[UPDATE] Clarified that I have two classes for my bullet. One which uses pooling, and another that does not use pooling. So my object pooling optimizations don’t seem to be working. I thought I would have seen some improvements in terms of my performance, but I’m just not seeing it. I think one issue is due to the fact that with more objects lying around, the garbage collector takes longer to run. Essentially, the pooling reduces how often the collector runs, but makes those runs more noticeable. ...

So I’m quickly progressing in my newest game, Super Rawr-Typeand am just about to put the finishing touches on it. I’ve given myself one month (30 days) to work on this bad boy. GDC and PAX took up quite a bit of time recently, so I’ve got a few days left to go. It’s far from perfect, but it’ll do. Next month, I’ll focus on publishing to The Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Stores, as well as wrapping the code in the iOS wrapper. ...

My first book, UnrealScript Game Programming Cookbook has been published by Pakt Publishing today. It covers a variety of topics, from creating your own modular camera system, crafting AI, creating intelligent pathfinding for bots, and manipulating weapons. A free sample chapter is available as well, which covers creating a modular camera system, from beginning to end. It’s available in a number of formats, including a physical copy, as well as Kindle and .pdf formats. You can find the book here, or also at Amazon.com here.

The most difficult part of this project thus far has been understanding the idea behind MVVM, or Model-View-View Model. Wikipedia defines it as: “MVVM facilitates a clear separation of the development of the graphical user interface (either as markup language or GUI code) from the development of the business logic or back end logic known as the model (also known as the data model to distinguish it from the view model). The view model of MVVM is a value converter, meaning that the view model is responsible for exposing the data objects from the model in such a way that those objects are easily managed and consumed” ...

Earlier today I completed the final chapter of my book The Advancaed UnealScript Programming Cookbook. The book covers a number of topics ranging from creating custom weapons, advanced AI for navigating tight paths and following pawns, drawing a HUD without the use of ScaleForm, and adjusting crosshairs based on the actor your pawn’s eyes are tracing. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Initially I wasn’t completely confident that I could complete the book within the restrictions of such a tight deadline (less than 3 months), especially when I hadn’t used the language or Unreal Development kit in almost a year. I had previously been focusing my efforts on C#, XNA, and Unity. ...

So it’s been a long time coming, but my first Xbox Live Indie Game, *Piz-ong,*finally appeared on Xbox Live this morning. It took me a few attempts to get it through peer review, and it was always for something silly, like forgetting an “if”statement for the trial mode (which I later found out from James Silva that you don’t even need, as the game automatically prompts for the trial to tend after 7 minutes). ...

I’ve decided to finally release my game. And by release, I mean submit it to playtesting, take some brief feedback, and then finally place it into peer review. Once it passes that it can be released on XBLIG. I’m doing this for a few reasons: 1) Learning It’s nice to have feedback from other developers in terms of how the game plays and how to make corrections. It’s essentially a pong clone, so I wanted to start simple, as it serves as a way for me to learn both C# and XNA. In that regard it has done its job. I feel as though it’s run its course at the moment and that I can learn more from others developers and players than to continue on as I am. ...

Just placeholder art for now Update: I’ve found the thread where in the App Hub where I got the original idea for the powerups. It is now linked. This is part 2 of my Dream.Build.Play journal, where I outline what it’s like to learn the technical side of XNA and C#. You can find my first part here. As I mentioned in my previous posting, a few members of the XNA community have been key in helping me learn the ins and outs along the way. I was looking for a framework to build my game on top of, and in doing so I came across a few which caught my attention, but Oneksoft’s Basic Starter Kit really had a lot of features that I was looking for. He frequently updates it, which gives you an added incentive to check out the page often as well. Essentially it is a combination of items from developers within the community, all of which are designed to make the experience of a novice developer easier. ...

I want to chronicle what it’s like to learn how to program. It has always been something that has interested me, and I’m impressed by people who can program. In the game development world programmers are the ones who hold the key to success. A game may be aesthetically pleasing or engross players in a beautiful soundtrack, but those who control how the game actually feels and how it all comes together are the programmers. ...

This weekend I had the pleasure of working with a great bunch of guys to put together a fun party style game for the first “What Would Molydeux?” game jam. It was my first game jam, but a great one nonetheless. I wasn’t sure of what to expect, but in the end I things turned out great. I had a chance to meet up with some great people, collaborate on a new project, and learn quite a bit along the way. ...