Tuesday, January 29, 2008

OMG! It Rocks!

Not that I had any doubts about it. But I just tried Rock Band today, playing the guitar and drums. Man, it is fun. Why, didn't I sing? Dunno. Next time. Playing the drums was just as muc fun as I had imagined. The guitar takes a bit getting used to. It is much more sturdy and heavier than the GH guitars and has a much different feel. But it actualy feels more like playing a real guitar than GH does, much more than I had thought. Is there a flipside?! Yes, the version I have access to here two months prior to launch is a PS3 version - so no achs for me for the time being. Darn it.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

XNA Tweener library

My second open source project is live now at Codeplex - and it has a release and everything! Check it out here.

The project is a Tweener library for XNA making it easy to create animations for your games. I was inspired by the Tween class in ActionScript although it is not a direct port. All the cool easing functions from Robert Penner that you know and love are of course there, ported from the js code. So the release is functional.xnatweener

I am actually quite pleased with myself for doing this, because it has been short and focused work. The first code was created this Thursday - this was the basic Tweener class and the first ported equation as well as a very basic demo. Today (technically yesterday) i squeezed in the rest of the work, adding stuff to the Tweener class and the last equations. Then I spend some time polishing up the demo so it would look cool - getting to know my own library in the progress.

Best of all: I didn't create the library alongside a specific other project. This made it easy to focus on not making all kind of proprietary stuff and KISS. I am pleased with the result, and will use it in my games. But i find that I lack some of the fancy dynamic features from JS lacking in C# which could have made the class so much cooler - but I have some slick ideas for making it rock even more.

The project is made on Codeplex, and having tried both Codeplex and SourceForge now - I will say that Codeplex really whips the llamas a**. Or at least SF's. When I made the d20Sharp project on SF it took me ages to get up and running properly. With Codeplex it literaly took 5 minutes. And the interface on Codeplex is much better and more intuitive than the one at SF, and I won't even begin on the features... I would like the Codeplex interface for my own projects - I know it is somehow based on TFS but I haven't checked out the product as I know it is way out of my league at Gosuman pricewise. If there were a hosted licensed version out there I would probably consider it.

Anyway - download the library and take it for a cruise. Then tell me what you think. Then I will improve it.

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