02/24/09 - Welcome back everyone. Recently I spoke at the Twin Cities XNA User Group about 3D math in games and had a great time seeing all the XNA developers interested in learning about the math needed in games. Unfortunately my talk was a bit more math oriented than I had planned and had a few bad explanations in it. I'll post all the code and presentation materials here on the site (check Projects > Articles). I'll post some clarifications to my explanations here at my blog.

Since Live Writer doesn't seem to like my GeeksWithBlogs blog I'm also trying to semi-update my Windows Live Space which you can find at: http://matchristian.spaces.live.com/.

As a final update, I'd just like to mention I've got 2 games in development right now, a version of Pong RPG for Xbox as well as an engine entitled 'Turf' (development name). Hopefully I'll have more information on those in awhile. While on the topic of the Turf engine, I'm speaking at the Twin Cities Code Camp again in April about some ways you can dynamically generate content in your game (using examples from Turf!), details follow:

Title:Building a Dynamic Game Engine in XNA: Giving Power Back to the Creators
Abstract:In this talk, different methods for implementing a dynamic game engine are introduced. Such examples include loading game menus through XML, generating 2D levels with simple text files, and using other file formats to generate game levels, menus, etc... The primary focus of this talk is to show implementations of code that pull data from other sources to build simple games. Note, the specifics of XNA won't be detailed in this discussion unless absolutely necessary.
Date: April 04, 2009
Location: Unniversity of Minnesota

Keep Gaming.

07/28/08 - Wow it's been a long time! That's not to say I haven't been busy, in fact it's quite the opposite. I've been constantly working on the site and coding although I haven't had time to update this front page. Since I built this site to be static, it isn't easy to update sadly. Although, I am an active blogger and you can typically find daily updates from me at the following:

http://www.geekswithblogs.net/CodeBlog

In other related news, I'll be speaking at a few events later this year. Both will cover shaders and I highly suggest you stop by for some awesome discussions about HLSL! Hope to see you there!

Title: A Crash Course in HLSL
Abstract: Microsoft’s High-Level Shader Language (HLSL) is a shading language developed to give graphics programmers complete control over the graphics in their applications. This talk starts at the very basics explaining what a shader is, how it works, how to write one, and why they’re so important in the future of next-gen graphics.
Date: Sept. 11, 2008
Location: Magenic Technologies

Title: Lighten Up! Lighting a 3D World with HLSL
Abstract: The basics of Microsoft’s high-level shading language (HLSL) are introduced, including a basic overview of the rendering pipeline, through the creation of a point light shader. HLSL allows graphics programmers to create realistic graphics through the use of a combination of math algorithms and the hardware they are processed on. Around the time of DirectX 8, shaders were implemented to allow changes per geometric shape, vertex, and pixel during a frame render. As one of the items comes to render on the graphics device, the math algorithm written into the shader file is applied to the respective object and is rendered to the screen. Current technology has reached the point where shaders are a necessity for any graphics developer, considering graphics libraries such as Microsoft’s XNA have removed support for a non-programmed, ‘fixed’ graphics pipeline. A simple shader is built to emulate a point light while each step includes reasoning behind the code and relevance to the theory of a point light. A conclusion is given explaining other uses for shaders.
Date: Oct. 11, 2008
Location: New Horizons
Pre-Registration: Pre-Register Here

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02/29/08 - Look everyone, new site! I've decided to update this site with a more 'colorful' layout. I'm using Visual Studio 2008 Professional and the site is in ASP 2.0. Hopefully this will help me update it a bit more (it only took me a few days to create the whole site). Also, the change was half based on users who thought XNA tutorials should be hosted on a site written using a Microsoft Product and I thought that was a good idea as well.

I've been really busy lately, working on school, work, and 3 other projects not including this site rewrite (this is the only one that was finished quickly!). One of those other projects are the tutorials so make sure you bookmark or continuously check the tutorials page for the latest and greatest.

Keep Gaming.