajitnov – Famed Russian Puzzle Designer & Creator of Tetris
• Jim Gray – Father of the Modern Database & Pioneer in Database Scalability
• Rakesh Agrawal – Inventor of modern Data Mining (TechFellow – Search Labs)
• Peter Molyneux – Video Game Luminary, founder of Lionhead Studios
• Ray Ozzie – Co-creator of Lotus Notes & Groove Networks
• Jean Paoli – Co-Creator of the industry XML 1.0 Standard
• Richard Garfield – Creator of Magic the Gathering
• Scott Isaacs – Co-creator of AJAX development & DHTML standards
• Ryan Parsell – Creator of Spaces, the world’s largest scalable blogging system
• Dave Cutler – Creator of Windows NT & VAX/VMS
• Jim Allchin – Father of Enterprise Directory Services, former directory services lead at Banyan
• Tim Patterson – Creator of DOS & minimum memory programming technology
• Gordon Bell – Leading Scalable Systems & Telepresence Researcher
• Anders Hejlsberg – Creator of Delphi & father of C#
• Mark Russonovich – Industry-recognized Windows Kernel & Internals expert
• Michael H. Freedman – Pioneer in Quantum Computing research
• Jim T. Kajiya – Pioneer of Modern Parallel Computing
• Yousef Khalidi – Chief Architect of Sun Solaris & UNIX Clustering
• Roy Levin – Creator & Lead developer of first Object Oriented Programming environment & language, Principal Scientist of Xerox PARC
• Tarek Najm – Father of Microsoft’s adCenter, Recognized leader in advertising platforms research
• Eric Traut – Thought leader in Virtual Machine Technology, creator of various virtual machine engines, created Apple’s 680×0 emulator for PowerPC, Sony Playstation emulator for PS2, etc.
• Anders Vinberg – Father of CA Unicenter
• Chuck Thacker – Co-Inventor of Ethernet-based networking, former Xerox PARC Researcher
• Gursharan Sidhu – Inventor of the AppleTalk protocol
• Rick Rashid – Lead developer of the Mach Kernel @ CMU (Foundation for Mac OS X)

UPDATE: (7/21 4:50PM)  Added Gusharan Sidhu & Rick Rashid on the recommendation of coworker.

I’m going to be offline for a bit.  A combination of family obligations, work-related travel, and a very belated vacation are going to have me freezing the blog for a while.  If I do post anything it’ll be through the email-based posting feature of Spaces, where emails I send to it get posted so nothing posted over the next 2-3 weeks is going to be substantial.

I’ll be back sometime in early to mid August.

An Microsoft HR intern created this video called “Perks”.

It does nice job of summarizing many of the little oft unmentioned reasons why I love working for this company and haven’t even remotely considered leaving in my many years of employment at Microsoft. 

And yes – I’ve worked at many other tech companies and even the absolute worst day here is better than the best day at so many other places.

Well, this was a pleasant surprise.

There is a competitive gaming organization called the Championship Gaming Series that’s been broadcast on DirecTV 101 and G4TV.  It pits teams of the best Xbox 360 gamers against each other from city to city.  Games played include: Forza Motorsport 2, Dead or Alive 4 (Two competitions – one for women, one for men), FIFA 08, and Counterstrike Source (PC).

Personally, I’m a big fan.  I love seeing the best of the best compete against each other.  The show lacks a certain polish to it being that the production quality is a little iffy, bordering on ghetto, however it nonetheless has great skilled players in it that’s very much worth watching.

Now available for free:  LIVE STREAMING ON WINDOWS MOBILE
If you own a Windows Mobile powered device like a Samsung Blackjack, a Verizon xv6600, a Samsung i760, or any number of devices out there with both Windows Media Player and Pocket Internet Explorer, you’re going to love the fact that you can now get it live in a stream to your device by simply doing one of two things:

1) Send a text message to 63636, with the word CGS in the body.  It will send you the URL below.

OR

2) Go to http://cgs.tmce.biz/wap4?app=cgs&info1=sc on Pocket Internet Explorer.

You can see Headlines on the latest competitions, live video or archived video of the days competitions, recent scores, and other things.

Q:  Tired of having to unlock your device after every 15 minutes – even when you’re on the phone?

One of our user group members, Cassio Goldschmidt, wrote a program that keeps you from having to enter your 4 digit password for a predetermined amount of time like an hour.  It doesn’t bypass anything on the system nor does it hack your registry.  It’s a little program that’s has a Today screen entry, is available for either Smartphone or for Pocket PC, and costs $4.99 at Handango.

• LockMeNot – Pocket PC
  http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=1&osId=992&jid=XXF67CB43555ADD4F5131FD8D9AFE58F
  &platformId=2&N=4294911038&Ntt=lockmenot&R=225032&
  productId=225032
• LockMeNot – Smartphone
  http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=1&osId=992&jid=XXF67CB43555ADD4F5131FD8D9AFE58F
  &platformId=2&N=4294911038&Ntt=lockmenot&R=224968&
  productId=224968&viewAnyWay=1

Apparently, we’ve made Sudoku v2.0 a free download off of the Total Access site for Windows Mobile.

Not since Tetris© and the Rubik Cube© has there been anything like it.

Simply enter the digits 1 to 9 in the grid without repeating in rows, columns or boxes. Easy. How hard can it be?

We promise you that after just one go you will be hooked on this fantastic 200 year old Japanese conundrum.

DOWNLOAD: 
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/totalaccess/software/sudoku.mspx

Here are a few things that seriously caught my attention at E3 today.

1. FALLOUT 3 WILL HAVE XBOX-EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT!
   Fallout 3… produced by Bethesda Softworks… was announced to have, just as with earlier title, Elder Scrolls Oblivion: Shivering Isles, ’substantial exclusive downloadable content’…
   …only available on Xbox 360.  (And Games for Windows!)
   
2. PORTAL:  STILL ALIVE… XBOX-EXCLUSIVE!
   Portal:  Still Alive, the hit game from the Orange Box (The 5 title game set from Valve containing Half Life 2/Intro, Half Life 2/Episode 1, Half Life 2/Episode 2, & Team Fortress) will be coming this fall…
   …only available on Xbox 360.
   
3. FINAL FANTASY XIII COMING TO XBOX 360 AT RELEASE
   WOW.  This was a doozy.  Final Fantasy XIII, after being a Sony exclusive for 13 iterations, will be released on the Xbox 360 the same day that it’s released on the Playstation 3.  God bless Hironobu Sakaguchi.
   
4. NEW SYSTEM CONSOLE CAN RIP OF GAME DISCS TO HARD DRIVE FOR FASTER PLAY
   This was actually on Major Nelson’s blog – not the E3 announcement.  There’s a feature in the new system console update coming this fall that will allow game discs to be copied to the hard drive for much faster load times and playback.  You will STILL need to have the game disc in the system however game data will be loaded off the hard drive for high performance load times.
   
5. XBOX 360 HAS MORE UNITS SOLD IN THE US THAN WII OR PS3
   SVP Don Matrick, "When it comes to hardware, we’re in fantastic shape. According to NPD, we’re leading the market with the largest install base in the US, more than 5m ahead of PS3; in software, ahead as well, 2.7b in the last 12 months.

   In the last year 3rd party revenue outpaced the Wii and PS3 combined. I’m willing to declare here, today, that Xbox 360 will sell more consoles worldwide than PS3 and Wii. We’ll offer an array of consoles with prices for everyone. …A year ago, 6m people were connected to Xbox live, and it’s doubled, a new member joining every 5 seconds."
   

6. 5 PLAYER COOP ON GEARS OF WAR 2
   Gears of War 2, available November 7th, will have a special 5 player coop mode called Horde where you basically fight off waves and waves of enemies.
   
7. XBOX PRIMETIME “1 VS 100”
   Endemol & Microsoft will partner to bring a massively multiplayer online version of “1 vs 100” featuring real prizes.
   
8. XBOX LIVE TITLES
   Geometry Wars
   UNO rush
   Galaga Legions
   (Note:  This is a true sequel to the original Galaga by Midway.  This looks really GOOD!)
   
9. AND EVERYTHING ELSE
   1. Netflix Partnership
      Partnership with NetFlix will make Netflix movies streamable to the console
   2. New system console & avatars
      New System Console will feature a 3D look and provide avatars… more on this later.  This is SERIOUSLY going to rock.  The people doing this console work really have been silently working on good stuff.
   3. NBC Universal partnership
      NBC Universal will be providing content to Xbox Live including movies & TV shows
   4. GTA4 XBOX-EXCLUSIVE content
      Grand Theft Auto 4’s XBox 360-exclusive content is still coming this fall, in case you forgot
   5. New Game:  SCENEIT?  BOX OFFICE SMASH
      A new version of the Big Button game and it will use the avatars of the new System Console.
   6. New Game:  YOU’RE IN THE MOVIES
      Featuring the Xbox Live Camera which records scenes, digitally synthesizes items on you, and puts you in prescripted movies.
   7. New Game:  LIPS 
      Karaoke Game feature microphone and sing-along gaming with point matching people that hit the appropriate pitch.

The System Center product group produced a video on how to install the Service Level Dashboard, import the necessary management pack, and configure the necessary service level parameters.

(For more on the Service Level Dashboard for SCOM2007, go to http://blogs.technet.com/smsandmom/archive/2008/07/08/service-level-dashboard-for-system-center-operations-manager-2007.aspx)

The video is about 12 minutes long and is obviously mostly done within the Operations Manager operator’s console.  It’s not complex but there’s quite a bit involved in configuring the management pack for doing service level monitoring for a given app to a decent depth.  Check it out:
http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2008/07/07/service-level-dashboard-video-overview.aspx

<taken from the PowerShell team blog>
Jeffery Snover of the PowerShell team blog wrote a rather interesting article highlighting how to drastically improve the performance of PowerShell v1.0’s startup times.

• http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2008/07/11/speeding-up-powershell-startup.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2007/11/08/update-gac-ps1.aspx

WHAT IS THIS?
The net of it is that he runs the following script and the result is much improved startup times for anything initially executed in PowerShell. 

Note that you will need administrator access to run the script below.

Set-Alias ngen @(
dir (join-path ${env:windir} "Microsoft.NETFramework") ngen.exe -recurse |
sort -descending lastwritetime
)[0].fullName
[appdomain]::currentdomain.getassemblies() | %{ngen $_.location}

WHAT ABOUT x64?
The script is just a little different for x64 with “Microsoft.NETFramework” being replaced by “Microsoft.NETFramework64”.

WHAT ABOUT POWERSHELL v2.0?
The problem will be fixed in Powershell 2.0 so this is specific to v1.0.