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Welcome to the tenth article on beginning game development. In the last article we manipulated sounds by adding sound effects. Together with the use of 3D Buffers to make the sounds positionaly accurate we now have a fully featured sound system in the game. But, while we’re are able to play and manipulate short sounds and sound effects we cannot play longer WMA or MP3 files with the DirectSound namespace. To accomplish that we need to turn to the AudioVideoPlayback namespace.

Once upon a time ... Nintendo, a game maker, innovates the world game experiences with a totally new concept: get physical (as to prevent you from getting ‘finger/thumb-RSI’). This striking new phenomenon is the nowadays well known Wii game, played with its remote objects, the Wii Remote (a.k.a Wiimote) and its companion, the Nunchuk.

As time goes by, clever people discover other possibilities for, in this case, the Wiimote. With some dedicated software you can turn it into a PC device, impersonating the standard mouse.

Welcome to the ninth article on beginning game development. In the last article we added sounds to the game using the DirectSound namespace using devices, 3D Buffers, and 3D Listeners. Now we are going to further manipulate the sounds using the sound effect capabilities of the DirectSound namespace. Finally, since it has been a while since the last article, I am also going to update the basic game loop to a more efficient implementation.

Code for an article at Coding4Fun written by Brian Peek of ASPSOFT, Inc..

Two Halloween applications to annoy and scare your friends.

Code is available in C# and Visual Basic.

Code for an article at Coding4Fun written by Brian Peek of ASPSOFT, Inc..

Use a Nintendo Wii Remote (Wiimote) as a controller for Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D.

Code is available in C# and Visual Basic.

Wiimote Interface for Virtual Earth

Click the [Save] link to download source and demo.

In this article, we will connect a stepper motor to our computer's parallel port, and then we will write some code to control it with the scroll wheel on a mouse (video). If you have never worked with stepper motors, you will surely have a lot of fun with this project. With stepper motors, you can build things such as robots, automatic fish feeder, or even a computerized etch-a-sketch! I'll start off by discussing the basics of parallel ports and stepper motors. Then, we will build the driver circuit required for connecting a stepper motor to a parallel port. In the final section, we will learn how to communicate with parallel ports and how stepper motors are controlled.

   There are some pretty good Home Automation packages out there on the market. Some of these are made for installers – and are thus closed to easy customization by the end user. Then there are packages that are made for hobbyists. These have good core automation systems, and provide some add-in points for customization. There are very few good “toolkits” for home automation enthusiasts who like to Code4Fun, so I decided to build one.

I have just posted an article on Coding4Fun exlaining how I have built a 2 player 8-Ball game in Silverlight (play here). In it, I explain how I used the Expression tools to design the graphics and various .NET techniques to enable user control and game animation. 

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Using the Facebook Developer Toolkit, you can combine the data stored on Facebook with contacts already stored in Outlook via a custom form region. Additionally, using VSTO and the Outlook object model, you can monitor incoming RSS feeds for posts that match interests of your friends on Facebook.

Check out the article on Coding4Fun