Shawn Hargreaves Blog Index

This is an index of old posts from my blog, organized by category.

• Taking out the trash
• Add the mesh, not the textures
• Build it ahead of time
• Debugging the content pipeline
• What to extend in the content pipeline
• ContentManager.ReadAsset
• Any language you like (as long as it's at build time)
• Wildcard content using MSBuild
• Embedding content as resources
• Content Pipeline types
• FBX improvements in XNA Game Studio 3.0
• Content Pipeline assemblies
• Automatic XNB serialization in XNA Game Studio 3.1

• Unicode fonts in XNA
• Bitmap fonts in XNA

• How to tell if your Xbox garbage collection is too slow
• Twin paths to garbage collector nirvana
• Delegates, events, and garbage
• Monitoring the garbage collector

• Understanding GPU performance
• An elf in a box
• Lost in translation
• How to tell if you are CPU or GPU bound
• Santa's production line
• Shawn's Holistic Detective Agency
• Stalling the pipeline
• Stalls part two: beware of SetData
• (Charles - n) + (George + n) != Charles + George

• Sixty fractals per second
• Technicolor Julias
• Debugging XNA graphics problems
• XNA rendertarget semantics
• Rendertarget changes in XNA Game Studio 2.0
• Virtualizing the GraphicsDevice in XNA Game Studio 2.0
• Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics
• BasicEffect: a misnomer?
• Instances and indices and vfetch - oh my!
• Detail textures
• Depth sorting alpha blended objects

• Keyboard suck
• Gamepads suck
• Mice suck
• Massaging thumbsticks
• Hysteresis
• So many buttons on the gamepad

• XML and the Content Pipeline
• IntermediateSerializer vs. XmlSerializer
• How serializers work
• Teaching a man to fish
• Everything you ever wanted to know about IntermediateSerializer
• Customizing IntermediateSerializer, part 1
• Customizing IntermediateSerializer, part 2
• Why IntermediateSerializer control attributes are not part of the Content Pipeline
• Serializing collections of shared resources

• The standard lighting rig
• Specularity
• Equalizing artwork
• BasicEffect.PreferPerPixelLighting

• Models, meshes, parts, and bones
• Flattening unwanted bones
• Customizing how models build their textures
• Rendering a Model with a custom Effect
• Note to self: Model = hammer
• Roll up, roll up, get your replacement hammers here...

• What's the difference between a technique and a hack?
• MotoGP: the sun
• MotoGP: bike damage
• MotoGP: crash camera
• MotoGP: the power of blu-tack
• MotoGP: particles
• MotoGP: localization
• MotoGP: custom paint jobs
• MotoGP: skidmarks
• MotoGP: replays

• System link networking in XNA Game Studio 2.0
• Network latency
• Network packet loss
• Network bandwidth: packet headers
• Network bandwidth: voice
• Network compression
• Network compression: quantization
• Network compression: packed vectors
• Network compression: bitfields
• Network compression: arithmetic encoding
• Network compression: just say no!
• Network object ownership
• Invites in XNA Game Studio 3.0
• NetworkGamer.Id in XNA Game Studio 3.0
• SendDataOptions.Chat in XNA Game Studio 3.0

• Inline those vector constructors
• A tale of many haggis
• Lock contention during load screen animations

• Programmer art
• More programmer art
• Return of the Son of Programmer Art
• The sky's the limit

• SpriteBatch and renderstates
• Graphics state management
• Bitfield renderstates

• Motion Blur
• Vrrroom! Whoosh!
• Speed is a matter of perspective

• SpriteBatch and SpriteSortMode
• SpriteBatch sorting part 2
• Return of the SpriteBatch: sorting part 3
• SpriteBatch and custom blend modes

• Texture compression
• Is DXT texture compression worth it?
• DXT compression for normalmaps

• Displaying the framerate
• Understanding GameTime
• GameTime outside America
• Game timing in XNA Game Studio 2.0

• The importance of transitions
• Transitions part one: the importance of curves
• Transitions part two: let's get physical
• Transitions part three: stencil swipes
• Transitions part four: rendertargets
• Transitions concluded: "there is no spoon"

• Two common XACT gotchas
• Some code is more equal than others
• A calculator called Eric
• XNA Framework on 64 bit Windows
• Unloading projects from a VS solution
• Hiding thread exit messages
• Trial mode in XNA Game Studio 3.0
• Rich Presence in XNA Game Studio 3.0
• Pixel perfect collision detection using GPU occlusion queries
• Overscan, title safe areas, and test cost
• Is floating point math deterministic?

• Zune battery efficiency
• Zune landscape mode
• Zune battery versus hard drive