Back, with a threading tutorial!
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!