Nuclex

Beta 2 of XNA Game Studio Express has been released to the public today. Porting my code to Beta 2 took me about one hour since some genius decided to make the all the model framework classes sealed and remove their generic versions. Also, the GameServices collection now lost its generics as well and requires manual downcasting.

While updating the code, I also broke something in the stencil buffer drawing code which now, instead of limiting the shadow to shadowed regions, limits the walls to holes in the floor. Fiddling around with the shader effect files for the stencil and shadow drawing solved the problem.

Next, finding some swept circle vs. aligned rectangle collision detection code on the net has prooven itself to be harder than it seemed. I don't have the strong math backgound needed to code such stuff myself. I ported the only code that seemed usable, even thought it was originally intended for sphere/polygon collisions. My first attempt at simple ball physics doesn't go to well and I fear I will have to integrate something like Ode at the end. Maybe the pure .NET Farseer Physics Engine can fill this gap?