Thank you everyone that made it out to tonights meeting. It was nice to see a couple of new faces. I appreciate everyone's patience tonight waiting for the meeting to start. Things ran a little late but I hope you enjoyed the presentation.

I neglected to send out the Facebook invitation to the XNA Family BBQ so as it would turn out only family and close friends attended. Appologies to everyone for my failure to notify you all properly. Let''s try this again next year everyone.

As expected, The_Zman's presentation was spot-on and in a word, 'awesome'. Being filled with lots of ""need-to-know"" information regarding the publication of your games on the Xbox Live Community Games (soon to be Xbox Live Indie Games) server I walked out learning a great deal myself. We hope to have Andy back again next year to give another presentation to the group. Those that missed the presentation Andy has provided the group with his PowerPoint slide show from the meetings. You all can get it from here.

The connectivity problems have been dealt with and we can now use access Xbox Live servers and deploy to the Xbox 360.

For those that missed the meeting this month, Scott Wilson did a great job of covering all aspects of the Creators Club web site. Great job Scott thanks!

This month our very own Scott Wilson will be giving a talk on the Creators Club Website and Membership benefits. Should be a light evening based around the creators club website content, where to find information and the forums.

This month David Morgantini will go over the basics of Unit testing and how it could be applies to game development. .

Using an adaptation of the Asteroids project presented last month, David will demonstrate how unit testing can help develop well understood and robust game code..

Please continue to work on your first projects if you are not completed. Make sure if you are having any trouble with the pong project to come out to the next meeting and get some help. For those of you that are still working on the Asteroids project if you need help make sure to ask otherwise we will cover the asteroids project when the group reconviens after the summer break.

See you this month.

This month I (Matthew Randall) will cover XNA Game and DrawableGame component's and demonstrate how they can be leveraged in an XNA game.

Also this month member will be presented with their second XNA Calgary Users Group project, Asteroids. As with pong members will be provided with a project outline and the media assets to get them started.

Please continue to work on your first projects if you are not completed yet and feel free to ask for help if you require it.

See you this month.

This month our very own Scott Wilson will give a discussion on collision techniques using the XNA Framework.

In addition if there are any members that are having some problems with the pong project there will be some support available at the end of this months meeting to help get you moving again.

For those that are interested in downloading the provided artwork for this project may do so from the following address:



http://forum.xnacalgary.org/XNACALUG_Project1_Pong.zip



As you will notice from the url listed above there is a new set of forums almost ready for use. These forums are being written by hand so please be patient.

Happy New Year's!



Starting January, members will be given a simple game outline, the audio and graphics resources needed to complete the game and development support as needed to get the game finished. Each month members will present their completed game projects to the group and be provided with a new game outline that will further build and re-enforce upon previous concepts and topics.

This month's game project will be, Pong.



Hope to see you all at this month's meeting!

Seems that there was a sligh problem with the date I selected to post the previous news item and apologize to everyone for the inconvienience.

The meeting for December will not have to be re-scheduled afterall and everything is business as usual.

This month one of our very own, David Morgantini will be presenting to the group, "Sim Climber" - a video game about rock climbing.

Hope to see you there this month!

Presented to the November XNA Calgary Users Group was part 2 in a series dealing with the XNA custom content pipeline. Matthew took the group through a simple example of how the content pipeline was used to simplify level design in the soon to be released game Arkzunoid. This example demonstrated how the content pipeline could be customized to allow the loading of a specially formatted graphic image containing level data into an XNA game to be rendered and displayed in real time.



Due to constraints with class scheduling the December meeting may have to be moved either a day before or the day after our normal meeting time of the second Wednesday of the month (December 10th 2008). I will know more in a few days as to the new dates.

This month Scott Wilson, one of the XNA Calgary Users Group members presented some code samples and gave a general over-view of the XNA Game Studio game project and walked attendees through some sample code from the Creators Club website.

All in all it was a very insteresting topic and lead to a general discussion regarding other XNA concepts.

Next month we will pick up where we left off in September regarding the XNA Custom Content Pipeline - An Overview, with part 2 in the series which the code required to create custom XNA importers and processor for use in your XNA game projects will be covered.

It is that time again!

As the September XNA Calgary User Group meeting approaches and the new school season starts we will open this months meeting with an over-view of the XNA Content Pipeline and introduce attendants to the general workings of the default XNA Game Studio Game Project.

This will be the first installment of a multi-part presentation that will bring attendants closer to the inner workings of the custom content pipeline demonstrating how it can be used to leverage game development using XNA technologies.

Just a reminder that the XNA Calgary User Group meeting for August is tonight!

Due to a soccer injury, John Bristowe was unable to attend the July meeting. Cheers to a speedy recovery John!

Attendance was very low last month however we were still able to give attendants a brief presentation of the QuickXAP audio tool set as well we were able to take attendants through a simple brainstorming process lead by Bruno that saw the creation of a simple game concept.

We look forward to seeing more of you out to the August meeting.

Thanks go out to all the people that attended the first XNA Calgary Users Group meeting on the S.A.I.T Campus last June!

The first meeting was a great success with over 15 attendees from students, industry professionals and the local Calgary .Net Users Group. We introduced attendees to the XNA Framework demonstrating some games built using the XNA technology and running on Windows PC's, Xbox 360 platforms as well as the new Zune media devices.

With that said it is almost time for the July 9, 2008 meeting and we hope to see some new faces in addition to those we met at the first meeting held in June.

The room has been changed and meeting will no longer be held in Room 201 but instead be held in Room 321 in the Heart Building on the S.A.I.T main campus. See July XNACALUG meeting information here.

The location for the June XNACALUG meeting has been secured and will be held on the SAIT Main Campus located in Calgary, Alberta in the Heart Building, Wing 'D', Room 201 (MD-201).

The first meeting for the XNACALUG will be Wednesday, June 11, 2008. Currently, we are working on securing a venue. Please keep checking back here for more updates.