www.enchantedage.com

I'm taking the XNA 4.0 beta for a spin. I don't have a Windows 7 phone (who does? :-) so I can't get motivated to start porting things like kW Animation / X-port to it, but I thought I'd check out the new and improved render target and effects APIs. Here's a little screen shot:

All Points Bulletin -- a great idea for a MMOFPS. Also, a nice vehicle for in-game customization of clothing and vehicles.

You can draw decals. You can sculpt avatars. You can paint cars. The game even has a built-in step/pattern sequencer!

Once in a while, I'll hear a question like "I'm tired of flipping burgers/school/my job as a sewer cleaner; how do I get into games programming?" Some people will say "don't do that -- game developers are treated like the scum of the earth, and careers are brutal and under-paid." I think that doesn't quite capture reality, though.

I just had to link to this.

I see this headline in the latest ACM TechNews:
Educators Seek New Ways to Steer Kids Toward Technical Fields

Here's a new perfmon graph of the memory leak progress over half a day that I'm seeing on my computer. It's definitely *something* slowly eating my memory. But it doesn't show up in the process monitor.

For work, I'm using a Dell Inspiron 1340 laptop. It's a wonderful piece of machinery, with Windows 7 professional 64-bit, a Core 2 Duo with 6 MB of cache, 4 GB of 1066 MHz RAM, 128 GB SSD and (this is the key) an NVIDIA 9400M and a G210M working in tandem (SLI) to get me a 13" laptop that scores 5.8 on Windows Experience Index. Yay technology!

A distressed, murky wood. Fences, docks, etc.

includes:

• Diffuse Map
• Bump Map
• Gloss Map

Size: 2048x2048

Download Textures (15 MB)

A rich, brown wood, somewhat worn. Perfect for hardwood floors.

includes:

• Diffuse Map
• Bump Map
• Gloss Map

Size: 2048x2048

Download Textures (15 MB)

Included, please find two DLLs: A main Havok content tools wrapper, and a simple C# assembly that actually exposes a content importer for use with XNA Game Studio version 3.1. Drop these in your solution folder, and point your content project at the HavokImporter.dll assembly (add as a Reference to the Content project).