Managed World

Well, it looks like the Game Development track that I'm heading up for Portland's Code Camp (you registered yet?). Here is the tentative lineup (it might still change, but I'm hoping that it won't too much).

- Introduction To Managed DirectX, David Weller

- Message-Oriented Game Development, Jason Olson

- Warplanner - Post Mortem of a Managed DirectX Game, Chris Goldfarb

- Implementing Creature AI, Chris Williams

- Behold My Bouncing Balls, Jason Mauer

- The Power of Scripting - Tribes RPG - Robert Under

- Introduction to Shaders - Andy "Zman" Dunn

It looks like a real fun line up for a Code Camp (especially the first one). I'm just hoping that it turns out to be a hit. SOOOOO, if you aren't coming (or you know people that aren't coming), tell them to get their tookis into gear and register already!!! (and if you're feeling especially well, go buy some of Rory's crap punk (I will too soon Rory, it's just too bad you don't have Size Lard Bucket))

For some reason, the maintenance downtime message for bloglines absolutely made me laugh. Perhaps I'm just in a stupid mood:

[Update: I added the assets directory to the source zip and re-uploaded so y'all should have everything you need to actually compile and run the code.]

Well, the rudimentary scene graph is done and hooked into Tanks! Below is a quick and dirty screenshot (remember this is still programmer art).

I was asked the other day if I was going to release source code and I figure, what the hell. Just keep in mind that this is FAR from being a finished product (hell, it's even FAR from being any kind of product at all). So, if you are interested in seeing the source code (albeit totally undocumented source code), you can download it from here. SOOOO, don't even try to ask for documentation because there's no way you're getting it until the articles are written :).

Mykre recently sent out a reminder that there is an IRC channel for Managed DirectX on EFNet. So, if you want to come around some time, feel free to (it seems like it is pretty quiet (hopefully we can change that)). I'm on there, Mykre is on there, Tom Miller hangs out there (although I hear he's pretty silent), and ZMan says that he'll start checking it out. So, grab an IRC client and head on over anytime (I personally use ChatZilla for FireFox).

When an exception occurs while running the sample framework, even if it is handled in a global exception try-catch block, the sample framework will throw an unhandled exception on Dispose. To replicate this issue, simply open up the empty project template and change line 238 in EmptyProject.cs from:

effect.SetValue("appTime", (float)appTime);

to (in order to force an exception):

effect.SetValue("appTm", (float)appTime);

Although it perhaps is not the best fix, the quick and dirty fix for this is to change lines 3948-3957 in the Dispose method in Common\dxmut.cs from:

if (Window != null)
{
// If we have a window, use BeginInvoke to start shutdown
Window.BeginInvoke(new DisposeDelegate(this.Shutdown));
}
else
{
// Otherwise, call it directly
Shutdown();
}

to just:

Shutdown();

Happy Programming!

I'm posting this as a reminder (for me and for others who were curious about this issue). If you are getting an exception when trying to retrieve transforms from your device (like "Matrix view = Device.Transform.View"), it might very well be because you are using a pure device. Pure devices do not support the getting of these matrices (and this is documented in the docs too evidently).

Happy Programming!