Kyle Schouviller

Alright, so long story short – I didn’t slip off the earth, just found a new cave to inhabit. About the time of Gamefest my University Advisor contacted me and informed me that there had been some mistakes in my scheduling, and instead of having graduated in May, I still had 5 credits left to complete! Imagine my dismay! So I pulled things together pretty quickly and managed to work it out so I can complete those credits by using XNA more – lucky me!

First of all – I’m now helping out on the FlatRedBall engine. It’s a 2.5D engine – meaning it renders 2D objects in 3D space. It’s got tons of great features – collision detection, particle systems, great debugging tools, a wide range of graphical options, and now, post-processing. Go check it out!

Second, I’m rebuilding Dream Sower. Our first version was wonderful, but needed something extra to take it over the top. I’ve got a lot of feedback on it, and I’m rewriting some of the low-level code to get it ready for reimplementation. I really really really need an artist, so if you have services you could offer (or know someone who can), please let me know! I’m decent with 3D art, but I’d much rather have a game that has more than programmer art!

Third, and last for today (may we meet again soon!) – I’ve written an article on multi-threading using XNA for Ziggyware’s XNA Article Contest. It has some good information on writing a background loader, teaches you about some common pitfalls in multi-threading, and I even threw in a managed thread class I developed for my game. Let me know what you think of it, and if you like it a lot, go vote for it!

That’s all for now!

I finished my final final exams last week, and I’m now packing up to head back to the United States. After handling the jet lag, I’m thinking I’ll write a new tutorial. What would you like to see? Let me know by posting in the comments – I’ll read them all and then decide next week when I’m finally home.

A quick update before my blog dies in your feed readers – I’m on vacation for two weeks from now, so there won’t be any updates for a while. When I get back, I’m going to attempt to write some tutorials, so stay tuned!

Edit: It’s really annoying to have to clean up spam while I’m away – I’ll be working to get some better protection on my comment system when I’m back. To anyone who read through all of the spam: I’m sorry.

Update: I’m back, and hopefully most of the spam will stop. I found a few spam-blocking things (notably Bad Behavior), so the spam should calm down. Let me know if you have any problems posting comments.

Just a quick note to say that I’m back from the weekend and so is my site. Apparently it decided to take a vacation too.

I also wanted to note that my quietness is due to final projects. I’m finishing my Computer Science degree this spring, and final projects are taking over my life. I’m going to try to keep updating with some useful information though, so if there’s anything you’d like to see let me know. Maybe I can pull together a tutorial!

Edit: Okay, it’s working for real this time! *I hope*

I’m back online! Well, sort of. I’m living in Scotland now, and my University’s internet only allows HTTP connections (or a very limited set of connections through their proxy, which does not include FTP). That I managed to move this site to a new webhost and get it up and running is just short of miraculous.

So what have I been up to? Well, I finished last semester and stopped working on my engine. Part of this was because of the move to Scotland, and part was that I decided to start working on something in three dimensions, as the majority of my work so far has been in two. It’s been a blast so far. I’m working on some volumetric rendering in XNA, and it’s been teaching me a lot. Already I’ve expanded my knowledge greatly in multi-threading, shaders, GPU pipelines and many other interesting subjects. Apparently rendering large volumes in real-time on consumer hardware requires some form of wizardry that is levels above my current experience. I’m quickly racking up experience though, and hopefully will achieve magician status soon.