TL;DR -> .NET 8 language support is now available for MonoGame and opening up a whole new world of goodness and speed for games.

*Note, the information contained below is for those developers who want access to the cutting edge, as it requires access to the development source. (with the exception of upgrading your game to .NET 8)

The full release of the .NET 8 MonoGame support will be included with the 3.9 release, coming soon.

MonoGame may have seemed stagnant or unmoving in the... read more

TL;DR -> With a little effort, publishing MonoGame projects to the Web is possible, so long as you remember it is the Web and you cannot do EVERYTHING!

When it comes to GameJams, like the one mentioned in this post, pushing out the finished project as an EXE or Appx usually results in your project either getting downvoted or ignored, because who wants to infect their machine with an unknown just to test out a Jam project. This applies to most Game Engines out there that are not web-based, including MonoGame,... read more

TL;DR -> Getting started with MonoGame is easy, mastering it takes time. So, throw all that out the window and get hacking instead!

The 5th annual MonoGameJam is kicking off soon on the 30th November 2023, which is by far one of the best ways to throw yourself into MonoGame and learn something new:

• Your next engine framework of choice.
• Try something new and exciting (granted usually hair-raising).
• Test out some new technique or skill.
• Have fun and throw things at the screen... read more

TL;DR -> With a little effort, publishing MonoGame projects to the Web is possible, so long as you remember it is the Web and you cannot do EVERYTHING!

When it comes to GameJams, like the one mentioned in this post, pushing out the finished project as an EXE or Appx usually results in your project either getting downvoted or ignored, because who wants to infect their machine with an unknown just to test out a Jam project. This applies to most Game Engines out there that are not web-based, including MonoGame,... read more

TL;DR -> Getting started with MonoGame is easy, mastering it takes time. So, throw all that out the window and get hacking instead!

The 5th annual MonoGameJam is kicking off soon on the 30th November 2023, which is by far one of the best ways to throw yourself into MonoGame and learn something new:

• Your next engine framework of choice.
• Try something new and exciting (granted usually hair-raising).
• Test out some new technique or skill.
• Have fun and throw things at the screen... read more

The concept of play to earn is fast becoming the trend with games of late but Microsoft seems to be going one better. There are now even more ways to earn points by searching and playing games than ever before.

There is also a journey of discovery to try out new games you never thought of checking out before.

Check out Microsoft Rewards here

What this means is that you can accrue points and use them to redeem GamePass Ultimate for free, the play never stops. (there are a multitude of other rewards you can also claim,... read more

Finding somewhere to post your content, be it pages, blogs or material can be a tough decision these days. There are many options, most of which require you to pay upfront to use the service, while others lure you in with a free trial hoping that you will stay after the amount of effort you have put in to get things set-up.

TL;DR;

• Create your GitHub Pages repo
• Configure the repository for GitHub Pages use
• Create your first post
• Update page to list posts
• Check-out your site online
• (optional) apply default GitHub Pages template

A small... read more

GIT appears to have become the defacto new source control system for the masses, in fact most if not all open source projects of late are managed through one GIT repository or another due to its alignment with SCRUM style development and team collaboration capabilities.

On the other side of the coin, it is certainly one of the more complicated management systems I have seen for some time now, GIT basically has its ways and if you do not fall in line you will become trapped, GIT is not perfect but as DVCS systems go it... read more

TL;DR -> Jekyll builds can have page collisions in different places if the pages happen to have the same title. Skip ahead to fix!.

WOW, it has been a while since I last posted, which is genuinely very bad for me, not to say I have been lazy or up to no good, quite the opposite, I have a myriad of things on my mind:

• This year I have been writing a new book Accelerating Unity Through Automation
• I changed jobs due to a sudden and dramatic change in... read more

Managing automation is hard enough without having to pollute your git history with changes to your actual workflows, in reality, the workflow itself is unlikely to change but there can be subtle updates in what each workflow action needs to do.

As an example, in the Reality Collective we needed to change the versioning strategy for our packages due to upcoming changes in Unity (another nightmare to be sure), the actual flow is not changing but we simply needed some minor updates. All this required (although not in reality) was to update our... read more

With Azure Devops and GitHub Actions you have the option to either use their hosted agents using the Azure backend, which is fine as you do get a decent amount of time of free resource but eventually you are going to end up paying for the service. Or, you can host your own agents on your own PC or even a dedicated box just for building.

If you have spare kit (does not need to be uber fast) then it makes sense to leave it powered on in the corner and have all... read more

I have been working long and hard on one of the most beneficial projects of my life. I have worked in healthcare for the past 2 decades professionally with healthcare software, ever since my Son was born with an untreatable genetic condition. I have wanted to “Pay forward” to all those clinical staff who helped us through our early years by creating better software to enable them to care more (and type less).

However, my work with the Fizzyo project to help the treatment of children with Cystic Fibrosis has been the most challenging... read more

Do you like making money? Or would you like to see your app in front of more users? Then read on.

If you have any apps on the Windows Store you will have likely received a mail of late asking you to update your age ratings, the reason for this is twofold:

1: There is a new IIARC age rating process which has greatly simplified getting your game rated for the majority of countries (except Korea)

2: There are many more markets now available (242 in total) to your projects, which you may not be targeting by... read more

Today I am very proud, not just of the efforts and feedback I’ve been getting for my latest title Unity 3D UI Essentials but also for my publisher who (against all odds) has done an amazing thing, promised a portion of sales revenue for my book to Charity.

Prader-Willi Association UK

Prader-Willi Syndrome, if you are unfamiliar with it (which I suspect most of you will be, it is not a very common condition) is a genetic disorder that affect approximately 1 in 20,000... read more

Not so long ago Intel launched their new perceptual computing vision which effectively is a cheaper alternative to Microsoft Kinect sensor, alongside that they began a challenge to create some inventive apps using the camera and to a select few (about 125+ developers) they offered the chance to win and own one. I entered 3 different apps into the challenge and to me surprise all three got accepted (only got one camera though )

The camera

The camera is a very interesting device both smaller and lighter that the Kinect plus... read more

Book review season is back again, this time with a title that opens up your eyes to Microsoft’s wondrous sensor, the Kinect.

Augmented Reality with Kinect

Definitely a Kinect for beginner’s book, here we have an Author who really knows how to lay out complex information is to short and readable parts, broken down so that anyone (even my daughter) can understand.

Since its release the Kinect has fascinated me, it drew to the forefront the idea of a fully realised non connective user interface experience.... read more

Readers would be pleased to know that I have teamed up with Packt Publishing to organize a Giveaway of a new book

Kinect in Motion- Audio and Visual Tracking by Example

3 lucky winners stand a chance to win digital copies of the book, keep reading to find out how you can be one of the Lucky Winners.

Overview:

· Step-by-step examples on how to master the essential features of Kinect technology

· Fully-functioning code samples ready to expand... read more

As I do from time to time, I get sent over a book or two to look over and give a review on which I am more than happy to do especially if it is along the lines of game development, x-platform or in this case new and exciting technology. I am fair and upfront and do not bow to publisher pressures, if it is good I will say so but just as much if I do not like it be prepared.

So far... read more

There are those who either do not like or prefer not to use big heavy-hitting coding IDE's, prefer the raw metal of cutting their teeth on code using nothing but their wits (and a good spellchecker), thanks to MonoGame 3.8's new .NET Core delivery approach they can.

MonoGame 3.8 Mac CLI

Thanks to the aforementioned Command-line/Terminal (CLI) approach mentioned in my previous article, developers can (if they choose) use either a slimline code editing tool such as read more

Technology it seems is moving ever faster and faster, especially in the world of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Barriers to entry are breaking down and huge cloud offerings from all the major suppliers are popping up left right and center. We see these on our devices (Siri, Cortana, Google Now), in our browsers yet to date, it is being used mainly for one thing it seems, Ads (joy).

So with the skill requirements at an all-time low, just about anyone can dive in and start making use of all the “intelligence” offerings that are available... read more

As promised for a while now, I am writing a series of tutorials for updating the GUI in my Mastering Unity 2D Game Development book to the all new and sparkly UI system that Unity introduced In version 4.6.

Now, these bonus chapters are not going to teach you the in’s and out’s of the new UI system, that is what my title Unity 3D UI Essentials is there for but I will be going through everything you need to update your RPG games with some new UI tricks.

read more

It’s truly a sad day today. I was notified by one of the newest readers of my book that the site that hosted the FREE game art I use as the basis of the books game has gone DOWN…

*Update.

Some of the content has started to come back (thanks to Matthew for pointing that out) at the bottom of the site page.  Resources have been moved over to some Azure hosting pages to keep them alive.

WootStudio who were part of MS Dev in Canada has closed it’s site down, bringing an end to many of their creations, including:

Phew, it has been a torturous time since my book was released back in August, my first experience releasing my work in printed / ebook form through a publisher only to find that lots of changes made it in to the book on release. Needless to say I was shocked and have been working hard with the publisher to fix what had been broken.

Not every errata that cropped up was down to the publisher, I do have to hold my hand up and say a few of them were mine (Some were “fixes” from Unity) but the publisher has... read more

Enter the next stage of the Mixed Reality Toolkit

After months of hard labour, cross words and more debates that you can shake a relatively large stick at, the Mixed Reality Toolkit finally entered the Beta phase.

This marks the first “release” ready for developers to start prototyping, building projects and hacking away to build fantastic Mixed Reality experiences.

Featuring:

• A new cross-platform architecture
• Scriptable configuration
• A new componentised layout
• Support for WMR and OpenVR right out of the box (Just hit play)
• And Much, much more.

It is not at feature parity with its predecessor the... read more

Well, it is October 17th (as I am writing this) which means it is the official launch of the Fall creators update of Windows 10 and the release of the Windows Mixed Reality headsets from Acer, Asus, Dell and more.

The Windows Mixed Reality Family

Microsoft refer to the new “Mixed Reality” setup as their “Windows Mixed Reality Family”, pairing up “Mixed Reality Ready” PCs, with headsets and controllers.

You should see this advertised wherever you see the new headsets or mixed reality enabled PC’s on offer. Just to make it clear, it... read more

Since Microsoft launched its Mixed Reality program, initially with the business focused HoloLens program, a lot of interest has been garnered for the experiences it has generated, especially with most of its game focused demos. Now that the program has begun targeting the consumer space with its new range of entry level Mixed Reality headsets (or Immersive Headsets as they are referred to) from Acer, Asus, Dell and others, the pace is certainly heating up.

For full disclosure, I am a developer on the Mixed Reality program and received my preview headset from Microsoft. However, apart from being a... read more

I was approached by Lotaris a while ago and asked if I would do a review of their platform. Having not heard of the company before, I waded in and started looking around and was quietly surprised by what I found.

If your interested in making more money for your paid apps or a higher revenue stream plus tracking and analytics, read on.

So Who and What are Lotaris?

Lotaris is an “in-app commerce” and mobile licensing platform with a rich and diverse set of tools aimed at leveraging the most... read more

For once I’m going with a simple yet boring title for this blog post (since I’m known for naming things in a weird and wacky way ) simply because the content will speak for itself

A Note – This control is designed for XNA on Windows Phone and will later be released for Desktop, Web ADS are NOT available on XBOX as there is no Internet connectivity. 

We may release a future version that allows multiple House Ads later on for XBOX.

###

If you followed my previous article on read more

One of those things we always strive for when we write games and apps for a platform is the hope of some recognition for our efforts or failing that a huge pile of cash to admire from our yacht parked in some temperate climate

The subject of how to achieve the latter is always up for debate, do you just ship out your game/app with a nice and affordable price tag or push it out free and use Ads or In App purchasing to reach that goal, both have merits but why not do both.... read more

I will be blogging over the next few weeks about my involvement with the MonoGame project in the dark dark backgrounds, all around the area of PCL support within the project.

I have been focusing on two aspects:

• Spiting up the MonoGame code base into two parts, the first part containing all code that will work on any platform without modification and the second part containing platform specific code that today is managed with #if statements to target each platform
• Creating a full PCL MonoGame Project which can be used to build games against that will work on... read more

TL;DR -> .NET 8 language support is now available for MonoGame and opening up a whole new world of goodness and speed for games.

*Note, the information contained below is for those developers who want access to the cutting edge, as it requires access to the development source. (with the exception of upgrading your game to .NET 8)

The full release of the .NET 8 MonoGame support will be included with the 3.9 release, coming soon.

MonoGame may have seemed stagnant or unmoving in the... read more

TL;DR -> With a little effort, publishing MonoGame projects to the Web is possible, so long as you remember it is the Web and you cannot do EVERYTHING!

When it comes to GameJams, like the one mentioned in this post, pushing out the finished project as an EXE or Appx usually results in your project either getting downvoted or ignored, because who wants to infect their machine with an unknown just to test out a Jam project. This applies to most Game Engines out there that are not web-based, including MonoGame,... read more

TL;DR -> Getting started with MonoGame is easy, mastering it takes time. So, throw all that out the window and get hacking instead!

The 5th annual MonoGameJam is kicking off soon on the 30th November 2023, which is by far one of the best ways to throw yourself into MonoGame and learn something new:

• Your next engine framework of choice.
• Try something new and exciting (granted usually hair-raising).
• Test out some new technique or skill.
• Have fun and throw things at the screen... read more

One of the cardinal sins ousted round the MVVM circles involves putting any kind of code in your XAML pages code behind, which is all well and good until you actually need to. When you have implemented MVVM there are always cases where the line gets blurred between functionality and UI behaviour.

[/rant]

One of these tricky situations revolves around the use of storyboards. Storyboards and animations are purely UI animations and snazzy effects, but what happens when it is your ViewModel wants to make something happen, like “it is game over” or just “you suck” read more

With Windows 8 just around the corner and many developers running for the ship to get up to speed with the new brave world (even those who have frowned at the new Metro interface and possibly wont touch it themselves, still see the value in writing apps / games for the platform to sell).

One of the biggest hurdles I have found and seems reflected in colleagues and peers is the new Async framework, granted to those who have followed the Task framework it is no big shock... read more

I couldn’t resist, I should be working on my Windows 8 Port of Flipped (which seems to be going swimmingly) and finishing of some other projects but glamour got the better of me as I rolled out of the covers and here we are.

One of my age old dreams with game development (even prior to XNA) was to be able to pick up my mobile device and use it as an alternate display or additional controller, at the time it was my trusty Windows Mobile PPC, times have evolved but my vision is still fresh.

I did for a... read more

Right on the heals of the last post detailing the Silverlight WCF service library for the Scoreboard service (formally known as the leaderboard service), here is a sample Silverlight application consuming that service to manage the Scoreboards on there. It implements all but the Register Leaderboard WCF method in the service.

It is goal is to list all Scoreboards registered on the service, list all the scores with those Scoreboards the client has access to (remember the access keys!) and be able to update those scores manually. The last bit was just a little extra so if you wanted... read more

Following on the heals of my last post on WCF service implementations on the Windows Phone 7, here is a nice little sample to give you a bit more detail / meat on the bone.

This is not going to go into detail on how to write a WCF service, i still state the best person to help you with this is Ron Jacob’s on his WCF and .NET blogs (he has many!!), however for this Sample Charles (RandomChaos) Humphrey has written a little WCF service and we have hosted it for you to test with (just... read more

Following on from my previous overview of the most common virtual services, this article is the first in the series doing a much deeper dive into each service, its offerings and how to set up and run an event.

These detailed articles are focused on what you need to do to set up an online meeting for your user group or event and will focus on those steps. There are many other features available for the service which you can explore as well. In future articles, I will also cover some of the more advanced features such as creating spaces... read more

In the wake of events in 2019 events, sessions and conferences are being cancelled leaving a gap for those who want to meet up and share information or just talk.

This article will walk through some of the most commonly used online services for organizing and scheduling an online meeting, mainly targeted at user groups or conferences who need to move their physical events online, but it is also useful if you just need to talk and share content.

What types of services are available?

read more

After playing a lot with Parse over the last few weeks I thought I would share some of my findings.

Getting to know Parse

Just what is Parse? a question I even asked myself until I really started to look behind the covers. If you just look at the homepage you will likely be left scraping your head and thinking it is some sort of creative design helper or some “powerful backend provider” to accelerate your apps (seriously??)

In short parse is a cloud based database system with a load of tools / frameworks thrown in and... read more

One of the trickiest things when re-imaging your view of the world or changing how you interact with it, is how you present yourself.
Do you continue as you were or try something new, new is always scary and in the technical world it can also include some unintended consequences.

In starting anew, I chose to break the shackles of a blogging platform (WordPress in my case) and transformed to a new Ghost blog hosted on Azure.  This has not come without significant peril and confusion, mainly because all information about hosting ghost yourself is several months/years out of date... read more

I've always been a steadfast supporter of helping to educate (and be taught by) the developer community, wherever I can on whichever subject, software or service I am currently embroiled in. It was always my mantra, even from the very early days, some 20 years back.

However, in the latter years, although I have been "out there", supporting who I can and wherever they are, I have not been as forthcoming with my blogging efforts.  There are numerous reasons for this, trials, tribulations and for those who know me... read more

Thought I would give this a go as some cunning bods have taking the decade old code of the awesome Windows Live Writer (WLW for short) and open sourced it, creating Open Live Writer

[ ![ /></a></p>

You can read all about this awesome development here, over on Scott Hanselmann’s blog:

<a title=](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/content/binary/Windows-Live-Writer/Announcing-Open-Live-Writer---An-Open-So_126D3/openlivewriter-purpleheader_f6470329-c239-4f06-b466-805d65b9bd70.png)http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AnnouncingOpenLiveWriterAnOpenSourceForkOfWindowsLiveWriter](http://openlivewriter.org/) This is a big achievement and yet another gem dragged out of retirement and brought openly to the web for all to build. Granted as Scott Notes: > “ **IMPORTANT HISTORICAL NOTE:** Much of the code in Open Live Writer is nearly 10 years old. The... read more

In yet another book review in game development and graphics land, I was handed a copy of the excellent Unity Shaders and Effects cookbook. This sturdy reference is a nice comparison to the previous HLSL cookbook I reviewed earlier.

Unity Shaders and Effects Cookbook

If anything this book shows both the amazing work Unity has put in to action behind the scenes to help designers and developers create stunning effects in their games and the differences between what you may already know and what you need to know in order to make... read more

While finally getting back round to me game development roots another interesting book crossed my desk which delves into the mysterious and sometimes scary world of shaders.

Even I only have an appreciation for what going on under the covers to create the mind blowing effects that only comes from mucking around in the graphics streams on the graphics card, XNA did a lot of this for us with 5 built in shaders that gave us a leg up and provided most of the basic effects used in common games.

To really make your game shine and look impressive, you... read more

![ /></p>

One thing that can tick off your users / players is that inevitable time through a series of random events a crash occurs, it is unhandled and causes the app/game to just crash.  Bang their goes all my progress and saves, very bad experience.

Even with the best of breed apps and games this can happen just because we are human and cannot account for every single possibility or potentially crafty thing that users / players can do, whether it is intentional, accidental or just plain dumb, or it could even be your fault who’d have thought that... read more

![ /></p>

So far with SilverXNA we have been dealing will a full page approach to rendering our Silverlight page in XNA, it is quick and simple but there is another way.

The Silverlight renderer (UIElementRenderer) is specifically targeted at UI controls it just so happens that most the samples use the Page as the control to render, it is also possible to use different controls as the source fro the Silverlight render if you so wish.  it is also possible to mix and max if need be but you have to be very careful when doing this.

If you... read more

Now one thing that was not in the original game (unless you count the player / enemy animations which to face it are part of the gam anyway) was any kind of animation to the UI experience, namely in this case the Overlay’s we just put back in. They are a bit flat and just show on the screen, now in XNA to do any sort of screen transformation / animation or effect generally speaking does take a lot of effort because you have to build your own animation system to do what you need where... read more

A fantastic announcement over on the SunBurn community blogs has just surfaced which is just amazing. HolPhone3D ad already built an amazing plug-in for SunBurn to allow easy stereoscopic rendering with just a few lines of code, todays announcement goes above and beyond hat, read the except from the blog below:

Get ready for Oculus Rift ready titles powered by SunBurn

The wait is nearly over and dev kits are shipping this week! Lot’s of excitement is all over the web as people want to develop and experience new 3D games within the Oculus Rift. I’ll... read more

So far in this series I have covered:

• MonoGame – a raw XNA implementation allowing you to create games but you have to code everything yourself
• UnityXNA – a way to host your existing XNA projects (or new ones) and deploy them using the Unity3D engine, but without utilising the advanced features of that engine

In both cases you are building your own “engine” per-se, doing your own physics and other such things. But what if there was an option, where you could have your cake and eat it, a way to have a full XNA... read more

Hot off the press, SunBurn 2.0 is now fully release, see what the Synapse Gaming guys have to say about it!

We are very excited to announce the official gold release of SunBurn Game Engine 2.0!

During SunBurn’s early adopter phase we’ve added tons of new features including physics/collision, 3D audio, component system, character controller, transparencies, plugin system, advanced light mapping, and much, much more.

![ /></p>

Now that SunBurn 2.0 is feature-complete and proven solid, we are pleased to announce the gold release!

The FREE Framework Edition is Back!

The official SunBurn 2.0 release includes the fully... read more

Knowledge is power and with what Syncfusionare doing to educate the masses , then they must be very powerful indeed. Training and educating developers far and wide, growing their own developer army. Or they could just be very nice people

Be sure to check out the giveaway comp at the end of the post, we have over 5 Syncfusion control packs to give away and one ultimate fantastic copy of Syncfusion’s Essentials complete collection! Mega$£

Syncfusion’s “Succinctly” series, one of the largest free set of technical books covering everything from... read more

The main reason I have been so quiet of late is because I have been focusing on entries for Nokia’s @DVLUP challenges in the hope to earn some XP and get some fantastic goodies. Just about finished on my last project and decided to have a breather (also they extended my current challenge, more time is always good for QA)

While up, I was looking at all the resources out there that is available to fellow programmers and developers (yes, there IS a difference so get off my back ), more importantly those that... read more

Following on from the previous articles I thought I would let you in on the newcomer to the Data Provider party, namely Telerik’s Everlive service and their new cloud data sync components.

There is a lot to be said for what Telerik is trying to achieve by creating a completely out of the box solution to solve those situations where your client and server need to keep each device updated with not just your backend data but the user’s too.

Getting to know Telerik Everlive

Everlive has a lot of similarities to Azures Mobile services (WAMS) in... read more

Note, UI Extensions project now updated for 5.2 (with its pesky updates), together with a 5.2 asset. Enjoy

Time is always against us, especially when your building your projects, tweaking your code or just getting ready for a release, wading through mountains of contracts, marketing PR or getting greenlit.

The last thing you want to be doing is re-inventing the wheel when some bright spark has already put together just what you need in order to accelerate forward. Problem is that with a lot of community provided content, unless it’s on the asset store (or been dropped on... read more

So what is in a “.” when accessing a Component

Check the Post on the Unity forms discussing this practice here – http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/245400-Unity-5-Beta-Insights

**Update, Unity have now written a post on the changes posed for Unity 5 and the inner workings, well worth a read – http://bit.ly/1pf5Wog

Another interesting post has arisen which also includes some timing and stats for using cached components verses using the shortcuts, check it out – http://bit.ly/1pfaUkQ

When you... read more

After clearing away all the drinks, party streamers and general clutter from the launch party, a few stragglers were found loitering in the rubble, so we picked a few randomly and awarded them some prizes. Well almost.

It was one hell’uv’a party and there was lots of fun, now that the winners have accepted and the various prizes handed out, I can announce their names!

I would like to thank everyone who entered and helped to spread awareness of my latest title, you are truly awesome people.

To everyone who has bought the title... read more

Just in time for February, my latest title Unity 3D UI Essentials, has now burst forward on to all leading bookstores, in both electronic and print formats (whichever takes your fancy). It has certainly been a fun and wild ride producing this unique title. A title that takes the new Unity UI system for a wild ride and brings along it’s pals, such as the new Unity EventSystem and of course its best friend Open Source code. (See the product page for... read more

I’ve hinted at this for a while now and I’m close to completing the production work for my next book:

Unity 3D UI Essentials

With the release of Unity 4.6 and the all new UI system, I had hoped to have this title ready at the same time (however due to issues with my previous book I had to put it on hold for a while, was not happy )

As always, I have set up a forum for the new title... read more

TL;DR -> XR is an interesting space with lots to offer, but it is not for the faint of heart as there are many challenges ahead. Checkout my solutions that are live in the market, not fake demos.

In a showcase of my recent efforts, I thought I would share some of the experiences I have been working on. Each has brought its own challenges, from dealing with engines and software, tackling complex integrations between vendor SDK’s and achieving the desired implementation, to the often confusing requirements set down by customers or sales.

These solutions are all... read more

With Azure Devops and GitHub Actions you have the option to either use their hosted agents using the Azure backend, which is fine as you do get a decent amount of time of free resource but eventually you are going to end up paying for the service. Or, you can host your own agents on your own PC or even a dedicated box just for building.

If you have spare kit (does not need to be uber fast) then it makes sense to leave it powered on in the corner and have all... read more

Similar to GitHub Actions, Azure can automate the building / testing and deploying of your Unity solution. It is true, that Microsoft is on a journey to migrate all build automation to GitHub to offer a more accessible way for developers to automate their project, however,there are a few notable exceptions and capabilities that are still far superior in Azure Devops currently that are worth exploring, namely:

• Publish artifacts / builds per build.
• Finer control / articulation of your automation.
• The ability to manually run automation on command.
• Provide integration that can... read more

Enter the next stage of the Mixed Reality Toolkit

After months of hard labour, cross words and more debates that you can shake a relatively large stick at, the Mixed Reality Toolkit finally entered the Beta phase.

This marks the first “release” ready for developers to start prototyping, building projects and hacking away to build fantastic Mixed Reality experiences.

Featuring:

• A new cross-platform architecture
• Scriptable configuration
• A new componentised layout
• Support for WMR and OpenVR right out of the box (Just hit play)
• And Much, much more.

It is not at feature parity with its predecessor the... read more

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the dream of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) experiences has accelerated in recent months/years with the evolution of newer and more modern technologies and techniques. Many companies, Kickstarter’s and freelance coders / architects are steadily bringing about the Reality revolution. Whether we are actually there yet or there is still a way to go before there is full consumer acceptance of VR/AR (like Cars and mobile phones do today) is a point of debate. Anyone however who has tried at least one Demo though will... read more

A fantastic announcement over on the SunBurn community blogs has just surfaced which is just amazing. HolPhone3D ad already built an amazing plug-in for SunBurn to allow easy stereoscopic rendering with just a few lines of code, todays announcement goes above and beyond hat, read the except from the blog below:

Get ready for Oculus Rift ready titles powered by SunBurn

The wait is nearly over and dev kits are shipping this week! Lot’s of excitement is all over the web as people want to develop and experience new 3D games within the Oculus Rift. I’ll... read more

**Updated for Version 1.0.0 – be aware there are some new “Getting Started” extra points, like installing C#, which is no longer installed by default.

I have written several articles on the use of VSCode with Unity through its evolution but time and tide waits for no man as the behemoth of technology marches on.

If you have not heard of Microsoft’s new multi-platform lightweight code editor before, go and check out its homepage (https://code.visualstudio.com), it is chock full of fantastic stuff to make you drop MonoDevelop or... read more

Note, this article has now been superseded with a new version for the VSCode 0.8.0 release and the new Unity Asset plugin
http://darkgenesis.zenithmoon.com/vscode-and-unity-take-another-bold-step-forward/

On day 1 of the Microsoft Build conference, Microsoft announced an all new, streamlines and lightweight code editor called Visual Studio Code. The big thing about this announcement is that it’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux natively (deployed as a modern cross-platform web app judging by it’s innards).

This gives us some great code editing features, intellisense, code completion, snippets (short-cut code) and GIT integration... read more

*edit, updated the article to also support the later “Anniversary” and “Creators” updates, which need a few tweaks, especially with an updated VoiceCommandFile Format.
Still working on updating the Unity Sample to 5.6, as Unity changed the UWP exported solution which breaks the project if you try to export it again.

True speech interaction is something we don’t see very often in gaming. Sure, you have recorded audio for NPCs and a few non-silent protagonists, but it’s very rare for the player to interact with speech themselves.

It’s certainly a missed... read more

For a long time MonoGame had only spurious updates and not a lot of outward activity (as opposed to the frantic and sometimes chaotic internal goings on in the mass of community contributions), this garnered such comments as “Is MonoGame dead?”.

The team started a trend just over a year ago by releasing development NuGet packages and publishing the development builds on the main MonoGame.Net website. Still however, there was a drive in the team to do more and make their efforts more public.

Fast forward to today and not only have the team... read more

The game development landscape, especially for Indies is certainly changing. With the recent XBOXOne and PS4 console releases show that skills like C++ are still very much in demand, as a fellow Indie this does concern be greatly. I left my C++ skills in the past once MDX and then XNA were born and the thoughts of going back does intimidate me somewhat.

Learning Windows 8 Game Development

As the book title suggests, this is a Windows8 title, however what is not immediately apparent is that it is a C++ Windows game... read more

Just to cross post back to my own blog (really did that the wrong way round ) here’s my entry to the Intel App-Up competition now being run on codeproject, if you got an idea for an app or game for Windows 8 then you should write a short article for the comp about your idea and you may even walk away with a free Intel Ultrabook to build it with.

**Update

Had some interesting discussions following this original post including a very helpful link from Travis Woodward aka @RabidLionGames. Seems a... read more

Boy what a crazy couple of months, to kick things off I got my first Windows 8 game up and running and through the App Excellence labs on to the Store in prompt fashion, not a glitch (if you do not count the first lab I attended not understanding what the labs were really there for, putting a tick in the box for your app to go on the store). Not one single issue in submission, it was in and done in about 4 days.

1 Day after clicking submit AdDuplex go and show off an offer where the... read more

A challenge faced by the MonoGame team when they created Windows Phone 8 support was that XNA is actually included with the platform, this created a unique challenge because it was

a direct contradiction to the XNA support being provided by MonoGame itself, this caused no end of problems until a solution was found.

The answer was simple, ignore the XNA libs native to Windows Phone at build time.

*NOTE

MonoGame NuGet packages have now been released so that you don’t need to go through this headache any more, there are both... read more

AdRotator for Windows Phone XNA V0.3 release

Hot on the heels of the Silverlight article for AdRotator is the documentation for the XNA version, to save repeating myself I’d suggest you read that first to get the general look and feel of AdRotator before continuing. I am only going to go over the XNA implementation parts in this article.

in some ways the XNA implementation is even easier than Silverlight because we don’t have to worry about al the GUI stuff, if you are doing a... read more

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AdRotator for Windows Phone Silverlight V1.2 release

With the release of what is likely the last version in the V1 branch of AdRotator for Windows Phone Silverlight I have gone some lengths to make sure the documentation and samples are also feature complete.

For the XNA version read this article and then <a href=](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/Microsoft_Silverlight_logo.png/150px-Microsoft_Silverlight_logo.png)continue on to here If you have not seen AdRotator before, it is a control library that supports multiple Ad Providers (MS PubCenter, [AdDuplex](https://www.adduplex.com/), Smaato to name but a few) with the ability to change the configuration of your... read more

The concept of play to earn is fast becoming the trend with games of late but Microsoft seems to be going one better. There are now even more ways to earn points by searching and playing games than ever before.

There is also a journey of discovery to try out new games you never thought of checking out before.

Check out Microsoft Rewards here

What this means is that you can accrue points and use them to redeem GamePass Ultimate for free, the play never stops. (there are a multitude of other rewards you can also claim,... read more

For my sins, I was asked back to FutureDecoded again this year to give a talk on the Microsoft UWP platform, specifically about bringing games to the XboxOne using UWP. By all accounts the session went well (especially as there was standing room only by the time the talk started). With it being just two days in the London ExCeL exhibition center, not everyone who wanted to make it could, in fact even some people were contacting me on the day saying they were in other sessions at that time but wanted more info.

So for everyone who could... read more

By now, everyone should have watched or at least heard about the Build2016 keynote announcements from Phil Spenser about development for Xbox One and the opening up / enablement (at long last) of the public “Developer mode”, something long since sought after since the days of XBLIG on the 360 and the previous promises made by the ID@Xbox team about the future of indie development on Microsoft’s latest console.

For getting started info, check out this awesome post by Lee Stott, a DX technical evangelist at Microsoft, who explains exactly what you need... read more

For some time now I have been asked if I would do a session on the “Darkside of MonoGame” about using XML with MonoGame and the Content Pipeline, for a while I put it off as I had my own schedule and agenda with the channel. Eventually I got worn down and I have succumbed to the demands of my viewers (it can happen )

The video for this post can be found here if you prefer video:

TL;DR -> .NET 8 language support is now available for MonoGame and opening up a whole new world of goodness and speed for games.

*Note, the information contained below is for those developers who want access to the cutting edge, as it requires access to the development source. (with the exception of upgrading your game to .NET 8)

The full release of the .NET 8 MonoGame support will be included with the 3.9 release, coming soon.

MonoGame may have seemed stagnant or unmoving in the... read more

TL;DR -> With a little effort, publishing MonoGame projects to the Web is possible, so long as you remember it is the Web and you cannot do EVERYTHING!

When it comes to GameJams, like the one mentioned in this post, pushing out the finished project as an EXE or Appx usually results in your project either getting downvoted or ignored, because who wants to infect their machine with an unknown just to test out a Jam project. This applies to most Game Engines out there that are not web-based, including MonoGame,... read more

TL;DR -> Getting started with MonoGame is easy, mastering it takes time. So, throw all that out the window and get hacking instead!

The 5th annual MonoGameJam is kicking off soon on the 30th November 2023, which is by far one of the best ways to throw yourself into MonoGame and learn something new:

• Your next engine framework of choice.
• Try something new and exciting (granted usually hair-raising).
• Test out some new technique or skill.
• Have fun and throw things at the screen... read more

Back in the day, Riemer Grootjans had one of the best XNA tutorial sites available (along with some C++ and other series), featuring a great balance of beginner, intermediate and advanced content.

Sadly some years ago, Riemers site failed (likely a DB issue) and all the content was lost, it was still available via the wayback machine, but this has its limitations, so not everything is there.

Now thanks to the efforts of the team managing the XNAGameStudioArchive, All of Riemers XNA tutorials have been archived and also migrated to MonoGame

XNA Game Studio Archive

TL;DR -> XR is an interesting space with lots to offer, but it is not for the faint of heart as there are many challenges ahead. Checkout my solutions that are live in the market, not fake demos.

In a showcase of my recent efforts, I thought I would share some of the experiences I have been working on. Each has brought its own challenges, from dealing with engines and software, tackling complex integrations between vendor SDK’s and achieving the desired implementation, to the often confusing requirements set down by customers or sales.

These solutions are all... read more

TL;DR -> Ethar is an XR powerhouse, using the latest technologies from leading partners and delivering award winning solutions, while also investing in XR research to make new experiences possible, quick and easy to deliver.

As an avid content creator and educator, these past few years have been tough since I joined Ethar (the premier XR Experience platform). I’ve loved being here since I joined the team and worked hard to accelerate their vision of creating the worlds first truly cross platform and cross-vendor spatial aware platform, however due to my focus... read more