Microsoft released the new games education pack including a multi-platform tutorial, RPG starter kit ported to Windows Phone 7.

I really like the comparisons of the isostore reads in MB/sec in the “reducing load times paper”, and the game samples that’s why blogging it.

Here’s the pack:

http://create.msdn.com/en-US/home/news/new_education_dec_2010

Kind of off topic: I got few asks “how do you make the mouse cursor in your videos?”

I created my own mouse cursor (just a circle .PNG, then convert to .cur) and I set the OS system default cursor to it. You can download the cursor here: http://nokola.com/sources/circle.cur

I use Windows Movie Maker for the video editing – does someone have better (free/cheap) suggestions? What do you use?

Now with music (again), special effects. Read more about the effects and other improvements here:

Yes! Thanks to few donations and some out-of-pocket money, I was able to buy back some of Shock's music.

• Each character has a theme song now. The new character - Old Man, is named after that guy that flies raindeers and distributes gifts through his Christmas distribution chain.
• The music has new engine now, with "announcing" control (a popup that displays the song title with information).
• Other improvements include sounds for everything - ball hit, shattering glass, etc. To make this work, I had to create an AutoPlay MediaElement for each mp3 and play it. There are few tricks here that you can use to minimize objects created and mem usage - code will follow!
• New visual effects include "shatter" effect which is based on this: http://www.shinedraw.com/animation-effect/flash-vs-silverlight-colorful-fireworks/, with the following simple changes/improvements:
  • Fireworks consist of 2 ellipses instead of 5 - speed optimization
  • The effect has "range" - e.g. you can make the dots appear everywhere on the brick, not just one point
  • The effect takes TimeSpan (e.g. 0.5 sec), and plays for a specific time, then the Canvas removes itself from it's parent. This allows to just add the effect anywhere and then start it and forget it. Nice and self-manageable :)
• Many speed improvements related to GPU and BitmapCache. For some weird reason, I've left the bitmap cache off many of the images before...most notably the background image that takes a lot of space

I have few more improvements in the pipeline - mainly perf and resolving few minor issues (I doubt if anyone will notice most of them)

It is a busy Christmas :) I'll post some code from v3 of the game soon...first let's wrap it up.

Yes, the game is here: http://nokola.com/shock

I strongly advise playing with the Old Man, as it provides the most festive experience! :)

Please let me know your opinion - does it play well? What do you think about it and what would you change or improve?

Thanks!

Note: donations are still open, since the game hasn't paid for itself just yet and I'm planning more games :)

Please take some time to read this appeal completely and eventually donate.

I don't like ads, and there's high possibility that you don't too!

At the same time having an ad-sponsored web site means that ad programs "share" some of people's time (and time is money) spent on my site.

Should I force anyone of the thousands people who view this site to pay for ads? No, I shouldn't and that's one reason to make today's appeal.

The main reason is that I found some very cool music, graphics and so on but they are paid. I want to make 2 more games (space shooter and jump-and-run - you'll see the "drafts" soon), but I "lack the monetary commitment" :)

You can see seemingly random parts of the games and level editors here, here, here (to be expanded in level editor) and here. You can also see, and download concept graphics here and here.

Or, you can see a complete game that topped the community charts on silverlight.net for weeks in 2008 (sans music, since I have to buy it now), here: http://nokola.com/shock/

$2 buys an image, and $15 is the price of a typical soundtrack.

Please click here to read the full appeal and donate today!.

Thanks!