The NXE is finally out! The next time you switch on your Xbox (if you haven’t already), you will be prompted to update.

So now I must say, welcome to the NXE. I successfully got it from the second round of the preview program, and have been enjoying it since. It is a great change that really gives a new breath of life to the Xbox 360.

Whilst I was sitting on twitter and watching my friends login and gain the download tonight, I wrote up a small widget for BlogEngine.Net that displays your GamerCard, provided by MyGamerCard.Net.

If you want it for your own blog, you can download it from here. Instructions are in the archive.

(Or from my Skydrive)

On another note, A Kingdom for Keflings was released for Arcade, which takes advantage of the avatars you create when you download the NXE.

I am currently in the process of working with my webhost to move my site over to their new platform. The benefits of this means I can use subdomains properly (I think) and they promise me that I will be on the Windows Server 2008 platform, which means IIS7. :) (That lets me use things like the URL rewrite module)

Due to the inspirational talk by Scott Hanselman at TechEd Sydney 2008 I am also considering using Asp.Net MVC to create a new blogging/content platform to replace BlogEngine.net on this website. Currently BlogEngine.net is serving me well, however I do like to write my own, and I would prefer to bake in a good page system rather than adding to a token implementation on a blogging platform.

More info once I make the move, and once I get started on the project. Might even make a small screencast or write a tutorial on it.

Just in time for developers to polish their games for Community Games, XNA Game Studio 3.0 has been released. There are numerous changes, however the most important ones are:

• XNA Game Studio 3.0 now supports Visual Studio 2008 (all editions), however it does not support VS2005 anymore, so ensure you upgrade!
• Friend Invites over Live – Add the ability to let players invite their friends on the Xbox/G4W Live network.
• Automatic Asset compression – this one is obvious
• New Media system – now you can add MP3 files to your content folder and play them using the new Media namespace.
• Zune support
• One Click installation for Windows games

Remember, if you live in the USA and some parts of Europe, Xbox Live Community Games will be released with the New Xbox Experience on the 19th of November.

Download XNA Game Studio 3.0 today!

Update: From the updated FAQ:

“Creators Club Premium members in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland and Spain will be able to sell their games. We'll be adding support for other regions later in 2009 and beyond but these are the only countries where XNA is enabled to pay their residents.”

After a 12 hour long countdown on the Bungie website today, Bungie has released a teaser trailer for their next project, which is set in the Halo Universe.

The teaser trailer, entitled ‘Keep it Clean’ is very vague on details, however the keen eye will notice that it is in New Mombasa, the city destroyed in the beginning of Halo 2, and the fact that this game is still a part of Halo 3.

The trailer opens to cameras showing an evacuated New Mombasa. Then it cuts to some drop pods falling in the outer atmosphere.  The streets are deserted, as shown by the camera ‘Lubamba’ and there is a space elevator in the distance, as shown by camera ‘Mbaraki’. The camera cuts to thousands of drop pods falling in the distance, and focuses on a small group, before a large explosion (presumably the warp in Halo 2) occurs, destroying the city.

The AI and cameras reboot to show a destroyed city, however when the camera Mbaraki reappears, you see a single drop pod falling towards the city. It cuts to Halo 3, before showing the pod from a different angle, as it smashes past the camera. Then it cuts to black  and reads: “Prepare to drop”, before jerking around a bit more and reading Bungie, then showing the standard Xbox 360 clip.

Here are some more screenshots from the video. Note the entire trailer is pre-rendered, click on the thumbnails to get a hi-res version of the screenshot.

You can view the trailer for yourself, just head on over to Bungie.net and download it in either Quicktime or WMV, Small Medium or Large.

So TechED Sydney is over and I now have the time to post about the big announcement for students that came out of the event. On Tuesday Microsoft held TechEd Student Day, a free day for students to come along and sit in on a series of presentations geared towards students, TechEd style.

Aside from that, every University student who attended the University half of the day received 4 DVDs full of free software, ready for use. Now if you could not attend this event, do not fret, this is all available for you as well (if you are a student), however you need to download it for yourself.

Head to https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/ and Sign In with your Windows Live ID, and then verify your student status and you can get your keys and downloads for all the software listed. This includes:

• Visual Studio 2008 Pro
• Visual Studio 2005 Pro
• Windows Server 2003 Standard
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Microsoft Expression Studio
• 12 Month XNA Creators Club Trial
• XNA Game Studio 2.0
• Virtual PC 2007 (Great for use with Windows Server 2003)

Grab the downloads, grab the keys, and start making cool things with this free software. Anything you make can be distributed with a non-commercial license, so get to it!

Microsoft has just released the long-awaited SP1 update to Visual Studio 2008 and .Net 3.5 after being in beta for a number of months.

Download it here

SP1 brings loads of enhancements and features to both Visual Studio and .Net 3.5, including a major performance (20%-45%) boost for WPF, the ADO Entity Framework, and full support for the newly released SQL Server 2008.

Microsoft has made a pretty good marketing ploy to help improve the image of Windows Vista.

Called “The Mojave Experiment”, they took a number of Vista ‘skeptics’ and showed them Windows “Mojave”, the next version of Windows. Overall these people, who had given Vista 4/10 or lower when asked in the beginning, rated “Mojave” really well.

Then Microsoft dropped the bombshell, Windows “Mojave” is really Windows Vista.

The positive reactions of the participants about Windows “Mojave” really shows that you need to experience things for yourself rather than relying only on what you hear, as most of them did. As one participant noted: “You have to see for yourself.”

You can see the video of the reactions and participants at the "Mojave" Experiment website.

Whilst searching through my RSS feeds today I found a little gem that could give you a nice boot time improvement.

It seems that even on dual/quad/n core machines, Vista boots using only one core. Peter Provost has a solution he found that will allow you to take advantage of all of your cores.

In summary the steps involve going to msconfig and changing the number of cores.

To do that:

1. Start –> Run
2. Type msconfig, click Ok
3. Click on the “Boot” tab
4. Click Advanced Options
5. Enable the checkbox titled “Number of Processors:”
6. Change the number to your number of cores using the drop down box
7. Click Ok
8. Click Ok/Apply
9. Restart

That is basically it, just follow those steps and you can enable Multi-Core startup.

This option also exists in Windows XP. It is under the tab named BOOT.INI, also under Advanced Options in there, however it is called /NUMPROC. A bit more advanced since there seems to be ini editing here, but either method isnt for a basic user

I have been a Microsoft Student Partner since the beginning of this year, and in conjunction with the other MSP at UTS,(Chris Webster) have been planning a large event for this semester.

Recently we decided that the best thing to do was to give a talk on the ways you can get free (or cheap) software from Microsoft as a student.

The time has finally arrived.

How to get Free (and cheap) stuff from Microsoft

Slides and content will be available after the presentation, although probably only late night or next day due to a late lecture. :P

If you intend to come to the event, head to the website there and register your interest so we can get an idea of numbers.

Remember, not only do you take away the methods of gaining free software, but you also take away a bag of goodies and have the chance of winning a lucky door prize!

The professional video tutorial scene has started to adopt XNA from the looks of it, with Digital Tutors releasing a DVD training package named Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA.

Popular highlights:

XNA Development Overview

Interfacing with Keyboard and Gamepad

Building Controller Systems

Controller Vibration

Exporting and Loading Static Meshes from Maya

Exporting Animated Characters from Maya

Moving and Turning a Character

Object-oriented Programming with Bullets and Targets

Baking Textures in Maya

Deriving Bounding Boxes from Maya

Collision Detection with Bounding boxes

Collision Detection with Rays

Building a Custom Animation Player

Switching and Blending Between Animations

Chase Cameras

Camera Shakes

Drawing Text

CGSociety has this to say about the product:

'Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA' contains nearly five hours of project-based training for technical artists learning the methods of creating game content using XNA and Maya. 'Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA' offers artists an essential workflow and innovative techniques for easily integrating Maya and XNA for game creation.

Since this costs money, I cannot get this at the moment and so I cannot give my own review. However it looks like a good product, and considering Digital Tutor's track record, it should be a good investment for the artistic programmers out there.

Edit [17/5/2008]: I noticed that Digital Tutors also has an interesting looking Training Package titled Real-Time Shaders with XNA.