Finally, my time is starting to get stable. I'm used to traveling every week now, and both the projects I'm on is beginning to get over the "startup period". This means I will get a bit more time and be able to create some tutorials and make some updates to this blog again.

 

I also have used a lot of time writing a long article for a magazine about XNA Shader Programming. More info about this will be written later, but the article is finished and is in the publishing process. Quite cool! :)

 

Anyway, the book "3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3: Beginner's Guide"( using Balder ;) ), by Gastón C. Hillar, is published and can be found here. The book contains a lot of samples, witch can be downloaded from here.

I got a copy of the book myself and have read a lot of it and it's really great. A good read, clear, good examples and very easy to follow. If you are in to Silverlight and want to look at the Silverlight world from a 3D perspective, I would recommend this book.

I got my copy of Dragon Age Origins this other day, but are still waiting for the release on PS3..

 

So far, the game is really great. Back in the earlier days I played a lot of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter nights and I'm sure this game will be just as great. At least I'm hooked so far.. The graphics is awesome!!!

 

I'm playing as a Human Rouge, going for archery for a start, but guess I will try all the start stories to see what's the most fun and then move from there.

 

Anyway, I spent a few days in Finland earlier this week as I'm on a project for Nokia, and will be going back there tomorrow so it won't be much time for gaming.. Guess Dragon Age got to wait a few more days..

Break a Leg is a really fun and addicting 1st person platform/action game created by a Norwegian team from NITH. In this game, you have to move through a city by breaking the laws of physics, using jump-pads on top of buildings, a lot of coordination, creativity and air-time, on the shortest time possible.

 

The graphics look great, and the levels have been designed in a really great way, making one level fun to play for many many hours( yeah, I did that ). You must race agains time, a ghost of your previous best run or your friend in two-player mode.

 

 

You can read more about the game on gamer.no (Norwegian), or on the developers journal (Norwegian), or best of all: Try the game for yourself on your own computer!

 

So, what are you waiting for? Jump, fly, SMASH !

 

Demo( 330 MB ):

Fangaming

Ausgamers

Computergames.ro

NITH

Hei alle sammen,


Vi har den glede av å invitere alle spillinteresserte til Dataforeningens faggruppe Game On- Faggruppen sitt nettverksmøte torsdag den 17. September klokka 16:45. 

Arrangementet er gratis.

Her vil det bli presentasjoner og mulighet for å stifte bekjentskap med store aktører innen spillbransjen.
Ta gjerne med venner og bekjente, etter foredraget blir det en mulighet for pils og nettverksbygging med personer fra spillbransjen.
Mer detaljer og påmelding finner du her:  http://www.dataforeningen.no/index.php?id=4625730

Stedet er Dubliner og registreringen starter 16:45

Program:
Presentasjon av Den Norske Dataforening
John Walle, Den Norske Dataforening

Din nye hverdag med fremtidens spillteknologi
Temaer: Hva skjer når teknologien bryter grensene mellom fact og fiction? Hvilke samfunnsmessige konsekvenser får vi nå skolene bytter ut læreren og tar i bruk spill i opplæring og at forsvaret rekrutterer gamere som jagerflyvere?
Eirik Newth, cand. scient med hovedfag i teoretisk astrofysikk

Tumbleweed Interactive om dagens spillbransje
Temaer: Hvorfor lager Tumbleweed Interactive spill?
Hva er de mest spennende trendene i spillverden i dag?
Kristoffer Jetmundsen, Tubleweed Interactive
 
Gamecamp kommer og holder XNA-stand samtidig som flere andre utviklere vil vise frem teknologi og spill. (Det blir også mulighet for å teste Break a Leg)

Sted: Dubliner.
Tid: 17.september. Kl 17.00 - 20.00. Registrering fra kl 16.45

For those of you who didn't know, one of the best games ever made is out on PS3( Since GameCon in Germany ): Final Fantasy VII.

 

I still got my original PS1 game( Yes, you can play PS1 games on PS3 now.. ), but for those of you who want to experience this great adventure, go to the PS Store and buy it for a very cheap price compared to what you will get ;)

 

 

Phew, after a long road of fixing and debugging, my computer is finally working again!!( so far at least ... )

 

The week have mostly been about work, but I had a pretty long workshop on sunday for a norwegian/swedish/finish game programming team, whom wanted to implement shaders into their engine and some more advanced shaders like normal mapping, parallax shading( I will upload the example and write a tutorial about this soon ) and shadows. The session was a great success and we managed to get it all in after 5 hour(ish) of coding :)

I will add a QA on this once I get some spare time.

 

Seems like these workshops get more and more popular as I get many requests( didnt know that many was working on something there in oslo these days, great news!! ), so feel free to send me a mail and I'll see what we can do! :)

 

Today I held a presentations/hands-on lab with a co-worker on WPF, Expression Blend and Microsoft Surface( yeah we got one ;) for the summer studends at Accenture Oslo)! I think it went pretty well, some demo effects happened( bluescreen, my computer froze ++ ) but that is quite common when having demos right?? ;)

 

Our gamecamp game is progressing as well and we are getting quite done the graphics part. I will post some screenshots asap.

                                                                                   Esposende - Portugal

 

Hopefully I will get my tutorial out soon, at least one of those I'm working on atm. so you guys get something to do during the summer!

 

Also, my Artificial Intelligence tutorial have been started and I'm working on Tutorial 1, which will be a short introduction to AI and AI in XNA/Games.

I'd just like to share with you guys that I have some visitors from Finland this week, and because of that I won't have the time to update my blog and answer e-mails. I'll try my best to answer as many as I can, but I can't promise anything.

But, a new tutorial will be posted next week, so be sure to check back then! ;)

I have uploaded a video of each example programs on my tutorials!

 

These can be found on the bottom of each tutorial( if they are not working yet, they might still be processing )..

 

Anyway, it took a while so, enjoy :)

I'm now officially the Chariman of Game Camp!

 

We are still the same crew and the same persons in the steering grop as before, but we promise you new english content to www.gamecamp.no, frequent news, updates and a new web design. We will also hold user groups, presentations and workshops so stay tuned! :)

 

Our first goal is to finish todays workshop, and start the (hopefully) monthly mini-events @ NITH. Remember, you are all welcome to these events, not only NITH students.

 

We will soon post more information about this on gamecamp.no!

 

 

 

Just wanted to share some pictures taken at The Gathering 2009 :)

An ocean of computers.. over 5000 ;)

 

From left to right: Steffen aka. kroz, Egil aka. higen, Petri aka. digitalerr0r( yeah me :P ),Thomas aka. sabotender, Stian aka. Gifster, Lars aka. RawBacon and Paul aka. MadeInPixels. Egil and me suffers from .. too little sleep and too much coding but im happy with this years The Gathering, we had lots of fun, and won some prizes :)

 

 

 

Me coding some last minute( those last minutes went on for 9 hours, after most of the group went to sleep :P ) changes in the democode. Sabotender is making faces in the background.

 

 

After many hours at the stand, im ready to do some more coding and getting our demo done.

I'm going to be a mentor at The Gathering 2009, and will be available on the stand and on IRC during the event( 8-12. april ).

So, if anyone want to come and say hi, please do so!

 

If you want to start programming or make demos, games and so on, the Workshop at The Gatheirng will be the place to go! Here you will have the possibility to ask qeuestions, get help to get started and chat with many experienced programmers, artists, musicians and 3d modelers.

 

More info: http://www.gathering.org/tg09/creative/mentors/

 

 

 

See you at The Gathering 2009! ;)

The workshop I had at NITH yesterday went great. We mananged to talk about cel shading and how different algorithm for impelmenting this can be implemented. I aslo gave them the source-code from my Shader Programming Tutorial 7( written for the workshop really ).

 

So, now it's all about implementing it into their own engine and see how the game looks from a non-photorealistic perspective!

As many of you know, I was going to start in Objectware as a Microsoft consultant...

Well, changes in plans, I decided to take back my resignment from Avanade and continue working there. There are various reasons for this but that stays with me.

 

Anyway, I look forward for doing more work with Avanade and continue on the Telenor Way of Work project.

Allright, my bags are packed and I'm ready to get a few hours of sleep before starting my trip to LA tomorrow morning!

 

I'll try to blog during the conference, and share some pictures, so check back here during the next week to know whats going on in LA, California and PDC2008!

 

 

California, here I come! :P

 

PDC? Read more: http://microsoftpdc.com/

I would like to use the oppurtunity to congratulate Einar Ingebritsen, who got his MVP in XNA and DirectX earlier today!

 

And for those of you who are interessted in Silverlight and not yet tried the new Silverlight RC0 version, go to www.silverlight.net and try it out! :)