Creators Club Communiqué 24

So, last week we covered some great links from around the web for newly hatched and fledgling Creators to lay the groundwork to make some great games with XNA Game Studio. This week, we’ll offer some slightly more advanced stuff to keep the learning rolling!

At the XNA Creators Club Online Forums Petri Tapio started a great thread about his XNA Shader Programming tutorial. It is meant as an introduction to the unavoidably shady world of shaders.

Brian Phelps created a sample on Skinned Model Instancing using the XNA Framework. It shows how you can use instancing techniques in order to draw very large amounts of independently animated characters at once.

One of the bigger hurdles game developers hit as they are learning their craft is handling player input. Luckily, edg3 offers a tutorial on Player Handling on his blog! While you’re there also check out his series on Simple Minimaps on his blog. Soon your players will know exactly where they need to go and how. He also suggests taking a look at MVP megastar Catalin Zima’s blog post about creating Fog of War in your game.

Another MVP superstar Nick Gravelyn began a very ambitious project to build a 3D go-kart racing game for Xbox LIVE Community Games. Along the way, he’s sharing his how-I-do-it so you can learn along with him!

Brilliant and helpful space genuses from Team XNA have also offered a few helpful posts on their blogs. The ever-fertile grounds of Shawn Hargreaves’ blog yields a complex answer to the simple question, “How come my transparent objects are drawn in the wrong order, or parts of them are missing? ” Meanwhile, the benevolent Stephen Styrchak was inspired to build a handy template for XNA Game Studio 3.0 that helps Creators eliminate garbage from your high scores.

Got your own pro-tips you want to share with us? Send them on over! I’m always happy to check them out.

Also – 1UP.com’s Game Night is playing a few Xbox LIVE Community Games tonight at 5:00 p.m. (PST)! Be sure to tune in and see what they say!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager