Moving to BlogEngine.Net 2.5+Disqus to Stop Spam

Deleted 100K+ comments (again!) Noticed that BlogEngine.NET 2.5 supports Disqus. After upgrading I used this tool (http://ithoughthecamewithyou.com/post/Convert-BlogML-comments-to-XWR-for-Disqus.aspx) to move my comments over! And also had to apply this BlogEngine Disqus Comment Count Fix The last part I had to do was update scripts/blog.js to put the div.appendChild(p) below the (ul) in order for the rating text to appear as expected showRating: function (container, id, raters, rating) {     var div = document.
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Detecting if Zune is Connected From Your NoDo/Mango App

Edit 2001/10/10: I noticed that I actually get InvalidOperationException on Mango (seems like all the time now, but I’m not 100% sure). Updated code in CaptureTask_Completed to check for this. Rene had a great blog post about How to detect the Zune software about an year ago. Unfortunately, the method he describes no longer works in Mango. Moreover, when you get the Cancel event from the PhotoChooserTask in Mango, neither OnNavigatingFrom nor OnNavigatedTo is called for your page.
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How I Deleted 100000 Comments!

Finally, no spam! My blog was slowly becoming dysfunctional, after getting more than 2000 spam comments per day! I moved to the new version 2.0 of http://dotnetblogengine.net last night, and it has super easy built in reCAPTCHA which stops spam and helps read books. Pretty cool! The reCAPTCHA settings are accessed by hovering over Tools and selecting Edit in .NET Blog Engine 2.0 – it was very hard and non-intuitive to find the setting, but once I did it worked like a charm!
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App Rating for Windows Phone 7 Source Code Released

I’m releasing the App Rating app source code today, under MS-RL license (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ms-rl). In summary, you can use the App Rating's source for commercial (even directly competitive) projects and are required to provide updates to the source code back to me and the community. The nice part that you can get from AppRating’s code is the WebApi.cs class, which is optimized for network REST requests, dynamically changing priority of requests, cancelling, etc, and is very lightweight.
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New Fantasia Painter, Windows Phone 7 Source Code Pack 1, New License

I’m back from the fields of Fantasia's [software development]! This post contains: New Fantasia Painter available, with 20 effects, an "alive" Fairy Lights brush, Text, symbols and photo functionality Source code for Fantasia’s high-usability controls tuned for WP7: color pickers, improved slider and easing progress bar. My new license (NNCL), which promotes fair commercial and personal use while protecting IP and ensures giving back to the community New Fantasia Painter The new app has just been released to the marketplace.
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App Ratings Updated with search and 6-10x times faster

I updated App Rating to have search for apps, show rating since last update, and be much faster. Unlike other similar rating apps on the marketplace, App Rating shows a single-screen per-market score so you can compare your app in different markets easily. To use, search the marketplace for “App Rating” or click here to get the app Video of the new functionality: Unless I get strong feedback for new features, I’m not planning to invest more in App Ratings.
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Games for Windows Phone 7 Resources: Reducing Load Times, RPG Kit; Other

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 .
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2 New Apps - See Ratings Across Marketplaces and Prevent Phone Locking when Debugging In Visual Studio

Did you know that by default you see only ratings for your marketplace? I didn’t, and was very amazed to find out my apps have more reviews and ratings than what shows up in my phone marketplace or Zune window. Using App Ratings, you can now view the ratings by market on a single screen and access reviews in all markets. Search the marketplace for “App Ratings” or click here to get the app
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Anti-aliased Lines And Optimizing Code for Windows Phone 7–First Look

Update Oct 27, 2010: Thanks to Shai Rubinshtein (see comments) for pointing out an issue with AALine(), source code updated below and in link. Some (long) time ago I decided to port Fantasia Painter to Windows Phone 7. When I ran it on an actual device (my friend’s, no I don’t have it yet unfortunately) last week, updating the screen while painting had about 0.5 second lag. This lag is quite unacceptable for a painting app.
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We’re Hiring! 19 jobs in WPF/Silverlight Designer in Expression/Visual Studio

The reason I didn’t post for so long: I was waiting for the public announcement of 19 new job openings in the Expression team! The jobs include QA (Software Design Engineer in Test), PM (Program Manager) and Dev (Software Design Engineer), Writer and few more. You can apply even if you’re not in the US. I moved to this team about 2 months ago. I’m currently part of the core/shared graphics team, which is a nice place to be (knock on wood:)) for a person who likes developing samples and working with technologies and devices such as WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and web site stuff :)
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New Directional Rainbow Brush; Smear Effect; EasyPainter Out of Beta and Becomes Fantasia!

Yes! A lot of announcements today: The new Fantasia Painter is here: http://fantasia.nokola.com New Rainbow brush makes ultra cool smooth color transitions, based on stroke direction EasyPainter includes all Fantasia brushes and is now named Fantasia! Fantasia is out of Beta! There is new, enhanced Undo functionality, improved interface. Smear procedural brush effect makes for reallistic paint “feel” when drawing Details below: Rainbow Brush The rainbow brush changes color based on stroke direction.
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Fantasia Lite: New Silverlight Painting Tool

Edit: Fantasia Painter (full version), is now available here: http://fantasia.nokola.com Edit 2: The Fantasia Lite version below, has been updated to include the new Rainbow brush (source code included too). Here’s what I built tonight – a drawing tool that utilizes procedural brushes to enable almost everyone to create fluffy rabbits like this: Note that it took me about 2 minutes to “build the rabbit”. I’m sure someone else can do better.
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Coolest Silverlight Sound Library for Games I’ve Seen Yet

Quite amazing demo: http://prefix.teddywino.com/post/SilverlightMediaKitLiveDemo.aspx  The library has a lot of potential for Silverlight games. It does MP3 decoding in managed code and exposes some cool controls like Pitch, Echo. Duet is my favorite. I’m also a Transformers fan and like how Duet makes explosion and swoosh sounds sound “Transformerish”. I believe it should solve the “short sound” and “looping music” issues with Silverlight without any problem :). The biggest coolness though is that you can now simulate doppler effects and have more “rich” sound in smaller package (for example, by keeping only one explosion.
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EasyPainter Source Pack 3: Adorners, Mouse Cursors and Frames

Adorners went a long way since their first release few months ago. They integrate with zoom now, have more options for controlling functionality and can use a shared "cursor plane" for displaying mouse cursors consistently across your application. Extensibility is improved allowing definition of custom adorner frames. There are 7 custom cursors and 4 custom frames to get you started :) Download source code I use the same adorner implementation in EasyPainter.
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EasyPainter Source Pack 2: Flickr, ComboCheckBox and more!

Yes! EasyPainter Source Pack 2 is here! This source pack contains Flickr integration sample amongst other also important things (read below). Download Source Code The live demo: Usage Go to http://www.flickr.com/services/api/, sign up and get an API key for your app Put the key in Flickr\FlickrHelper.cs Use the below code behind and XAML: [code:c#] public MainPage() {     InitializeComponent();     Globals.ToolbarRadioButtonStyle = (Style)Application.Current.Resources["ToolbarRadioButton"];     IGenericUserInterface ui = (IGenericUserInterface)openDialog1;     ui.
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EasyPainter: Lion Hair styling

I am playing with EasyPainter recently :) There are no new additions to the software (yet). Here's how to apply a hair style to a lion. Original: Hair styled: The original image is from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/2404544591/ (search for "lion" in EasyPainter) I'd say the second one looks way cooler, especially with the blue Raiden-like eyes. Raiden is the god of thunder from Mortal Kombat! Effects used: Color shift for the eyes, followed by Brigthness.
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10 New Effects in EasyPainter

Yes! :) After spending about 1 hour last night, here are 10 more shaders in EasyPainter. Since I don't have time to write about each one now, here is a sample image leveraging a few: Original: Manipulated: Zoom Motion in the lower left corner making the trees appear moving fast towards the viewer Ripples in the sea Magnify to enlarge the cloud on the right of the image Pinch to change the shape of the lower coconuts Tint and Color Shift to change the color of the coconuts Sharpen on the houses in the backgroundto make the contrast with Zoom Motion stand out more Magnifier Lens to make the trunk of the palm thinner Life-Like Colors to reveal the missing colors Shaders now have color pickers (such as Tint), and positions (such as Zoom Motion).
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EasyPainter: Watercolor, Blood and Gloom Pixel Shaders

Click here to try the new effects in EasyPainter. Download source code. Original vs Zombie – can you figure out which one is which? :)   The new Blood shader works only on skin colors. To use it, you have to use the selection brush to select skin tones from the image. Here is the Watercolor shader. It's very subtle, but I think it looks nice nevertheless. If anyone has suggestions for improvements, including a proper name for this shader, since it is really subtle - please let me know!
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Old Photo, Pastel, and Pencil Sketch Pixel Shaders For Silverlight

EasyPainter has new filters! Source code below! Try them out here Edit: I'd actually like to improve the pastel shader further - real-life pastel is usually on white background, and the shaders are on black... Samples Original (http://www.flickr.com/photos/-arpi/4280428638/): Pastel Drawing: Old Photo: Old Photo ("younger"): [more] Pencil Sketch: Source Code Download shader source code and required images The .zip file contains the old photo shader, and 2 variations of the sketch shader.
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Simplex Noise (like Perlin Noise) in Pixel Shader 2.0 for Silverlight and WPF

Yay! 2D and 3D noise in pixel shaders! After tackling the Hue shader I decided to move to something even more interesting, Simplex noise. You've probably heard of Perlin Noise, if not see Rene's post with realtime 3D noise here and also check out my Living Noise sample and Living Noise blog post . The "Noise" can be used to make effects such as fire, water, marbles, smooth motion, hand-drawn UI, space travel effects, nebulas and a lot more!
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Someone Said it Was Impossible: Hue Shift in Pixel Shader 2.0 (EasyPainter, Silverlight)

I read somewhere online that Hue changes can't be done in pixel shader 2.0, due to limitation of 64 instructions per slot. Here's the sample that proves otherwise: Download source code Indeed the RGB-to-HSL-to-RGB conversion takes about 100 instructions in its typical implementation. PS 2.0 which is the shader model supported by Silverlight 3 only allows for 64 arithmetic instructions, as outlined in this comparison between pixel shaders on Wikipedia
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EasyPainter Source Pack1: Color Picker, RangeSlider, Small Expander, Fast Drop Shadow and more!

I'm very happy to publish the EasyPainter source code pack. The controls in the pack are optimized for usability, speed and size. All of them have been succesfully used in real-life apps which is the best way to test if something works. Download Source Code Here's a live demo: This pack contains the following controls: Color Picker - feature complete control that allows to pick any color, transparency or type in hex color Editable, auto-formatting slider - if you want to give the user the ability to quickly choose values with previews, this control is for you.
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EasyPainter Beta: Top Secret Online Image Editor Announced

Today I am announcing EasyPainter Beta: The Artist Within. An online image editor that is: Fast. Easy. Made for non-designers. And FREE! :) Click here to open EasyPainter Note: send feedback in the comments section of this post. Unlike other online (or many offline) image editors, EasyPainter offers online effects comparable to powerful desktop apps, integrated search for millions of free-for-commercial or -personal use photos, and instant previews of any changes you make.
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The Most Important Silverlight WriteableBitmap Gotcha - Does It Lose/Change Colors?

Edit Nov 21, 2011: changed 256/a to 255/a due to Gert’s comment – thanks Gert! The first time I tried saving WriteableBitmap to png, the transparencies didn't look right. The color was "washed out" and replaced with gray:  Moreover: Let's say you wanted to set a half-opaque red pixel color inside a WriteableBitmap. To my biggest surprise this didn't work: bitmap.Pixels[i] = (255 << 24) + (255 << 16) I got a redder pixel than expected!
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Quick and Dirty Output of WriteableBitmap as TGA Image

If you ever needed to save a WriteableBitmap to an image file without too much hassle (e.g. for debugging purposes), you could use this simple source code to save it as TGA and then open with Paint.NET: From Wikipedia: "TGA files are in widespread use due to their simplicity and ease of implementation and lack of encumbering patents." [code:c#] public static class TgaWriter {     public static void Write(WriteableBitmap bitmap, Stream output) {
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Calculating Shader Effects in WriteableBitmap (Fast Float Computations And More)

Here's a small code snippet that allows you to calculate any pixel shader and get the output into a WriteableBitmap! [code:c#] Stream stream = Application.GetResourceStream(new Uri("SilverlightApplication1;component/Images/test.jpg", UriKind.Relative)).Stream; WriteableBitmap result = new WriteableBitmap(1, 1); // avoid creating intermediate BitmapImage result.SetSource(stream); Image image = new Image(); image.Effect = new BlurEffect(); // any pixel shader effect image.Source = result; // set the image to the original result.Render(image, null); result.Invalidate(); // render the pixel shader
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Game Cutscenes Part 1 - The Sequencer (No Code Yet, Just Concept)

This post is a call for initial feedback, before I go deeper into coding and stuff, just to make sure I'm not missing anything and capture cool ideas... I've been working on a new game recently, and thought it would be really nice to have some cutscenes in the game. Here's a sample frame such a scene:  Obviously, the above frame is not too advanced, but it looks pretty exciting and fun to create, especially when combined with the right soundtrack
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Improving Download Time (2-3x) for Full Screen Background Images

Getting your backgrounds quickly is very important for games, especially at startup time when you're downloading a lot of stuff anyway (like menu buttons, simple effects, such as explosions and other things that didn't make it into the "core" xap to reduce initial load time). Since you are full screen, it is a good idea to detect the resolution (that would be the ActualWidth and ActualHeight properties of your root control) and programatically return a suitable sized background.
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Tips/Tricks: Short Sounds, Fireworks and BitmapCache Speed

This blog post is a follow-up of the previous one dedicated to the Shock improvements. I'll just list all tips or other interesting findings/updates in no particular order: Playing Short Sounds in Silverlight (Improved) You probably know by now that Silverlight (2,3) has an annoying issue with short sounds - sometimes the sound is not played correctly. The simple workaround is here.  If you happen to play too many sounds/sec, the above workaround can cause your memory usage to grow more than you want to for short time.
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Fast Tile Brush in Silverlight, And Easiest Way to Shader Effects

Here is one monster, tiled as 6 monsters down here: This is actually 1 monster, tiled twice horizontally and 3 times vertically using a Silverlght Tile brush shader effect. Download source code I'm not 100% sure if this is the fastest way, but it's definitely worth it (fast). There are 2 other possible ways to do fast tiling: Do it manually or "hardcoded" - if your tile will never change, just do it in any image editor and then display the tiled result using an Image tag Display several images next to each other - relatively harder, but might end up being faster than the pixel shader (this is just a speculation on my side since I haven't tested it yet, but it is worth a try).
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Adorners in Silverlight - Move, Size, Rotate, Custom Mouse Cursor

This adorner took me few days to get right! Edit Dec, 15: Andrej Tozon created an updated source supporting Behaviours (and drag-drop without code in Blend). Here's a link to his version. Thanks Andrej! This is work in progress, but the base functionality is there and stable! Download source code View Sample   The adorner currently has the following features: Shows custom mouse cursors that get rotated and aligned to the object being rotated/sized in realtime.
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Super Cool Silverlight Game (Not Mine) + Source

This is mind blowing!! A desktop-like RPG Chinese game in Silverlight: http://silverfuture.cn/  It's 10.7 MB but worth the wait! It's in Chinese. I'm sure in future versions it can be much less (e.g. Shock is 17 MB, but 680KB in order to play with the rest being downloaded as you play) And!! The source code is here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/QXGameEngine Some notable things (other than the graphics, implementation and overall coolness): 1. The map is made of PNG's sized 400x300, it is pre-drawn.
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Silverlight 4 Improvements for Gaming

Yes! Silverlight 4 Beta is here! And it comes with quite a few improvements, mostly LOB, but there are some cool things for game developers as well! The full list of Silverlight 4 features is here. Also check http://video.microsoftpdc.com/ - the keynote at 1:47:09, showing a cool Facebook app (1:47:56). Here is a quick overview of some of the new features that I think will improve gaming in Silverlght 4: Faster Silverlight 4 has better performance than Silverlight 3.
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Special Effects: Living Noise

The Living Noise is an animated “flow” of particles. The particle trajectory is changed by using Perlin Noise (long live Ken Perlin!) I’m so excited. Perlin noise is used pretty much in all special effects – explosions, texture generation, water, clouds, mountains, terrain generation, twinkling stars, halo/weapon effects, etc.. Click below to see the Living Noise sample, which is just one way to use Noise: Living Noise Download the source code for Living Noise
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Two Ways to Create High-Quality Glassy Controls in XAML

 “However, there is one design trick that I'd love to master to give my applications that killer look -- the ability to give a control, be that a logo, a menu bar, or whatever, the ultra-glossy appearance, and especially the appearance that I've seen in these water ripples applications of the control having a shiny layer of water on them..  I don't necessarily need to achieve the ripple effect, but I'd love to know how to achieve the water layer appearance.
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WPF/Silverlight Tutorials From My Previous Blog

This is the list of all posts I consider interesting from my old blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/nikola This blog now replaces the old one :) Here's the list...hope you like it: Gaming: Exposed: 5 methods to create game loop: which is the best? Anatomy of a Silverlight Game: Avoid Common Mistakes When Building Online Games Play this Silverlight Game Online: Shock v2 Design and Effects: Nice background image Large Star Field - Take 2, how to make it look "
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The Cool Windows 7 Selection in XAML

Here's the XAML to make a selection rectangle similar to the one in Win7:         <GridHeight="22"Width="300" >             <RectangleStroke="#FF7DA2CE"RadiusX="2"RadiusY="2">                 <Rectangle.Fill>                     <LinearGradientBrushEndPoint="0.5,1"StartPoint="0.5,0">                         <GradientStopColor="#FFDCEBFC"Offset="0" />                         <GradientStopColor="#FFC1DBFC"Offset="1" />                     </LinearGradientBrush>                 </Rectangle.Fill>             </Rectangle>             <RectangleMargin="1"Stroke="#FFEBF4FD"RadiusX="2"RadiusY="2"Fill="{x:Null}">             </Rectangle>         </Grid>  
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