December saw the publishing of a number of templates facilitating the use of F# with XNA:
- For the Xbox 360: library template, which has been downloaded 360 times. Does that mean there are 360 F# games coming to the Xbox? If you are working on a game, don't hesitate to let me know!
- For the Windows Phone 7 platform: library and full application templates. Although I am not personally involved in WP7 development, I would love to hear about ongoing projects too!
In January, the discovery of custom workflows and how they can dramatically increase the readability of one's code fascinated me. I think that's a feature that even functional programming sceptics should love.
My game, Asteroid Sharpshooter passed peer review and became available on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. I doubt it will make me rich, but for a first try, it's not too bad.
What are February and the following months going to be like? First, I want to understand whether custom workflows are safe to use in the absence of tail call elimination. I'm still a bit confused... If they are safe, as I suspect they are, I will go ahead and make an XNA game starter kit, similar to the XNA Game State Management sample. It will include file IO and menus based on the Eventually workflow and cooperative multi-tasking.
At the end of February, Dream-Build-Play 2011 will open for registration, which will be the starting point for my next game.
I will also try to be more active in the XNA community and let people know C# is not the only language available in their toolbox. To this effect, I have registered on twitter. I'm deneuxj there. I'll be posting a few pre-paid codes for Asteroid Sharpshooter there, so stay tuned!
