ashNOLOGY

Source: Professional XNA Game Programming for Xbox 360 and Windows By Benjamin Nitschke Section: Part III: Improving Your Game Engine Chapter 9: Adding Sound with XACT Integrating Audio into XNA A tutorial by Ashraf Dawod Integrating audio in the XNA frame work is done in five (5) stages according to the book, one thing they mention is the sound files have to be in .WAV format. So in actuality it should be six (6) stages, because your first step will be converting your audio files into WAV format. Here is a quick outline of this tutorial: What is Xact Xactly? Step 1: Converting your files to .WAV. Step 2: Creating your wave bank. Step 3: Compressing music data. Step 4: Creating a sound bank. Step 5: Cue Variables. Step 6: Creating a sound class. What is XACT Xactly? XACT is the name for Microsoft’s Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool, which allows you to create audio projects for the Windows and Xbox 360 platforms. The reason you can’t sue anything but XACT is the fact that ...

This is the newsiest brainstorm from the magnificent mind of Jeff Bezos , the same mind that founded Amazon.com . In simple terms Cloud Computing is Net Storage. If you’re a small company who can’t afford the space for / or money to have a server to store all your essentials, or just need a computing infrastructure that is higher than what you have, then Hardware as a Service (Haas) or Cloud Computing is the way to go. Sean Knapp, chief engineer of Ooyala the new interactive “hypervideo” technology, uses Cloud Computing. One of the products is Justin.tv, which “serves up a half-million live videostreams daily thanks to Amazon hardware.” This is what Cloud Computing could do, amongst other things. Read the full web article [ here ] to know more. Have a good Wednesday everyone. -Ash

The infamous Games For Health Conference will be held at at the Baltimore Convention Center , from May 8-9. I also hear that on May 7th there will be a two (2) day long event dedicated to Virtual Worlds, Health & Game Accessibility. Make sure to check their website for more information. Have a good day -Ash

I JUST heard of this, apparently there is some kind of world wide summer internship program that is being sponsored by Google. That company just amazes me to no extend. So every summer they have this Codeing event, in which you would apply to one of the projects, who will have a mentor for you to work under, and you basically code to improve some kind of Open Source application, that is just fantastic. The Student Sign up Perdiod: per their Important Times & Dates page. Starts: 3/24/08 Ends: 3/31/08 For more info on this awesome project check out The Tor Blog .

I found the following game related topics very nice, and shiny (literally in some cases), and I decided to share them with you. Enjoy. DS-lite: No more just plain colored hand-helds, a company called ColorWare has a website in which you can customize the colors that you want for your DS-lite and they send it to you, so you could have a hand-held truly yours. PsP: 3.93 firmWare upDate The latest firmware upDate has now been released. What this includes is: 20 internet radio stations \ Skype \ Playstation Network. You could do the update either through the PSP or through your PC , choose your method. xBox Halo MOD: For 55 Euros, you will receive a kit that will allow you change you xBox 360 case, to a Green Halo MOD case . It actually looks wicked cool. Ash Games: I've updated my portfolio to include some of the Games that I've worked on in the past 2 years for my classes, so now I have a "games" page, as well as a "C++" page which includes the files as wel...

This is a free downloadable hack for both the iPhone & iPod Touch, it basically turnes your iPhone/Touch into a remote control for your computer. It works with both PC & MAC. There is a video demo here . You can get more information at their website as well. TouchPad Pro

Justin Hall has come up with a new kind of online gaming, for his master's thesis. He calls it PMOG (Passively Multi-player Online Games). The concept is basically to rage technological warfare against your friends 'through' the browser. Which means you can go the sites that you know they visit often and set mines and traps to take away their data point (life). Its a pretty neat concept, but I think it would be a bit distracting, especially if your at work, or researching something important. I'm not quite sure what actually happens to the page your viewing, I just know that you can see your data points going down and it tells you what happened to cause that. I don't think it shuts down your browser or anything, but still I think its a very neat concept. You can read the article here , it will explain it better than I. Have a good day. -Ash