Some time ago, I wrote about a desire to create a peer-referral freelance network, based on a few simple ideas:

• Each member maintains a page with three good samples of their work w/ source files.
• On each page, each member lists other members whose work they have reviewed and liked. These reasons are listed briefly.

The idea here is to see the work and tap expert opinions in a community structure. The most recent push I wrote about in this post: freelance referral network building.

Member Pages

This will be alphabetically sorted by first name, last name for now.

• Dave Seah - Investigative Designer
• Sid Ceaser - Fine Art & Creative Portrait Photographer

Queued Pages

Adding a list of names that I plan to get to later:

• JAMES MEISTER - DESIGNER / METAL WORKER
• KENDALL GUILLEMETTE - WEB DEVELOPER
• LYLE KONKIEL - WEB DEVELOPER
• GARY V. VAUGHN - UNIX / MARTIAL ARTS / WRITER
• OCTAVIA CHEETHAM - GRAPHIC ARTIST / WEB DESIGNER

(List the roles you can perform, and describe what it is you make for what purpose)

Fine Art & Creative Portrait Photographer: It remains my desire to capture personal moments in my photographs that reflect beauty, or serenity, or visual poetic instances that show grace, or character. I like to romanticize, to portray things in a more “perfect” situation and I try to make my subjects feel the kind of attention and importance they might not feel in every day life. From high school seniors, to children to parents and grandparents - every individual is beautiful and I want my images to help show this.

My talents cover a wide selection of people related photography; portraits, head shots, corporate work, editorial portraiture, etc.

More information: ceaserphotography.com

Sid's Samples

Sample 1

Mersades wanted to get into modeling and wanted a simply lit, radiant portrait that shows her beautiful eyes and face.

Sample 2

Jillian is a dear friend whom I've known for many years. When her hair started falling out in clumps because of alopecia, she asked to start a series of shoots to help her come to terms with her disease. I lit her softly and simply, because no matter what she looks like, she still remains gorgeous.

Sample 3

Mei Mei takes music classes at the Nashua Community Music School. This was taken while she didn't know I was looking.

One of my long-term goals is to create a codex of important concepts that, when properly introduced to a young mind, helps produce achievement as a byproduct of understanding the core principles. For example, "leverage" is an important concept to know in a mechanical sense. "Ratio" is another important concept from mathematics. I believe there's a core set of principles like this that could really be helpful.

I'm going to keep track of some links to off-site resources that I think are useful.

Personal Productivity

• Henrik Edberg wrote this list of 16 things he wish he'd been taught, and it's an excellent list. I agree with just about all of them.

• There was that book by that southern school teacher on excellence in schools, teaching a bunch of principles. I have 2 copies of the book and can't find it! Gah!

If you are looking for my research notes, head over to my WikiLab. It's read-only, but updated continuously.

Productivity Form Resources

• Compact Calendar Pages
• Excel GANTT Pages
• Other Services

Group Resources

• Freelancer Network
• Dave Seah Travel Plans
• GameDev Study Group - includes DirectX Notes
• SXSW 2008 Links

Fun Stuff

• The Museum of Transformation and Translation
• MacBook Pro Decals and Skins
• Vault of Important Concepts

To edit or create a page, first register yourself and login

To upload files, use the File Upload item in the left sidebar. In addition to the regular Wiki syntax, I have my preferred Markdown syntax in effect.

Please read the Wiki Policy for more details on how you may use this site.

So according to Sharing and Distributing Your Game on the XNA Developer Center website, you need to use something called XNA Game Studio Package Utility (xnapack.exe) for both Windows and Xbox 360. However, this usable only by other XNA Game Studio users.

If it's a Windows-only game, you have more options by distributing the game files with the "redistributables". We're directed to the Distributing Your Finished Game article. From the article:

Approach 1: Compile Game Binaries for Distribution

1. In XNA Game Studio, Build Solution
2. Package all the files from the output directory using an "installation package tool" of your choice.

In practical terms, you go to the "Release" directory for your game, and copy both the Content directory and the executable. The next trick is to make sure you have all those darn prerequisites installed. You can see a list of prerequisite components and their installer locations. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't make it particularly EASY to automatically run and install these things. There are a bunch of installer options available...I'm looking at Windows Installer, WiX 3.0 and Votive (a VisStudio add-on that allows you to create Wix projects), Inno Setup, and Nullsoft Installer System (NSIS).

Here's what you need to ensure is installed:

• .NET Framework 2.0 Redistributable
• XNA Framework Redistributable
• Several files form the DirectX 9.0c Redistributable:
  • OCT2006_d3dx9_31_x86.cab
  • APR2007_d3dx9_33_x86.cab
  • aug2007_xact_x86.cab
  • APR2007_xinput_x86.cab
  • DSETUP.dll
  • dsetup32.dll
  • DXSETUP.exe
  • dxupdate.cab

This doesn't seem particularly elegant, or complete. We have also been getting this complaints about manifest files, so we need to know a bit more about what constitutes a "output" from the solution.

This article Build a setup project for your XNA Game has some background information about the overall process. From what I gather, you can create a "Setup Project" in Visual Studio 2005 (it's in the "other" project types). By choosing "Project Properties" for the Setup project in the Solution Explorer (right click for the menu), you can create a "Dependencies" list.

The Stubbs article describes how to create the "XNA Framework Prequisites" files you need. They are two XML files called product.xml and package.xml. This is a one-time thing. These files are [described here][manifests. There's also some general background in [this article series about the installer architecture][arch].

• First, in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages I'm creating an XNAFrameworks2 folder. Then, create an en (English) language folder. We'll create our localized package.xml and product.xml files in there. I copied them from the stubbs article.

• However, I'm using XNA 2.0, so I want to update the various product codes. I'm not sure it's strictly necessary, but I'd rather be sure while learning how these manifest things work.

ALternatively, this thread by pelleator describes using Inno to create an installer. I'll look at the stubbs approach first, which using Microsoft Windows Installer.

Product.XML

• Change Product:ProductCode to anything you want...I think it just has to be unique within Vis Studio. I used Microsoft.XNARuntime.2.0. Seems logical.
• The list of distributable files is in the ` tag. The attributeNamerefers to the name of the installer file. TheHomeSitevalue refers to a String entry in thePackage.XMLfile.PublicKey` can be retrieved by looking at the Properties->Digital Signatures->Public Key field, copying the values out of that, and removing all the spaces. It seems to match.
• The next set of tags, <InstallChecks>, sets Properties if it can find that these specific Products are installed. These are used in the next set of tags. The pertinent redistributable product codes can be found in the Distributing Your Finished Game page at Microsoft.
• The part of the file that actually says what to do is in <Commands>, which contains individual command nuggets. Each command tag specifies what to do, and when to bypass.

...

Hmm, taking a quick look at other approaches.

Other Approaches

• Using NSIS to create setups for XNA Games - NSIS is the Nullsoft Installer. Promising.
• The DotNET module for downloading and installing the .NET framework...worked with NSIS.
• Using WIX for XNA-based games - This apparently requires something called SharpDevelop, which is an open-source IDE for .NET or something. This Wix 2.0 Tutorial is pretty informative and well done. More on wix from astebner as why GS2 switched to beta version 3.
• this page allegedly has code to check for requirements but is down. From this post
• Looking at Votive, which apparently allows you to load wix projects into Visual Studio Standard or higher.

I'm starting with MDX 1.1, the "managed" version of Direct X, albeit not the latest stuff. The reason I'm using this is that I don't need DirectX 10 features, and MDX 1.1 is probably fairly stable. Probably. As others have mentioned, though XNA is the new hotness.

• Use MDX 1.1? Well, not anymore. You can ignore this stuff...
• Use Irrlicht?

After looking at XNA Game Studio 2.0 (released December 14, 2007), it is pretty apparent that this is what I should go with.

• Use XNA, definitely!
• XNA Framework Notes

XNA Links

• Dave's GameDev Study Forum
• XNA Programming Guide
• XNA Framework Class Reference
• Shawn Hargrave's Blog ... insightful!
• A convenient FAQ that answers a lot of basic questions "how to do something"

Asset Creation

• I'm wondering if SoftImage ModTool will actually work for us.

Deploying XNA Games

This isn't your daddy's EXE file no more! C# and .NET use these things called "assemblies" and, uh, well...I have to figure out how this works.

• Deploying XNA Games

Physics Links

• Box2D Flash
• Andre Michelle
• C# Port of Box2D
• Bullet is an open source 3D physics engine with XNA support
• 2D Farseer Physics for XNA... this looks like it is the easiest to use.

The suggestion whiteboard is covered with indecipherable and probably crazy ideas. "Sarah", however, has left one of the few legible suggestions:

On "Language Concepts, Linguistics, and Psychology of Communication" ...I did a tiny exhibit a couple of years ago - had a friend write a text in German, which was then translated forth and back between German and Japanese ten times - the text morphed until it was something completely different - in the end, they were three instead of two main characters, people’s names had changed and even the location of the short story had changed. It was really interesting. I’ve long wanted to do something different also involving English - would this fit your concept?

You'll have to register on the Museum Wiki to leave a note.

• Head back to The Great Foyer

The Curator, a balding heavyset Asian man, is sitting behind an enormous desk covered with piles of books and paper that almost, but not quite, hides the giant LCD screen mounted on the wall behind it. He swivels to face you, a slightly harried smile flickering across his sleep deprived face as he carefully checks you out.

"I'll be with you in just a minute," he says, "If you can't wait, you might want to leave a suggestion outside in on Suggestion Board."

• Check out the Suggestion Board

The Museum is quite empty today, despite the obvious remaining work to be done.

The Great Foyer, as it's called, is about 50 feet wide and extends 100 feet into the distance. The ceiling is low at the entrance where you are standing, but rises up into an open space brightened by an impressive array of skylights placed strategically overhead. Two distinct exhibit halls open to the east and west: the translation wing and the transformation wing.

The unfinished admission desk, a long and low-slung bank of terminal windows resembling something you might see in a futuristic airport ticketing station, is nestled between each wing's entrance against the rear wall. A suggestion board is propped up against the admission desk, covered with ideas from a recent brainstorming session, and a Post-It note on it reads, "Please add your own suggestions before our next meeting. We need them!"

A small door behind the admissions desk is labeled "Staff Only", but it is ajar and another hand-lettered sign reads:

The Curator's office is inside. Exhibitor designers, please come in.

• Go to The Currator's Office
• Scribble on The Suggestion Board
• Go to The Translation Wing (Under Construction)
• Go to The Transformation Wing (Under Construction)