Free “Windows Phone Blue Book” Course

Microsoft Faculty Connection have just released my “Windows Phone Programming Blue Book”. This is kind of a companion to the "C# Yellow Book” which has been around for a while. However, it has a lot more stuff with it. There are demo programs and also a whole set of presentations and exercises that you could use to create a complete course on Windows Phone 7. You can find the content here:

https://www.facultyresourcecenter.com/curriculum/pfv.aspx?ID=8729

Christmas Bash 2010

The Christmas Bash is becoming a tradition. From modest beginnings a couple of years ago we now have a well established setup which this year included Team Fortress, Track Mania, Kinect, PS Move and Band Hero. Along with the ever popular word search. In fact I was aghast to see a bunch of students ignoring their gaming terminals and instead searching through the grid for such words as “Battleships”, “Theatre” and of course “wordsearch”.

The gathering actually established a new record for bashes. From 22 pizzas to nothing in around 6 minutes. Amazing.

There are more pictures on Flickr. If you have any of your own please tag them hullxmasbash2010.

Busy Marking

If you have been trying to find me over the last couple of days you would have been out of luck. I’ve been in the First Year labs marking student programs. Actually great fun (but also very hard work). Saw some stuff that could easily go to market, which was very nice.

Just half a day of marking left and then we can get on with the Christmas Bash.

Mad Game Development in the Press

You might remember our Mad Game Development a few weeks ago. Fifteen teams spent 24 hours on campus writing a game. Great fun. Writer Peter Gothard (now of GamesTM Magazine) came along for the ride (actually it was his idea….)

Anyhoo, he has now written up the whole thing as a superb article in 360 Magazine this month. With pictures of all the teams and screenshots of their games it is well worth a read. In all good newsagents now..

Cheese Clipart

You wouldn’t believe how much pictures cost for games. I can get a picture of a piece of cheese for a pound I can use in a web page. If I want to put it into a game I’m going to have to spend an awful lot more than that. More than the price of a piece of cheese…..

So today I was in the conservatory photographing cheese for use in my next cheese based XNA game project.  And next I’m going to eat it all.