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Articles by Simon Jackson (Articles: 3, Technical Blogs: 22)

Articles: 3, Technical Blogs: 22

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Average article rating: 4.89

Azure

The Racing Sticks challenge - via Azure and the web
Posted: 24 Apr 2013   Updated: 25 Apr 2013   Views: 565   Rating: 4.67/5    Votes: 3   Popularity: 2.15
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 0   Downloaded: 0
Come one, come all , get your racing sticks here, throw them in and catch the winner!
The FindMe project
Posted: 24 Apr 2013   Updated: 26 Apr 2013   Views: 1,497   Rating: 5.00/5    Votes: 6   Popularity: 3.89
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 2   Downloaded: 0
FindMe - My entry to the Azure Developer competition

Ultrabooks

XNA in Windows 8 from dream to reality
Posted: 15 Oct 2012   Updated: 15 Oct 2012   Views: 7,165   Rating: 5.00/5    Votes: 5   Popularity: 3.49
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 5   Downloaded: 0
An exploration into getting XNA running on Windows 8 & .NET 4.5 and all the perils, pitfalls and opportunities it provides.

Average blogs rating: 4.91

Dialogs and Windows

Windows 8 Corrupt Packages [Technical Blog]
Posted: 23 Oct 2012   Updated: 23 Oct 2012   Views: 1,027   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 0   Downloaded: 0
Like with any new system there are bound to be some kinks in the road, issues or just downright annoyances that will send you spiralling into the deepest dark pits of annoyance (the last has been me for the last few weeks). A situation exists (which unfortunately is not reliably or easily repeatable

Files and Folders

Converting DirectX .X files for use in games [Technical Blog]
Posted: 5 Nov 2012   Updated: 5 Nov 2012   Views: 5,396   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 4   Downloaded: 0
While putting together the UnityXNA article I cast aside all warnings and threw caution to the wind and spent a bit of time trying to get my 3D starter XNA sample in to the framework, it should come as no surprise from the tenant of that article that I failed, granted I only spent aboutRead More…

Custom Controls

AdRotator V2 progress report [Technical Blog]
Posted: 8 Apr 2013   Updated: 8 Apr 2013   Views: 1,290   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 2   Downloaded: 0
We are working as hard and as fast as we can with V2, support or V1 is limited at the moment but we still help out where we can.

Mobile Development

PCL Targets for Mono / MonoGame Projects [Technical Blog]
Posted: 1 Apr 2013   Updated: 6 Apr 2013   Views: 2,463   Rating: 4.70/5    Votes: 3   Popularity: 1.67
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 3   Downloaded: 0
PCL targets for Mono / MonoGame projects

Windows Phone 7/8

AdRotator for Windows Phone XNA [Technical Blog]
Posted: 24 Oct 2012   Updated: 24 Oct 2012   Views: 1,489   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 1   Downloaded: 0
AdRotator for Windows Phone XNA.

Cross Platform

MonoGame: Content Projects and Custom Model Types [Technical Blog]
Posted: 20 May 2013   Updated: 20 May 2013   Views: 1,139   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 1   Downloaded: 0
I’ll go over one one of those fringe / advanced options available to old XNA projects where you can effectively build your own content.

Windows API

Windows 8 License Checker / tester / thingy [Technical Blog]
Posted: 24 Oct 2012   Updated: 24 Oct 2012   Views: 1,337   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 0   Downloaded: 0
Windows 8 license checker.

Windows Communication Foundation

Windows 8 submission trials and tribulations [Technical Blog]
Posted: 19 Oct 2012   Updated: 23 Oct 2012   Views: 3,238   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 0   Downloaded: 0
Boy what a crazy couple of months, to kick things off I got my first Windows 8 game up and running and through the App Excellence labs on to the Store in prompt fashion, not a glitch (if you don’t count the first lab I attended not understanding what the labs were really there for,Read More…

Game Development

XNA to MonoGame and beyond [Technical Blog]
Posted: 30 Oct 2012   Updated: 5 Nov 2012   Views: 6,028   Rating: 5.00/5    Votes: 1   Popularity: 0.00
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 6   Downloaded: 0
As part of a new “Back to basics” series which extends on my original XNA Futures article some months ago, I’m going to cover all the options I explained back then in more detail plus probably a few others which have come to light recently. All of this is to show developers who have workedRead More…
Does lightning really strike twice? [Technical Blog]
Posted: 7 Feb 2013   Updated: 7 Feb 2013   Views: 2,710   Rating: 5.00/5    Votes: 1   Popularity: 0.00
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 1   Downloaded: 0
It all started one sunny morning when Michael Hoffman who wrote a shocking article on some fantastic lighting effects all done with XNA, I read this and was immediately impressed just how simple his solution was. Not long after this a guy down under called Jose Fajardo was so impressed …
MonoGame gets Shocked! [Technical Blog]
Posted: 7 Feb 2013   Updated: 7 Feb 2013   Views: 3,444   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 1   Downloaded: 0
Following on from my previous article we don the rubber gloves and grab Zeus’s lightning bolt to launch it on other platforms. Not cryptic enough for you then read on We left off just porting Michael Hoffman’s excellent article showing us how to generate lightning effects almost effortlessly using X
MonoGame goes Portable [Technical Blog]
Posted: 19 Feb 2013   Updated: 19 Feb 2013   Views: 1,619   Rating: 5.00/5    Votes: 1   Popularity: 0.00
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 4   Downloaded: 0
While I was putting together the MonoGame solution for shocking effect you did seem to get the feeling you were building your game for several platforms, there’s a fair bit of too’ing and fro’ing, pulling parts of the project together and one of my least favorite porting practices, the COPY …

XNA

XNA and Beyond, the notable mentions [Technical Blog]
Posted: 10 Jan 2013   Updated: 16 Jan 2013   Views: 2,767   Rating: 5.00/5    Votes: 2   Popularity: 1.51
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 6   Downloaded: 0
Some of the other frameworks which use XNA as a baseline.

Book Reviews

Android 4: New features for Application Development–PacktPub Book Review [Technical Blog]
Posted: 11 Feb 2013   Updated: 11 Feb 2013   Views: 3,061   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 2   Downloaded: 0
This book is a practical and hands-on guide for developing Android applications using new features of Android Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), with a step-by-step approach and clearly explained sample codes.
Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide – A review [Technical Blog]
Posted: 7 Apr 2013   Updated: 7 Apr 2013   Views: 1,913   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 2   Downloaded: 0
If you want to learn the Kinect and how to make the most of it then this book is a really good start and one worth having on the shelf.

Reviews on Third Party Products and Tools

Hold on I forgot to mention… [Technical Blog]
Posted: 23 Oct 2012   Updated: 23 Oct 2012   Views: 645   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 0   Downloaded: 0
There’s always that point when you are maintaining and developing your live project when you really wish you had a way to communicate to your users, it could be as simple as a “Check this out” or as worrying as “My backend service provider just crashed please check for my update”. In the past
XNA to the Sunburn Gaming Engine and Beyond [Technical Blog]
Posted: 6 Jan 2013   Updated: 6 Jan 2013   Views: 3,207   Rating: 5.00/5    Votes: 1   Popularity: 0.00
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 4   Downloaded: 0
So far in this series I’ve covered: MonoGame – a raw XNA implementation allowing you to create games but you have to code everything yourself UnityXNA – a way to host your existing XNA projects (or new ones) and deploy them using the Unity3D engine, but without utilising the advanced …

Third Party Products and Tools

AdRotator for Windows 8 [Technical Blog]
Posted: 23 Oct 2012   Updated: 23 Oct 2012   Views: 1,037   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 1   Downloaded: 0
*Note by popular request here’s a sample (pulled from the AdRotator site) showing AdRotator implemented in a Windows 8 app with AdDuplex, PubCenter and a local House AD. As battles go this was certainly one of the strangest.  Windows 8 introduces so many different ways of working, some expecte
AdRotator for Windows Phone Silverlight [Technical Blog]
Posted: 24 Oct 2012   Updated: 24 Oct 2012   Views: 2,055   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 2   Downloaded: 0
          AdRotator for Windows Phone Silverlight V1.2 release With the release of what is likely the last version in the V1 branch of AdRotator for Windows Phone Silverlight I’ve gone some lengths to make sure the documentation and samples are also feature complete. For the XNA version read this ar
XNA to UnityXNA and Beyond [Technical Blog]
Posted: 5 Nov 2012   Updated: 5 Nov 2012   Views: 5,734   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 9   Downloaded: 0
Continuing on the exploration of XNA future I posted about an interesting new framework that was brewing by Barnaby Smith over at MVINetwork, a curious project aiming to bring the ease of use of XNA into the Unity3D engine. The project itself is fascinating but at its heart basically just a wrapper
MonoGame: Using Libraries with Windows Phone Projects [Technical Blog]
Posted: 30 Apr 2013   Updated: 1 May 2013   Views: 1,947   Rating: 0.0 / 5    Votes: 0   Popularity: 0.0
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 2   Downloaded: 0
MonoGame - Using libraries with Windows Phone projects
MonoGame: Building Portable Solutions [Technical Blog]
Posted: 21 May 2013   Updated: 21 May 2013   Views: 1,103   Rating: 4.67/5    Votes: 2   Popularity: 1.51
Licence: The Code Project Open License (CPOL)      Bookmarked: 3   Downloaded: 0
In one of my previous articles I talked about how MonoGame could be used with portable libraries, this was off the back of some work I was doing with the MonoGame team to help with some of the more tedious clean up tasks that needed doing and I had the …
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Simon Jackson
Architect ZenithMoon Studios
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Long time game developer / IT maniac.
By day working as a lowly Technical Architect for a healthcare software firm, by night Masquerading as the Master Chief of ZenithMoon Studios.
 
At heart I'm a community developer breaking down lots of fun and curious technologies and bringing them to the masses.
 
I'm also a contributor to several open source projects, most notably the AdRotator advertising rotator project for Windows and Windows Phone.
 
After a hefty break with Windows Phone and Windows 8 I'm heading back to my XNA roots to show how beginners and current XNA devs can take their skills forward with XNA's bleak future.
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