PAXNAUG - Portland Area XNA User Group

So in our excitement about the Penny Arcade Expo, we failed to realize that we weren’t going to be able to host a PAXNAUG meeting this month. Again.

Rick, Jonathan and myself will all be up in Seattle commenting on all the smelly kids and reveling in all that is gaming. We’ll resume in September where hopefully I can figure out how to get a guest speaker to actually agree to come talk…

See you guys then and hope you’re still having fun playing around with the XNA framework!

We are going to be canceling this upcoming meeting because of Gamefest! It’s falling on the 4th Wednesay of this month (July 22nd and 23rd) so I’m not going to be here and most of my potential speakers aren’t going to be here either. That’s right, I’m going to Gamefest!

We will be picking things up again next month with a meeting scheduled for August 27th. I’ll make sure to spend some time haranguing potential speakers while hanging out with the big guys at Gamefest. Hopefully we have some great speaking talent lined up for a few months after I get back.

Enjoy the month off and I hope to see you all next month.  Also, if you happen to be going to Gamefest let me know so we can meet up sometime. I know a lot of the XNA developers and MVPs are getting together for drinks so just let me know so I can tell you a time and a place (as soon as they tell me that is….)

See you in August!

The fourth meeting of PAXNAUG was this past Wednesday. I intended to give an introductory overview of developing games for the Zune but things didn’t go quite as planned…

We did a much better job of advertising for this meeting and the turnout was great. As 6:30 rolled around, people were still trickling in and we all sat around socializing and chowing down on pizza. With all the newcomers we decided to go around and have everyone introduce themselves and just give a little bit of what they were currently working on.

As each person gave a quick introduction my jaw kept dropping a little further. By the end, I wasn’t even qualified to breath the same air as the people that surrounded me. Needless to say I was thrown off just more than just a little. I tried to collect my thoughts and was mentally trying to adjust my talk for the audience I had but I never really recovered from my shock. I had to chuckle as I was wrapping up my very casual talk and one of the guys asked me, “so, when are you going to do your presentation?”

Ouch.

The cool thing though was that I was just so jazzed up from meeting so many cool new game developers in the area, I was on cloud nine at the end. I’m hoping I can convince a few of them to give some talks in the future and also, with this bigger audience, I can finally start inviting some actual presenters down to Portland. There were several guys who were running small game studios, guys working on titles that should be coming out on XBLA later this year and we even had a sound guy who was busy working with on orchestra on some music. Just incredible cool people with some amazing portfolios. I’ll try and put together a web tour of their portfolios and sites soon, it was really cool seeing all their past and upcoming projects.

Needless to say, I’m really looking forward to next time! Thanks to everyone who showed up, hopefully I’ll get to meet you again sometime when I’m a little less star struck.

We should put putting up information about the next meeting of PAXNAUG shortly, so keep a lookout and hope to see you there.

If you don’t talk about it, no one will come…

We’ve had our third meeting of PAXNAUG and it went really well. We had an interesting discussion on sprite movement and the presentation and demonstration went swimmingly. We had quite a lot of snacks and refreshments as well. We had the room reserved, the signs posted and even put up reminders on the PAXNAUG site.

We did have one slight issue though. Small turnout.

It’s ok. We know you were busy. But we did miss you just a little.

We want to start bringing in speakers from great faraway lands. Other XNA MVPS, book writers and community evangelists. Maybe even some of the legendary XNA team themselves! But we want to have just a few more people consistently coming to give them a decently sized audience.

It’s our fault I know. We’re pretty new at running a user group. We’re getting better though. We swear! And we’re making an even greater effort this time to spread the word about the next meeting. We’re planning on contacting some of the local college campuses, getting in touch with the .NET user group and there’s also a local game development group that we can get in touch with.

If you’re reading this, help us out a little and spread the word yourself.

Here’s the details.

Who: Portland XNA User Group (PAXNAUG)

What: XNA MVP George Clingerman (that’s me!) will be speaking on “An introductory look at creating games for the Zune”

Where: River East Center (next to OMSI) in Portland OR

When: Wednesday June 25, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

Hope to see you there!

Just a quick reminder that our next meeting will be next Wednesday, May 28. We would like to start getting attendance up, so please tell anyone who might be interested in the game development process about the meetings, and encourage them to come.

See you there!

The third meeting of PAXNAUG will be held on Wednesday, May 28th at 6:30 PM at the River East Center location. We hope to see you there!

Rick Mogstad will be speaking on sprite movement. He’ll cover some concepts of sprite movement hitting on things like velocity, acceleration and deceleration. If you’re making a game, you’re going to want to move your sprite around and this will cover some  of the options available to you.

As always,  we’ll make sure to post cell phone numbers on the door so you can call us if the doors are locked. Refreshments will be available (we’re working on pizza again, but no promises if funding falls through, keep your fingers crossed!) and we still have several books to give away.

Mark your calendars and plan to come on down for some great networking and fun conversations on the XNA framework and game development in general. Whether you’re a hobbyist, an artist, a musician or someone thinking about working in the industry, think about stopping by and seeing what PAXNAUG is about.

Hope to see you there!

The second meeting of PAXNAUG is upon us. Well, tomorrow evening to be exact. Hopefully you didn’t forget and can still attend. Plan to be at the River East Center location on Wednesday, April 23rd at 6:30 PM.

We will again post cell phone numbers on the door because they still haven’t managed to adjust the lock times for the time adjustment (we’re hopeful they will eventually get that resolved). So if you come and the doors are locked, just call and we’ll come let you in.

Along with the pizza and the general social time, I’m going to walk through creating a simple 2D game using XNA Game Studio. We’ll see how far we can get in making a “complete” game.

Hope to see you there!

* the definition of “complete” may vary….

The first ever meeting of PAXNAUG has come and gone. Things went remarkably well and the turnout was great for our first meeting. Thanks to everyone who participated! It was great meeting all of you and hope to see you at future gatherings.

We are currently in the process of looking for a speaker for the next get together. If you or someone you know would like to give an XNA related presentation, please contact us so we can get things arranged.

Speaking of the next meeting, PAXNAUG will be meeting next on April 23rd at 6:30. The location will remain the same. We had a little issue with the doors to the building locking a bit early, but we managed to overcome that slight obstacle (for a bit more about how the meeting went you can read my blog post) Also, we’re always looking for advice and feedback so feel free to either contact us via email or leave a comment. We appreciate any feedback you might have.

Thanks again to all of our sponsors and everyone who came. I’m looking forward to meeting even more game development enthusiasts in the future. If you’re in the Portland/Vancouver area, make sure to get the word out, I’m really hoping to see the numbers grow for our next meeting.

April 23rd, mark you calendars and hope to see you there!

Our first meeting is coming closer, and we have some more information.  Our local XNA MVP, George Clingerman , has agreed to give an Introduction to XNA presentation.  This is a great opportunity if you are just getting started with XNA, or even if you are just curious about what it is, and why you should be excited about it.

Please RSVP by leaving a comment, so we can know how many to expect.

See you there!