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We are about to release the first (alpha) version of our new animation library for XNA: DigitalRune Animation.

I am currently working on the documentation and have just finished writing the summary of all features. This library is packed with features! I dare to say that this is the most comprehensive animation library for .NET and XNA to date.

(I am personally really excited about this new product. It is the result of months – actually years – of research and hard work.)

Features in DigitalRune Animation

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Richard Moss (http://cyotek.com/) has written a very good article about how to add CSS syntax highlighting to the DigitalRune Text Editor Control.

Check it out: CSS Syntax Highlighting in the DigitalRune Text Editor Control (by cyotek.com)

The DigitalRune Game UI package is a set of .NET libraries that help to handle device input and create graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in XNA. The libraries support Windows, Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7. The GUI can be controlled using mouse, keyboard, gamepad or touch input.

With the DigitalRune Game UI you can create a simple game menu for your Xbox 360 or Windows Phone 7 game. Or, you can create a complex user interface for your MMORPG or your game editor. The GUI can be a normal 2D user interface, but is also possible to project the GUI onto 3D surfaces to create in-game user interfaces.

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The .NET Framework 4 contains the Task Parallel Library (TPL). It introduces the concept of tasks. Tasks represent asynchronous operations that can be executed concurrently. Developers no longer have to manage threads or thread pool work items directly. The library provides a higher-level API for writing multi-threaded application or games. The only negative thing we can say about the TPL is that it is not supported on the .NET Compact Framework and is therefore not available on the Xbox 360 (or the WP7).

When we added multithreading support for our libraries, we looked for an easy-to-use, cross-platform threading library. After evaluating a lot of solutions we found the ParallelTasks library on CodePlex. The library is a lightweight replacement for the TPL. It offers all relevant features such as …

In the previous post I wrote about the resource pool implementation offered by the DigitalRune Helper library. In this post I will show the pattern we use to make objects reusable.

When we start to design a class library we usually don’t care about resource pooling. Only when the major parts of the API and the internal algorithms are done we start to measure performance and profile memory usage. When we started optimizing DigitalRune Geometry and Physics we realized that some objects needed to be pooled in order to avoid garbage on the Xbox 360. So a few types had to be made reusable.

The following pattern has proven very handy for turning a normal object into a pooled object.

By now, we probably all know that the latency of the garbage collector on Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 can be a problem. One solution is to avoid frequent memory allocations by using resource pools (or free-lists).

This blog post provides some information about the resource pool implementation provided by the DigitalRune libraries.

In our company we do not program in VB.NET. Not that we have anything against it, we have just specialized in C# when we program .NET applications.

We are are aware that our WinForms libraries (DigitalRune Docking Windows and the DigitalRune Text Editor Control) are used by many VB programmers. And they regularly ask for VB example code.

Here are a few ways to automatically convert C# code to VB (or the other way around):

In 2005 I finished my master thesis about rigid body dynamics. It shows how to build a rigid body physics engine for interactive 3d applications. I am sure it is a good starting point for everyone who wants to learn about game physics.