Adam Kinney posts tagged with 'halo'

Xbox Friends Watch - a Sidebar Gadget using Silverlight

Adam Kinney — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:42:00 GMT

[UPDATE: version 1.1 has been posted, performance improvements and an auto version checker now included.]

HALO 3 is out and my Xbox is now getting the love it truly deserves. Multiplayer mode in HALO is a lot of fun and even more fun when you can play with friends. Thus, a perfect opportunity was born to create a useful sidebar gadget.

I've recorded a demo on how the gadget works available on Channel 9 and you can download the gadget directly from my server, although I will be posting it to the Gadget Gallery shortly.

Just make sure that before you run the gadget you install Silverlight 1.0, otherwise the gadget will not work.

My data source for Xbox Live information is coming from Duncan Mackenzie's REST service and the UI is done completely in Silverlight 1.0. This turned out to be a really fun project and the Sidebar hosting environment was a great place for a Silverlight application.

One of the most obvious benefits is that within the Sidebar you can make cross-domain calls, no need for any server-side proxies. You also gain access to certain System properties and a small data storage model all through the Gadget API.

I foresee more Silverlight-based Sidebar Gadgets in the future, I'm looking at you Twitter API...

Tafiti goes all HALO on us

Adam Kinney — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:29:00 GMT

Tafiti is now donning a fancy HALO skin, showing that we (Microsoft) are just as excited about the upcoming release of HALO 3 as the rest of you who have pre-ordered the game and planning to take September 25th off of work.

Unfortunately there is no treeview which would have been very interesting to see skinned in the HALO way, but I do think the News view is interesting, which is something I hadn't used before. The dividing lines between articles are a bit thick, but I like the column/summary type of layout.

HALO 3 live action trailer in HD via Silverlight

Adam Kinney — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:44:00 GMT

Watch the gritty, live action HALO trailer in HD now

Now for those of you that know, I am not a huge fan of HALO for multiplayer joy (I'm still a UT guy (UT 3 trailer here!)). BUT I did like the thematic single player mode and I do like the mythology of HALO. So what better to see then a trailer for the third installment done in live action in HD on demand.

Lovely, looking forward to the next installment.

RvB Player Silverlight sample updated

Adam Kinney — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 16:50:00 GMT

Back in March, Scott Guthrie made his debut appearance in a Red vs. Blue video packaged in a WPF/e player. Well since MIX07, WPF/e has become Silverlight and a new beta was released. Along with the beta came a few breaking changes which did in fact break the RvB player.

Last week I worked through the changes needed in the code and the RvB Player is now functional once again and live on Channel 9. The good thing is that each change that was made appears to be an improvement over what had been there before.

Now, if only we could get Scott into another video...

HALO themed "WPF/E" player source code

Adam Kinney — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:40:00 GMT

Mike Harsh pointed out I didn't share the source for the HALO themed player for Scott Guthrie's appearance in Red vs Blue. Extremely embarrassed and questioning my ability to be a "sample guy", I've posted the source. Are you happy now? I'm feeling better about it already.

HALO themed player for Scott Guthrie in Red vs. Blue

Adam Kinney — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:58:00 GMT

"Can you make a HALO themed player for the next Red vs. Blue video? It has Scott Guthrie in it and he talks about ASP.Net to the Red team."

"Scott Guthrie in Red vs. Blue? Nice. Sure, I don't have that much time but I can put something together."

/me grabs code from SleekVideoPlayer sample. Throws in new graphics, adds sliding intro panel and popup link at the end. Turns up volume of video.

/presents Red vs. Blue player on Channel 9

/Scott Guthrie blogs about it