Archive for January, 2010

Robbie Bach Uni Talk

Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division is giving a public talk at the University of Sydney on Tuesday 9th February 2010.

For any readers who are in Sydney, this would be a great event to attend. E&D covers everything from the XBOX to the Surface, even Keyboards + Mice from MS hardware.

Hopefully there will be a Natal unit on display, and maybe a demo, although no confirmation yet.

RSVP by emailing kumarman[at]microsoft.com

 

SydUniRobbieBachTalk9thFeb

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Autodesk Student Subscriptions [Freebies]

I know that many of you will want to make use of either Blender or the nice free version of Softimage (Previously XSI) on the Creators Club website, however for those interested in expanding their skill set, perhaps with the intention of entering the industry, getting access to 3ds Max or Maya can be quite hard to do.* (legitimately)

I recently found that if you are a student and have an email address with your institution (.edu) then you can get access to licenses for Max, Maya, even AutoCAD and Revit for free using the Autodesk Student subscription.

Just go to http://students.autodesk.com to see if you qualify and register.

* I am not implying that 3ds Max + Maya are the only tools the industry uses, however they are the focus of this post.

Side Note: There are way too many versions of AutoCAD.

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Action Based Input Manager w/Events in XNA

I recently completed an action based Input system for my own engine that allows me to create named actions which support the GamePad, Keyboard and Mouse.

The system uses events to notify the game of changes in input state, which makes it really easy to use, and the system supports XML serialisation so key assignments can be saved and loaded.

Supports:

  • Thumbsticks (Analog)
  • Triggers (Analog)
  • GamePad Buttons (incl Trigger “Buttons”)
  • Keyboard
  • Mouse (Analog)
  • Mouse Buttons

The system also supports Gamepad, Mouse and Keyboard assignments for each action, so you can support both the GamePad and Keyboard at the same time.

It also supports disabling of certain GamePads, so you can find the active GamePad and only accept input from that one, via a really simply array of booleans.

You can specify a single direction or axis for the Thumbstick and Mouse, so that the events will only be triggered if there is movement “up” on the Thumbstick.

You can download the InputManager and InputAction classes below:

AxialInput Sample

Feel free to use these classes in your own project, although if you do make use of them, it would be nice to get a mention.

If you notice any problems, or have any suggestions/feedback, feel free to post them in the comments.

Note/Disclaimer:
This sample/code is provided as is. I am not responsible for any problems you may have, and you use the code at your own risk.
I am available to answer questions about the code through the comment system on this website – although this is not guaranteed.
This code was intended for personal use, however I have decided to share it with the community to help out newer developers.

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Disqus Comments Added

Just letting everyone know I added Disqus commenting to this site, so if you have a profile with them, use that, otherwise they offer many other ways to login via Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo etc.

This adds some more commenting features, and should make the experience better overall. All previous comments should have imported correctly into Disqus.

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