Today is April Fool's day...and apparently I fooled quite a few people with my post earlier today! Sorry if you were outraged, concerned (or maybe you were happy and elated?) but I am not losing my MVP status. I'm still an XNA MVP and hope to remain one for as long as XNA is around. I really love the technology and this community!
Something that was NOT an April fool's joke however, there are now two new XNA MVPs (well only two knew that I'm aware of, if there's more, please make yourself known!). Congratulations to Michael McLaughlin and John Defenbaugh for this recent award, you guys truly deserve the honor. Thanks for everything the both of you have done for the community this past year.
With all the announcements done, let's get on to what I noticed going on in the XNA community this past week.
XNA Team:
- The XNA Team announces that Gamefest 2011 is open to all
- Shawn Hargreaves and Charles Cox talk XNA Game Studio on Channel 9
- Shawn Hargreaves goes on a posting spree and shares a slew of technical terms that SHOULD exist and few extra posts thrown in. His last 7 posts are all new from last week!
XNA MVPs:
- Newly awarded XNA MVP Michael McLaughlin prepares himself for XNA and VB
- George Clingerman defends XBLIG
- http://www.dealspwn.com/microsoft-mvp-defends-xblig/
- and I apparently write more convincingly than I realized and trick a large portion of the community into thinking I lost my MVP status. April Fools! I’m still an MVP and plan on being one for a long, long time
XNA Developers:
- Tom Miller wants to know, just what DID you think of his book?
- The Daily XNA is trying a new format, let @mrhelmut know what you think and be sure to offer suggestions!
- Aaron T. Foley (@slyprid) works on enhancing a project release by Nick. G. for WPF Hosting for XNA 4.0.
- Spyn-Doctor announces his XBLIG Your Doodles Are Bugged will be showing up on Steam!
- DigitalDNA celebrates over 1 millions downloads of their Xbox LIVE Indie games
- Simon (Darkside) J shares his thoughts on the ATTDeveloper webcast Connecting WP7 to the web
- Kris Steele gets into the April Fools spirit and shares The Divide By Zero postmortem. There’s a lesson in there for all of us. Somewhere. I think. Well maybe not, but it’s a fun read!
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG):
- Destructoid is looking to help promote indie games
- Raymond Matthews continues to post XBLIG reviews on DarkStarMatryx
- Armless Octopus, reviews, podcasts, articles, news. They have it all on Xbox LIVE Indie Games. Subscribe to the feed, hit the site daily.
- MasterBlud of VVGTV releases his music album for the upcoming XBLIG was released and is available here
- DIY releases Best of the Indies - March 29th 2011
- Petition launched to get XBLIG expanded into Austria
- Another 7 days and another 7 awesome Xbox LIVE Indie Games discovered by Steven Hurdle (he’s up to Day 142 now! That’s 142 Xbox LIVE Indie Game recommendations!)
- Dealspwn posts the Xbox LIVE Indie Game of the Week winner
- Just Press Start XBLIG Podcast, Episode 51
- Bonded Reality gets a mention in May’s issue of Xbox Magazine!
- mancide shares the March 2011 Indie Games Spotlight on TrueAchievements.com
- GameMarx announces Microsoft’s Announcement of the “Adopt-An-Indie” program. Another fantastic April Fool’s post!
- Ben Kane does a developer update on his action RPG twin-stick shooter game Project Splice
- Kris Steele of FunInfused Games posts another Fun Infused Friday sharing what they’ve been up to
- XBLIG Shield The Beat wants you to show the love on their Facebook page (you should also check out this game, fantastic!)
- The Dishwasher: Vampire Smiles is being released in 4 days and Ska Studios in awesome indie style has mad a fantastic video Dev Diary.
XNA Development:
- Protohacks shares an XNA Debug Terminal
- Microsoft announces XNA is coming to Visual Basic
- Channel 9 posts the WP7 XNA for Silverlight Developers Series
- @MrDaaark shares some information on basic color theory
- Astroboid Games share an XNA Message system for games