Just a quick recap of things I noticed going on in or around the XNA community this past week. I’m sure there’s a lot I missed (it’s a pretty big community with lots of different parts to it) but these where the things I caught that I thought were pretty cool.

The XNA Team

• Michael Klucher gave a list of books every gamer should read.
  • http://twitter.com/#!/mklucher/status/22313041135673344
• Shawn Hargreaves posted Nelxon Studio posting about a cheatsheet for converting 3.1 to 4.0
  • http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/01/04/xna-3-1-to-4-0-cheat-sheet.aspx?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
• XNA Game Studio won the Frontline award for Programming Tool by GameDev magazine! Congrats to the XNA team!
  • http://www.gdmag.com/homepage.htm

XNA MVPs

• In January several MVPs were up for re-election, Jim Perry, Andy ‘The ZMan’ Dunn, Glenn Wilson and myself were all re-award a Microsoft MVP award for their contributions to the XNA/DirectX communities.
  • https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx?product=1&competency=XNA%2fDirectX
• A movement to get Michael McLaughlin an MVP award has started and you can join in too!
  • http://twitter.com/#!/theBigDaddio/status/22744458621620224
  • http://www.xnadevelopment.com/MVP/MichaelMcLaughlinMVP.txt
• Don’t forget you can nominate ANYONE for a MVP award, that’s how they work.
  • https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/gp/mvpbecoming

 XNA Developers

• James Silva of Ska Studios hit 9,200 sales of ZP2KX and recommends you listen to Infected Mushroom.
  • http://twitter.com/#!/Jamezila/status/22538865357094912
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infected_Mushroom
• Noogy creator of the upcoming XBLA title Dust an Elysian tail posts some details into his art creation.
  • http://noogy.com/image/statue/statue.html
    

Xbox LIVE Indie Game News

• Microsoft posts acknowledging there was an issue with the sales data that has been addressed and apologized for not posting about it sooner.
  • http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71347/436154.aspx#436154
• Winter Uprising sales still chugging along and being updated by Xalterax (by those developers willing to actually share sales numbers. Thanks for sharing guys, much appreciated!)
  • http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/70147.aspx
• Don’t forget about Dream Build Play coming up in February!
  • http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Main/Home.aspx
• The Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games December Edition comes out on NeoGaf
  • http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=414485
• The Greatest XBox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 on DealSpwn – Congrats to DrMistry and MStarGames for his #1 spot with his massive XBLIG Space Pirates From Tomorrow!
  • http://www.dealspwn.com/xbligoty-2010/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Dealspwn+%28Dealspwn%29

XNA Game Development

• The future of XACT and WP7 has finally been confirmed and we finally know what our options are for looping audio seamlessly on WP7.
  • http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/61826/436639.aspx#436639 
• Super Mario 3 Design Notes is an interesting read for XBLIG developers, giving some insight to the training that natural occurs for players as they start playing the game. Good things for XBLIG developers to think about.
  • http://www.significant-bits.com/super-mario-bros-3-level-design-lessons