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GDC, "SunBurn" Beta, and Write-up on Ziggyware

Name:	John Kabus (BobTheCBuilder)
Date Posted:	Feb 12, 2008
Rating:	4.7 out of 5
Public:	YES
Comments:	YES
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Profile Page:	View profile page for John Kabus (BobTheCBuilder)

Blog post

GDC 2008

I'll be at GDC again this year representing Synapse Gaming. If you're going to GDC and interested in meeting up you can contact me at: jkabus@synapsegaming.com. I look forward to seeing you there!

SunBurn Lighting System Beta

This weekend we announced our latest lighting and material engine, codenamed "SunBurn", for Microsoft's XNA Game Studio. SunBurn provides XNA developers with highly flexible unified dynamic lighting, shadowing, and material systems.

SunBurn is the culmination of years of architectural design aimed at creating lighting and material systems that are as easy to integrate into existing games and engines, and to customize, as they are to use out of the box. Based on the feedback we've received and the work already being done with SunBurn, it looks like we definitely achieved that goal.

SunBurn is entering private beta and we are looking for people working with XNA to put the system through its paces. If you are interested in beta testing SunBurn, contact us (beta.sunburn@synapsegaming.com) with some information about you, your team, and the XNA project(s) you are working on.

Review on Ziggyware

Michael Morton posted an awesome review of SunBurn over at Ziggyware.com. He covers some of SunBurn's features, its flexibility and easy to use architecture, and his experiences beta testing it.

For anyone not familiar with Ziggyware, it's one of the top XNA resource and news sites, and Michael is the owner/operator, so it's one hell of a cool write up - thanks Michael!

For more information on SunBurn check out my personal blog or the SunBurn page.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	02/12/08 - GDC, "SunBurn" Beta, and Write-up on Ziggyware 06/19/07 - Game in a Day 21 - Adventure Game 04/24/07 - Constructor and Torque - Mapping in Style 03/05/07 - GDC, Growing support team, and more 08/05/06 - The Year Long Cycle and IGC 07/15/06 - GI10H - Extreme Kork Paintball! 05/02/06 - Torque Lighting Kit - Demo and Visual Studio 2005 Express 03/10/06 - TLK Shaman Demo - Public Soft Launch

List:

02/12/08 - GDC, "SunBurn" Beta, and Write-up on Ziggyware
06/19/07 - Game in a Day 21 - Adventure Game
04/24/07 - Constructor and Torque - Mapping in Style
03/05/07 - GDC, Growing support team, and more
08/05/06 - The Year Long Cycle and IGC
07/15/06 - GI10H - Extreme Kork Paintball!
05/02/06 - Torque Lighting Kit - Demo and Visual Studio 2005 Express
03/10/06 - TLK Shaman Demo - Public Soft Launch

Submit your own resources!

David Montgomery-Blake (Feb 12, 2008 at 21:28 GMT)

Very, very sweet John!

Prairie Games (Feb 12, 2008 at 22:00 GMT)

Looks excellent John, great lighting is so important and so hard to pull off.

Video! Video! Video! :)

Ben Sparks (Warspawn) (Feb 12, 2008 at 23:03 GMT)

wow, that looks great! really sharp!

Jake T (Feb 12, 2008 at 23:41 GMT)

Sharp is exactly the word I was going to use! John - Sunburn looks fantastic. Enough to make me want to start working on an XNA project ;) And it should open your excellent work up to a much larger audience, congrats. Sorry I'll miss GDC this year!!

Sean T. Boyette (Feb 13, 2008 at 01:00 GMT)

GREAT!

Brett Seyler (Feb 13, 2008 at 04:21 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Awesome John. I was wondering when we'd see this. I can't wait to see it in action!

Kory James (Feb 13, 2008 at 05:09 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Looks amazing please post a video

John Kabus (BobTheCBuilder) (Feb 13, 2008 at 07:16 GMT)

Hey guys,

Thanks! The best way to see the system in action is to join the beta. ;)

Hey Brett,

If you're heading to GDC we should meet up.

Affectworks (Feb 13, 2008 at 14:28 GMT)

Wow. This looks amazing, John. Will sunburn be ported to any of the Torque engines?

Fredrik S

H.W. Kim (Feb 13, 2008 at 14:39 GMT)

Looks so great!
Could we expect any chance to port Sunburn to TGEA? :-)
Edited on Feb 13, 2008 14:39 GMT

Mark Dynna (Feb 13, 2008 at 14:59 GMT)

If Sunburn is built for XNA it should be possible to plug it into TorqueX then?

John Kabus (BobTheCBuilder) (Feb 13, 2008 at 20:32 GMT)

Hey guys,

I think Torque X is still running against XNA 1.0 - it probably needs updated to XNA 2.0 to support SunBurn.

There are plans for a native port of SunBurn, but nothing specific about which engines it will support. Of course the system was designed with integration in mind and is extremely easy to incorporate into existing codebases, so even if we do not have built-in support for your engine, you can still add SunBurn to it.

Brett Seyler (Feb 13, 2008 at 20:59 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Without making too overt a promise here, GG will be releasing an update to Torque X for XNA 2.0 compatibility here very soon. We'll also be talking with John about how best to make Torque X work with SunBurn. Native engines too :)

Justin DuJardin (Feb 13, 2008 at 22:12 GMT) Resource Rating: 4

That looks absolutely slick John, nice work!

-Justin

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