Hello. I am Paul Kinlan.

I've just pushed an update to my XNA Parallax Engine project, which now includes its first demo. This initial demo showcases a basic single scrolling background—simple, yet functional, requiring minimal code for setup. I'm currently refining the layer collection initialization process. The updated source code is available on Codeplex for those interested in exploring it further.

I've started a project on Codeplex and I'm very impressed with how easy Team Foundation Server is to use compared to Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest. It integrates seamlessly with VS2005. I'm still getting used to it, but running into some integration issues between VS C# Express (required for XNA) and Team Foundation Server. I'm currently using VS2005 Team Edition, VS Express, and the command line (tf) in my workflow.

I am having a bit of difficulty with TypeConverters and Generic Lists and I was hoping that I could get a bit of advice. I have a type converter that is used to create the constructor code for my component. (It is an XNA a Game Component, but I don't think that that has anything to do with the problem because it appears on a Winform) inside another component. For instance I have the following: Code highlighting produced by Actipro CodeHighlighter (freeware)http://www.

Excited to share that Xbox360homebrew blogged about my Paralax Engine Project! Hoping to release more code soon and get more people involved.

I've started an open-source parallax scrolling component project on CodePlex to help game developers create repeating scrolling backgrounds for their XNA games. It's still in early stages, but currently includes a 2D camera, layer oscillators, scrolling, and clipping functionality. Check out the XNAParalax Component project on CodePlex and provide feedback!

I was developing a component in XNA and needed a way to edit Vector2 properties directly within the Game Designer. Since Vector2 is a struct and doesn't inherently support this, I created a custom TypeConverter. The provided code allows you to modify Vector2 values in the designer using comma notation (e.g., 50, 100). Feel free to adapt it for other types like Vector3.

I bought a used Xbox 360 controller to test game development using XNA for PC and the upcoming Xbox 360. The XNA programming model works well, and I can access controller inputs like trigger pressure. I couldn't install the official Xbox 360 controller driver for Windows XP, but the XBCD drivers worked seamlessly. Find them at xbcd360guide.50webs.com (use at your own risk, the site looks a bit sketchy).

I've started gathering hCard stats on topicala.com thanks to pingerati.net. hCards are a machine-readable microformat for contact information that can be embedded in HTML. Pingerati notifies services like mine when hCards are updated. To get your hCard included in the stats, ping pingerati at http://pingerati.net/ping/[your updated url]. I'm excited about the potential of microformats and plan to add more services to topicala as more data becomes available. Learn how to create an hCard at http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator.

I've been exploring Windows Live Writer plugins and hit a snag: the API doesn't let plugins access the post's text. This severely limits plugin functionality, preventing things like automated tagging or microformat integration. I've raised this issue on the Windows Live Writer forum and with Microsoft's Joe Cheng, emphasizing the need for text access to enable a wider range of plugins. I encourage other developers to voice similar concerns to Microsoft.

I just got the XNA Beta and had to tweak the template code a bit to get it running on my older machine (Athlon with a Geforce 2MX). I was getting a Device Creation Exception, and it turned out my graphics card doesn't support multisampling on the backbuffer. Adding "this.graphics.AllowMultiSampling = false;" to the InitializeComponent method fixed it. Hopefully, this helps someone else too! (P.S. Hardware donations are welcome! 😉)