So TechED Sydney is over and I now have the time to post about the big announcement for students that came out of the event. On Tuesday Microsoft held TechEd Student Day, a free day for students to come along and sit in on a series of presentations geared towards students, TechEd style.

Aside from that, every University student who attended the University half of the day received 4 DVDs full of free software, ready for use. Now if you could not attend this event, do not fret, this is all available for you as well (if you are a student), however you need to download it for yourself.

Head to https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/ and Sign In with your Windows Live ID, and then verify your student status and you can get your keys and downloads for all the software listed. This includes:

• Visual Studio 2008 Pro
• Visual Studio 2005 Pro
• Windows Server 2003 Standard
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Microsoft Expression Studio
• 12 Month XNA Creators Club Trial
• XNA Game Studio 2.0
• Virtual PC 2007 (Great for use with Windows Server 2003)

Grab the downloads, grab the keys, and start making cool things with this free software. Anything you make can be distributed with a non-commercial license, so get to it!

Microsoft has just released the long-awaited SP1 update to Visual Studio 2008 and .Net 3.5 after being in beta for a number of months.

Download it here

SP1 brings loads of enhancements and features to both Visual Studio and .Net 3.5, including a major performance (20%-45%) boost for WPF, the ADO Entity Framework, and full support for the newly released SQL Server 2008.

For those doing native application development that need a Physics or Animation product, Havok, partnered with Intel have released the world famous Havok Physics & Animation package for free.

This gives you the complete binary for use in your personal, educational or even commercial game as long as it is below US$10.

Currently there does not seem to be anything for XNA (despite an apparent job ad a while back), but I am sure this will be wrapped soon enough, and then the power of Havok will be available for use on the PC platform in XNA as well.

You can get Havok from http://tryhavok.intel.com. Just fill out the form and download the Programmer binaries and Artist tools.

I have been a Microsoft Student Partner since the beginning of this year, and in conjunction with the other MSP at UTS,(Chris Webster) have been planning a large event for this semester.

Recently we decided that the best thing to do was to give a talk on the ways you can get free (or cheap) software from Microsoft as a student.

The time has finally arrived.

How to get Free (and cheap) stuff from Microsoft

Slides and content will be available after the presentation, although probably only late night or next day due to a late lecture. :P

If you intend to come to the event, head to the website there and register your interest so we can get an idea of numbers.

Remember, not only do you take away the methods of gaining free software, but you also take away a bag of goodies and have the chance of winning a lucky door prize!

In my preparation for CeBIT starting tomorrow I found an article on the website about the recent export numbers for Australian Game Developers.

http://www.ausinnovate.com/2008/05/05/export-boom-for-game-makers/

The article mentions that 06-07 data shows $139.7 million in generated revenue, with most of the market coming from Queensland or Victoria. Programmers accounting for 29% of those employed, compared to 34% for artists. A logical number. :)

If you missed out on the free registration, check for information next year around February, that is the time the free Registration occurs.

The professional video tutorial scene has started to adopt XNA from the looks of it, with Digital Tutors releasing a DVD training package named Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA.

Popular highlights:

XNA Development Overview

Interfacing with Keyboard and Gamepad

Building Controller Systems

Controller Vibration

Exporting and Loading Static Meshes from Maya

Exporting Animated Characters from Maya

Moving and Turning a Character

Object-oriented Programming with Bullets and Targets

Baking Textures in Maya

Deriving Bounding Boxes from Maya

Collision Detection with Bounding boxes

Collision Detection with Rays

Building a Custom Animation Player

Switching and Blending Between Animations

Chase Cameras

Camera Shakes

Drawing Text

CGSociety has this to say about the product:

'Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA' contains nearly five hours of project-based training for technical artists learning the methods of creating game content using XNA and Maya. 'Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA' offers artists an essential workflow and innovative techniques for easily integrating Maya and XNA for game creation.

Since this costs money, I cannot get this at the moment and so I cannot give my own review. However it looks like a good product, and considering Digital Tutor's track record, it should be a good investment for the artistic programmers out there.

Edit [17/5/2008]: I noticed that Digital Tutors also has an interesting looking Training Package titled Real-Time Shaders with XNA.

As of now the XNA 3.0 Community Technology Preview is available for download.

XNA 3.0 CTP

This requires a version of Visual Studio 2008 and will co-exist with Visual Studio 2005 and XNA GS 2.0.

Note there is no Xbox360 support in the CTP release, however there will be with the final release, currently only PC and Zune.

Now I am off to see what else they added. :) Enjoy.

To help celebrate the launch of Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft is holding a competition that is open to all.

To win some really awesome prizes, you just need to create and submit a 10 minute or less video demo of one of the new technologies being launched. So that could be C#3.0 or LINQ, or anything else related to the products launched at the Heroes Happen Here 2008 launch event.

The comp runs from the beginning of April (it's started!) until September, and is open to everyone.

You can get more details as well as a registration form at http://www.microsoft.com/australia/heroes/community.aspx.

It is pretty simple, just create a small demo, put it online using Silverlight Streaming, complete the registration form and send it in.

If you are a part of a group you have a higher chance of making the national finals because 3 demos from at least 2 people in a group (User group etc) will go through, whilst only 30 random demos will be chosen by Microsoft if they are alone.

So find some other people making demos, choose your best and send them off!

If you win in the national finals, you get a Media Center PC, a trip to Tech Ed 2009 in LA, and a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite, WITH a MSDN Premium subscription! All for a 10 minute demo.

(There seems to be issues with the website at the time of writing, but I have assurances it will be resolved ASAP)

Nvidia has released the first of their acclaimed GPU Gems series for free reading online in its entirety.

These are full HTML forms of the articles, all revolving around techniques for rendering. Completely free.

You can go and read the book here and even take advantage of 30% off the print copy. (See the top of the page, available at time of writing)

So tomorrow begins my first year of university at UTS studying for a Bachelor of Engineering in ICTE Software. (Pretty much Software Engineering)

Should be enjoyable, and should also provide some inspiration so I can get started programming again. Been relaxing too much these holidays.

Big news out of GDC, as most already know. XNA Community Games is finally here, and a general timeframe for XNA 3.0 :) Sad that Australia doesn't get the game preview that is currently running. :(

I am in the process of working on a small game, but still in the tech planning stages, I want this engine to be useful for later projects and maybe even samples or demos.

Dreamspark is also something big that occured which is good for me. Being a student, I can get access to this once it is prepared for Australia. Some great resources in there for students, all for FREE! XD

I need to update more... :S