<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/utility/FeedStylesheets/rss.xsl" media="screen"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"><channel><title>JohnK Blog</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/default.aspx</link><description /><dc:language>en</dc:language><generator>CommunityServer 2008.5 SP1 (Build: 31106.3070)</generator><item><title>Avatar Lighting, Shadows, and SunBurn 1.3</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2010/01/26/avatar-lighting-shadows-and-sunburn-1-3.aspx</link><pubDate>Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:46:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:3928</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>2</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=3928</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2010/01/26/avatar-lighting-shadows-and-sunburn-1-3.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;Last night we launched &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/engine/"&gt;SunBurn Engine 1.3.1&lt;/a&gt;, the first release of SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s updated API.&amp;nbsp; While this release focuses on opening up more of the SunBurn API, and making the system even more modular and customizable, there are also a couple of great new features packed inside this gem, including:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Avatar Lighting and Shadows&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This release introduces an AvatarManager for rendering game avatars, and storing them in a scenegraph for fast querying later.&amp;nbsp; SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s avatar rendering includes lighting, shadows, fog, deferred, HDR, bloom, and more, and is 100% compatible with both the XBLIG peer-review guidelines and XNA avatar rendering rules.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Discussions.Components.Files/5/3632.SunBurn_2D00_Avatar_2D00_2.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer.Discussions.Components.Files/5/3632.SunBurn_2D00_Avatar_2D00_2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;(I&amp;rsquo;m in the Abandoned Town Demo!)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;SunBurn Developer Hub&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Based on the awesome Developer Hub feedback we received, the Hub is now a sizable window, can minimize to the system-tray, and the tray-icon right-click menu allows you to quickly jump to any page on the Hub.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/johnk/SunBurnDevHub.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/johnk/SunBurnDevHub.jpg" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;SunBurn 1.3 API Preview&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The new API opens up SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s core technology and helpers for use in your games.&amp;nbsp; Things like the scenegraph, which was available as an end-point (put objects in and render) now supports moving, removing, and querying objects, and can be used as the main game scenegraph.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Also managers are now completely independent of each other and accessible through a common service provider.&amp;nbsp; This makes it easy to create custom renderers, scenegraphs, even new manager types (physics, gui, ...), and plug them into SunBurn.&amp;nbsp; Your custom managers have the same level of control and flexibility as SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s built-in managers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;While many things changed under the hood in SunBurn 1.3, we tried to keep the external changes small to make migrating as easy as possible.&amp;nbsp; We even included a number of helper methods that mimic SunBurn 1.2 style methods.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Even though we designed the API to be easy to migrate, we were still surprised by how few changes were made when updating the SunBurn examples and start kits.&amp;nbsp; The code looks nearly the same, porting was easy, and there are a ton of new features to take advantage of &amp;ndash; win, win ,win!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Make sure to check out the SunBurn 1.3.1 release notes for a complete list of new features.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get SunBurn Engine 1.3 Now!&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;rsquo;re a SunBurn Engine developer head over to the &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/downloads/"&gt;Downloads section&lt;/a&gt; and check out the latest release.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And if you&amp;#39;re not, what are you waiting for?&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/"&gt;Become a SunBurn developer today!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you have any questions let us know!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/sgdarksquirrel/avatar-body.png" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=3928" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description><enclosure url="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.00.39.28/blog_2D00_avatars3.jpg" length="19031" type="image/jpeg" /></item><item><title>SunBurn 1.2 Developer Hub</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/12/06/sunburn-1-2-developer-hub.aspx</link><pubDate>Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:23:26 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:3221</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>5</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=3221</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/12/06/sunburn-1-2-developer-hub.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;Today we launched the &lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/products/sunburn/"&gt;latest SunBurn&lt;/a&gt; update, version 1.2.6, which includes a number of API enhancements, greater control over SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s internal rendering, &lt;b&gt;and the new SunBurn Developer Hub&lt;/b&gt;&amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;SunBurn Developer Hub&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/bobthecbuilder"&gt;If you&amp;rsquo;re following my Twitter account&lt;/a&gt;, you&amp;rsquo;ve likely heard about the SunBurn Developer Hub (or the &amp;ldquo;Hub&amp;rdquo; as it&amp;rsquo;s known around the office) &amp;ndash; it&amp;rsquo;s been quite an exciting topic over the past few weeks. :)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Hub is a desktop app that allows you to create and manage SunBurn projects, and provides quick access to the SunBurn editor.&amp;nbsp; It also provides quick access to SunBurn getting started info, examples, and documentation.&amp;nbsp; And the Hub keeps you up-to-date on the latest community news and discussions.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/johnk/SunBurnDevHub.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/johnk/SunBurnDevHub.jpg" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Originally we designed the Hub for new users, intending it to provide information on getting started &amp;ndash; similar to the Getting Started thread, only more in-depth and available on the user&amp;rsquo;s desktop immediately after install.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;However after prototyping the Hub we started to see a much larger potential and starting asking some crazy questions like: What if you could launch the editor from the Hub?&amp;nbsp; What if you could add, create, and manage SunBurn projects through the Hub?&amp;nbsp; What if you could see the latest community posts, blogs, and news in the Hub? &amp;hellip; and more.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In the end the Hub is far more feature rich than we ever intended and is certainly an asset even for established SunBurn developers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;More 1.2.6 Enhancements and Updates&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;rsquo;ve also added a bunch of new enhancements to SunBurn 1.2.6.&amp;nbsp; To see all of the updates check out the release notes on the SunBurn 1.2.6 download page &amp;ndash; here are some of the highlights:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The bump mapping and skinning compatible vertex structs VertexPositionNormalTextureBump and VertexPositionNormalTextureBumpSkin (which are used when creating custom objects, and previously available in the SunBurn resources) are now included in the SunBurn assembly.&amp;nbsp; And helper methods for generating tangent space information are included on the vertex structs.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;(Please visit the site to view this media)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Haiku Interactive&lt;/b&gt; utilized the vertex structs to perform instancing in their awesome game &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/products/sunburn/demos.aspx#crateexpectations"&gt;Crate Expectations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Light and shadow map objects used by the render managers are now exposed through the API, allowing full lighting and shadows on objects rendered outside of the render manager (previously objects rendered outside of the render manager either did not receive full lighting and shadowing, or were rendered with a custom renderer).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The shadow manager&amp;rsquo;s internal shadow map creation and management is exposed through the API, allowing for custom shadow map caching and sharing, static shadows, and even custom shadow implementations.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;rsquo;ve also made a number of optimizations, and increased the number of bones supported by the built-in effects to 75 (was 58), which allows for more elaborate animations and more compact and efficient instancing.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get it Now!&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;rsquo;re a SunBurn developer head over to the &lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/downloads/"&gt;Downloads section&lt;/a&gt; and check out the latest release.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And if you&amp;#39;re not, what are you waiting for?&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/products/sunburn/"&gt;Become a SunBurn developer today!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you have any questions let us know!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/sgdarksquirrel/avatar-body.png" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=3221" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description></item><item><title>SunBurn 1.2 and Xbox Deferred</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/11/02/sunburn-1-2-and-xbox-deferred.aspx</link><pubDate>Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:54:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:2982</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=2982</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/11/02/sunburn-1-2-and-xbox-deferred.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;We&amp;rsquo;re very excited to announce that &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/"&gt;SunBurn 1.2.5&lt;/a&gt; launched on Friday.&amp;nbsp; This release is &lt;b&gt;absolutely packed&lt;/b&gt; full of new features, improvements, and a number of enhancements requested by the SunBurn community.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But by far the biggest new feature is Xbox 360 support for SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s deferred rendering system...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Deferred Rendering on Xbox 360&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So you&amp;rsquo;d like complex scenes, an insane number of lights, at full 720P high-definition - all running seamlessly across Xbox and Windows?&amp;nbsp; No problem. :)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;(Please visit the site to view this media)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We&amp;rsquo;ve spent the past few months tweaking, tuning, and optimizing the hell out of the deferred rendering system, and the results are quite stunning.&amp;nbsp; While deferred rendering systems are generally slower than traditional rendering in scenes with simple lighting - SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s deferred rendering is often &lt;b&gt;faster &lt;/b&gt;on the Xbox regardless of the scene&amp;rsquo;s complexity.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So whether your scene lighting is complex or as simple as a single sunlight, SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s deferred rendering will help.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And SunBurn continues to support traditional forward rendering, allowing you to choose the rendering style that best fits your project.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Deferred Anti-Aliasing&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Up until now the major limitation of deferred rendering was the lack of anti-aliasing - &lt;b&gt;but not anymore&lt;/b&gt;.&amp;nbsp; SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s deferred rendering supports full hardware-accelerated anti-aliasing / multi-sampling.&amp;nbsp; This is not an edge blur shader that will interfere with the quality of your scenes, instead SunBurn uses the hardware&amp;rsquo;s built-in anti-aliasing for a crisp and smooth visual quality.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Most Powerful Xbox Engine&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;By providing you with the latest professional tools and technology, &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration:underline;"&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/b&gt;the ability to develop Xbox games without expensive development-kits, licensing, or any authorization process, SunBurn is easily the most powerful engine anywhere near its price range.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/johnk/screen3_5F00_Web.jpg.png"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/johnk/screen3_5F00_Web.jpg.png" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;Crate Expectations&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; by &lt;i&gt;Haiku Interactive&lt;/i&gt; (&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/offers/00000000-0000-4000-8000-000058550345?cid=SLink"&gt;try it out!&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And of course SunBurn also fully supports Windows with the exact same code and API, so your games run seamlessly across both platforms without having to port any SunBurn related code.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get it Now!&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;rsquo;re a SunBurn developer head over to the &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/downloads/default.aspx"&gt;Downloads section&lt;/a&gt; and check out the latest release.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And if you&amp;#39;re not, what are you waiting for?&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Become a SunBurn developer today&lt;/b&gt;!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you have any questions let us know!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/sgdarksquirrel/avatar-body.png" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=2982" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description><enclosure url="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.00.29.82/blog_2D00_deferred_2D00_xbox.jpg" length="18819" type="image/jpeg" /></item><item><title>Latest Updates, Examples, and More</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/10/19/latest-updates-example-and-more.aspx</link><pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:24:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:2820</guid><dc:creator>JohnK (WorkingOnTheSite)</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=2820</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/10/19/latest-updates-example-and-more.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;Over the past couple of weeks we&amp;#39;ve released awesome new SunBurn updates, including performance enhancements, an updated instancing example, tutorials on ambient occlusion mapping, and sneak-peeks at some of the future examples we&amp;#39;re working on.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ambient Occlusion Mapping Tutorial&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Our lead artist, &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/blogs/turbosmooth/archive/2009/09/25/ambient-occlusion-mapping-tutorial.aspx"&gt;Alex &amp;quot;Turbosmooth Operator&amp;quot;, posted an excellent article&lt;/a&gt; on applying high quality ambient occlusion mapping to SunBurn scenes.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Alex&amp;rsquo;s technique uses tools available to all XNA developers (including XSI ModTool), and can be applied to most other tools and modeling applications, as well as used for light mapping and grunge mapping in SunBurn.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/turbosmooth/004.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/turbosmooth/004.jpg" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Alex also talked a little about future examples we&amp;#39;re working on, and how SunBurn&amp;#39;s material and shader support allows you to use a few very small textures to provide incredible amounts of scene detail.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="padding-left:60px;"&gt;&lt;img src="http://i37.tinypic.com/nldjlt.gif" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;SunBurn 1.2.4&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Along with the usual features and updates, SunBurn 1.2.4 also includes enhancements that boost performance considerably in cpu limited scenes.&amp;nbsp; These enhancements make a significant difference on the Xbox, where the cpu often limits rendering.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To see some real-world examples of how these enhancements improve performance, &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://amapplease.blogspot.com/2009/09/watching-sun-burn-part-2.html"&gt;check out Ultrahead&amp;#39;s SunBurn articles on &amp;ldquo;Do as I say, not as I do...&amp;rdquo;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Instancing Example Update&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#39;ve also updated the SunBurn Instancing example.&amp;nbsp; The example is now a complete instancing solution showing how to quickly and easily instance XNA models &lt;b&gt;and &lt;/b&gt;custom objects.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And like all of SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s examples, it includes complete source code and assets, so you can modify and enhance the code to fit your project&amp;#39;s needs.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And More&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;These updates join our ever-growing library of resources, which include full source code and assets to use in your projects.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Other resources include:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/media/g/reflect_refract_example/default.aspx"&gt;Reflection / Refraction Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; - shows how to quickly and easily create reflection and refraction effects using SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s helper classes, and combine these effects with the built-in renderer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/screenshots/sunburn/ReflectionRefraction-2.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/media/g/power_station_example/default.aspx"&gt;Power Station Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; &amp;ndash; shows how we created the Power Station demo for GameFest 2008, as well as how to use custom materials, shaders, and rendering with SunBurn.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/media/g/hdr_example/default.aspx"&gt;HDR Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; &amp;ndash; shows how to use SunBurn&amp;#39;s built-in post-processing and high dynamic range (HDR) lighting and rendering.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/media/g/skinned_model_example/default.aspx"&gt;Skinned Model Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; &amp;ndash; based on the original XNA Skinned Model example, shows how to use skinned models with SunBurn, and how to integrate SunBurn into custom content processors.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/media/g/winforms_example/default.aspx"&gt;WinForms Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; - based on the XNA WinForms Content Loader example, shows how to integrate SunBurn into WinForm applications with full support for lighting, shadows, HDR, and more.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;And other great examples&lt;/b&gt;, as well as SunBurn Documentation, API docs, Community Created Resources, and more!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get it Now!&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;rsquo;re a SunBurn developer &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/downloads/"&gt;head over to the Downloads section&lt;/a&gt; and check out the latest updates and examples.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;And if you&amp;rsquo;re not, what are you waiting for?&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/"&gt;Become a SunBurn developer today!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As always let us know if you have any questions or comments!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/sgdarksquirrel/avatar-body.png" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=2820" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description><enclosure url="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.00.28.20/blog_2D00_updates.jpg" length="19497" type="image/jpeg" /></item><item><title>New SunBurn Updates and Examples</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/08/14/new-sunburn-updates-and-examples.aspx</link><pubDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:07:43 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:2183</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=2183</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/08/14/new-sunburn-updates-and-examples.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;Today we launched two new updates to SunBurn featuring a number of new features including: enhanced WinForms support, render target helper for quickly and easily generating reflection, refraction, and render-to-texture maps, model mesh optimizer, and more.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We also launched two new awesome Sunburn examples...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Reflection / Refraction Example&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/media/g/reflect_refract_example/default.aspx"&gt;SunBurn Reflection / Refraction example&lt;/a&gt; shows how to quickly and easily create reflection and refraction effects using SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s built-in helper classes, and how to combine the effects with SunBurn&amp;rsquo;s built-in renderer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;(Please visit the site to view this media)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;WinForms Example&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Based on the XNA WinForms content loader example, the &lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/media/g/winforms_example/default.aspx"&gt;SunBurn WinForms example&lt;/a&gt; shows how to integrate SunBurn into WinForm applications with full support for lighting, shadows, HDR, and more.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;(Please visit the site to view this media)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;rsquo;re a SunBurn user just head over the &lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/media/"&gt;download section&lt;/a&gt; and check out the new goodies.&lt;br /&gt;As always let us know if you have any questions or comments!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/sgdarksquirrel/avatar-body.png" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=2183" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description></item><item><title>Community Blogs, Instancing Example, and More</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/07/27/community-blogs-instancing-example-and-more.aspx</link><pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:12:45 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:1992</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=1992</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/07/27/community-blogs-instancing-example-and-more.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;This week we rolled out a ton of new community features, documentation, and the new &lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/media/g/instancing_example/default.aspx"&gt;SunBurn Instancing example&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Community Updates&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#39;ve had requests for a more general forum to hang out in, talk about projects, and more.&amp;nbsp; This is an excellent idea, so we created a new &lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=12"&gt;Community forum group&lt;/a&gt; and launched &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;The Lounge&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, an ideal place to talk about what you&amp;#39;re working on, the game industry, swap ideas, or just hang out and chat.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But wouldn&amp;#39;t it be great if there was a more visible place to talk about your work?&amp;nbsp; Well now there is.&amp;nbsp; We&amp;#39;ve also launched &lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/community_blogs/default.aspx"&gt;Community Blogs&lt;/a&gt;, where you can post blogs talking about your projects, cool features you&amp;#39;re working on, or just introduce yourself and your project!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="padding-left:30px;"&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/johnk/blogs.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/johnk/blogs.jpg" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Community blogs show up at the top of the main Community page, and other community members can comment, provide feedback, and share experiences and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Posting a new blog is easy, click on any existing community blog or the Community Blogs link below it, then on the group page click &amp;quot;Write a new blog post&amp;quot; in the Community Blogs panel on the right.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Examples and Documentation&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Our latest coding example, the &lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/media/g/instancing_example/default.aspx"&gt;SunBurn Instancing example&lt;/a&gt;, is now available in the Downloads section.&amp;nbsp; It shows how to render up to 20x more objects in your scenes without sacrificing performance using SunBurn&amp;#39;s built-in instancing support.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Discussions.Components.Files/3/5381.InstancingExample.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer.Discussions.Components.Files/3/5381.InstancingExample.jpg" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In addition three new optimization articles are posted in the Documentation section.&amp;nbsp; These articles talk about using SunBurn&amp;#39;s built-in statistics to tune your scenes, performance pit-falls to avoid, and the process we used to tune the Power Station example.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="padding-left:30px;"&gt;(Please visit the site to view this media)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Wrap Up&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#39;s been a great week, we&amp;#39;ve launched a ton of new features for the community, and we&amp;#39;re excited to see the upcoming community blogs and ideas flowing in The Lounge.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As always if you have any questions let us know!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/sgdarksquirrel/avatar-body.png" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1992" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description></item><item><title>New Releases and XNA 3.1</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/07/11/new-releases-and-xna-3-1.aspx</link><pubDate>Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:15:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:1841</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=1841</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/07/11/new-releases-and-xna-3-1.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;Today we launched two exciting new releases of SunBurn (versions 1.1.6 and 1.2.2), which include an even smoother editor workflow, new options when importing materials from your modeling application, a more compact release package, support for XNA 3.1, and more!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Support for Both XNA 3.1 and 3.0&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To help with the migration from XNA 3.0 to 3.1 we&amp;#39;ve rolled the latest SunBurn updates into both SunBurn 1.1.x (which uses XNA 3.0) and SunBurn 1.2.x (which uses XNA 3.1).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-lighting-small.jpg" style="max-width:550px;border:0;float:right;margin:8px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This allows your projects to take advantage of the latest SunBurn features, even if you&amp;#39;re not ready to move to XNA 3.1.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Features and More Features&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Some of the new features in &lt;i&gt;both &lt;/i&gt;SunBurn releases include:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Editor&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The editor has a new game-launcher, which allows you to browse for a SunBurn game to edit (if a SunBurn game is already running the editor still automatically connects to it without browsing, just like earlier versions).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The editor also helps manage changes to your assets, so you can edit scene lighting, shadows, materials, environment, and more, without &lt;b&gt;ever &lt;/b&gt;opening Visual Studio.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Along with other new features like full-screen mode and the ability to disable light icons while viewing the scene, the SunBurn editor&amp;#39;s workflow is even smoother and more streamlined than ever.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Materials&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;SunBurn&amp;#39;s latest content processors provide the option to use material names assigned by your modeling application instead of deriving names from the material&amp;#39;s diffuse textures (the default).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-car-alt.jpg" style="max-width:550px;border:0;margin-top:8px;margin-bottom:8px;margin-left:16px;margin-right:16px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This makes it easy to create simulations, visualization, and games that do not use textures (or that assign textures entirely within SunBurn).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Smaller, More Compact Releases&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The SunBurn redistributable now references &lt;b&gt;only &lt;/b&gt;.Net 2.0.&amp;nbsp; In most cases this eliminates the need to distribute or require a .Net release with your game, as .Net 2.0 is generally available on most PCs and is included in Vista and Windows 7.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;And Much More&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Other features include render manager overloads for assigning user / procedural effects to XNA models, Visual Studio item templates for SunBurn materials, fixes, and much more!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;SunBurn 1.2.2&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Along with XNA 3.1 support, the new features mentioned above, and the ability to run both traditional forward rendering and SunBurn&amp;#39;s new deferred rendering, SunBurn 1.2.2 has several additional new features.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-reactor.jpg" style="max-width:550px;border:0;margin-top:8px;margin-bottom:8px;margin-left:16px;margin-right:16px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Including support for shaders that alter render and blending states within their HLSL, and reduced memory usage when rendering debugging statistics.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get it now!&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#39;re a SunBurn developer you can download the latest releases in our &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/media/"&gt;Downloads section&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; And if you&amp;#39;re not, what are you waiting for?&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/editions.aspx"&gt;Become a SunBurn developer today&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As always if you have any questions let us know!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/sgdarksquirrel/avatar-body.png" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1841" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description><enclosure url="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.00.18.41/blog_2D00_xna31.jpg" length="15713" type="image/jpeg" /><category domain="http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/tags/XNA+3.0/default.aspx">XNA 3.0</category><category domain="http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/tags/XNA+3.1/default.aspx">XNA 3.1</category></item><item><title>Community Resources and API Documentation</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/06/22/community-resources-and-api-documentation.aspx</link><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:14:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:1736</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=1736</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/06/22/community-resources-and-api-documentation.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;Over the past few weeks we&amp;#39;ve introduced some awesome new sections to the &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/wikis/"&gt;SunBurn online documentation&lt;/a&gt; to make finding and sharing game development information easy.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Community Resources&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Certainly one of the most exciting additions is our new &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/wikis/community_created_resources/default.aspx"&gt;Community Resources section&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; It lets community members upload and share helpful code snippets, examples, tutorials, shaders, and more, related to both SunBurn and game development in general.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#39;ve also contributed a number of resources based on snippets we&amp;#39;ve posted in the forums, making sure they&amp;#39;re easy to find in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Some of the great new community resources are:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Grunge mapping shader (with multiple uv channels)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Billboarding classes&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;SunBurn reference renderer (for help debugging custom objects and renderers)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Code for generating custom tangent space coordinates&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;And more!&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;API Documentation&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#39;ve also posted full MSDN style &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/documentation/"&gt;API documentation for SunBurn&lt;/a&gt;, covering both versions 1.1.x and 1.2.x, and the various editions, which makes browsing and exploring the API even easier.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#39;t forget SunBurn includes full assembly documentation, so you can still browse the same information within Visual Studio using Intellisense or the Object Browser.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The API documentation required some modifications to our community site, which we rolled out over the past couple of weeks.&amp;nbsp; We definitely appreciate the community&amp;#39;s patience while waiting for this information &amp;ndash; thanks!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you have any questions or comments let us know,&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/sgdarksquirrel/avatar-body.png" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1736" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description><enclosure url="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.00.17.36/blog_2D00_resources.jpg" length="23328" type="image/jpeg" /></item><item><title>New Community Home Page and Xbox LIVE Avatars</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/06/10/new-community-home-page-and-xbox-live-avatars.aspx</link><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:16:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:1651</guid><dc:creator>JohnK (WorkingOnTheSite)</dc:creator><slash:comments>1</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=1651</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/06/10/new-community-home-page-and-xbox-live-avatars.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#39;ve just rolled out cool new updates to the SunBurn community site
that make finding the latest info easier and browsing the forums even
more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The big update is &lt;a href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/community/"&gt;our new community home page&lt;/a&gt;,
which now serves up the latest blogs, news, forums, as well as forum
posts.&amp;nbsp; And now that our blogs are easier to find (hard to miss
actually), we can start keeping journals of our work on SunBurn,
R&amp;amp;D projects, personal game development projects, and more.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In
addition to the new community home page, we&amp;#39;ve also added support for
using Xbox LIVE avatars as community avatars.&amp;nbsp; To make an Xbox LIVE
avatar your community avatar:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Edit your profile by selecting the &lt;i&gt;Edit &lt;/i&gt;link on the blue bar at the top of any community page&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Select &lt;i&gt;Change Avatar&lt;/i&gt; in the edit profile &lt;i&gt;Avatar &lt;/i&gt;section&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Choose the &lt;i&gt;Use Xbox LIVE Avatar&lt;/i&gt; tab of the &lt;i&gt;Change Avatar&lt;/i&gt; window&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Enter the name of the Xbox LIVE Gamertag you&amp;#39;d like to use as your avatar&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;And select &lt;i&gt;Use Linked Image&lt;/i&gt; to finish&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#39;t have an Xbox 360?&amp;nbsp; No worries, we have a number of default
avatars to choose from.&amp;nbsp; When changing your avatar check out the &lt;i&gt;Select an Avatar&lt;/i&gt; tab of the &lt;i&gt;Change Avatar&lt;/i&gt; window.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#39;re
always looking at ways to enhance our community, add new features, and
generally make it even more interesting to use.&amp;nbsp; We&amp;#39;re excited about
these new updates, and we hope you are too!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you have any question or comments let us know,&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/sgdarksquirrel/avatar-body.png" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1651" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description><enclosure url="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.00.16.51/blog_2D00_avatars.jpg" length="15647" type="image/jpeg" /></item><item><title>SunBurn: a great launch, videos, and more</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/03/04/sunburn-a-great-launch-videos-and-more.aspx</link><pubDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:31:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:998</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=998</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/03/04/sunburn-a-great-launch-videos-and-more.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;Wow &amp;ndash; it&amp;#39;s already been two weeks since we &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/pro/"&gt;launched SunBurn&lt;/a&gt;, where
did the time go?&amp;nbsp; ... into cool new updates and videos, that&amp;#39;s where!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The past two weeks were amazing &amp;ndash; the launch went very well, SunBurn
is doing excellent, the community is growing, and we received great
feedback from the community on how to make buying SunBurn even easier.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-barrels.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;SunBurn Videos&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We received a lot of requests from people interested in SunBurn, and
one of the biggest was videos showing SunBurn in action.&amp;nbsp; We planned to
roll out SunBurn videos when things settled down, but with people
already interested in seeing more, we decided to put together a few of
the videos early.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So far we&amp;#39;ve posted three videos (which we&amp;#39;ll add to the &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/screenshots.aspx"&gt;SunBurn
screenshot page&lt;/a&gt; soon) featuring SunBurn examples, and scenes from our
screenshots section:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Power Station Demo (demo source code and assets available with SunBurn Pro or higher)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;(Please visit the site to view this media)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;High-poly Face (captured from the SunBurn Editor view-port)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;(Please visit the site to view this media)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;High Dynamic Range (HDR) Example (source code and assets available with SunBurn Pro or higher)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small;"&gt;(Please visit the site to view this media)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;SunBurn Upgrades&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Another big request was upgrades between the SunBurn editions.&amp;nbsp; We
considered upgrades many times, but never really nailed down the best
way to provide them.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thanks to the excellent feedback from both licensees and people
evaluating SunBurn, we put together a really simple and yet flexible
upgrade path &amp;ndash; and you can now upgrade between &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/pro/"&gt;SunBurn Pro&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/community/"&gt;Community&lt;/a&gt;,
and &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/studio/"&gt;Studio editions&lt;/a&gt; during checkout (please see the product pages for
details).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-reactor.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks for Your Feedback!&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Again it&amp;#39;s been an awesome week, and we&amp;#39;re really impressed with the
feedback we got from everyone &amp;ndash; it&amp;#39;s already making a great impact on
our community.&amp;nbsp; We&amp;#39;re looking forward to hearing more of your feedback
in the future &amp;ndash; thanks!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=998" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description></item><item><title>SunBurn Lighting and Rendering Engine Launched!</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/02/19/sunburn-lighting-and-rendering-engine-launched.aspx</link><pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:02:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:861</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=861</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/02/19/sunburn-lighting-and-rendering-engine-launched.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#39;s official, &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/shops/store/default.aspx"&gt;SunBurn is now available in the Synapse Gaming store!&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp; We&amp;#39;re very happy to announce all four editions of SunBurn have launched and are available for immediate download after purchase.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#39;ve worked hard to make SunBurn&amp;#39;s licensing flexible for studios and development teams, while keeping it affordable for indies and hobbyists.&amp;nbsp; &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/indie/"&gt;Indie edition&lt;/a&gt; offers a simplified version of SunBurn&amp;#39;s tools and technology, and at under &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;$80&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; it&amp;#39;s an excellent way to get started.&amp;nbsp; Starting under &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;$200&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/pro/"&gt;SunBurn&amp;#39;s Pro&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/community/"&gt;Community&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/studio/"&gt;Studio &lt;/a&gt;editions are full-featured, offer development on Xbox 360, and come with access to bonus development examples and resources.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-car-alt.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every SunBurn edition includes access to private forums, online documentation, Visual C# templates, and example projects, including the source and assets from our popular Power Station demo (available with SunBurn Community, Pro, and Studio).&amp;nbsp; The latest SunBurn releases also include support for both XNA 2.0 and 3.0, and Visual C# 2005 and 2008.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What&amp;#39;s SunBurn?&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;SunBurn is a feature-rich, flexible lighting and rendering engine that enhances the look and visual style of practically any game or product using XNA Game Studio, making it standout to potential customers, publishers, and funders.&amp;nbsp; Built on top of Microsoft&amp;#39;s XNA Game Studio, SunBurn is a natural evolution of the framework.&amp;nbsp; It offers the same flexibility, ease-of-use, rapid-development, as well as full support for XNA Game Studio and its powerful content pipeline. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-barrels.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Enhance XNA &lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;SunBurn&amp;#39;s features include 100% dynamic lighting and soft-shadows, cinematic effects like HDR and soft natural fill-lighting, a powerful material system offering parallax, bump, color specular, emissive mapping, and more.&amp;nbsp; As well as support for custom user FX shaders, very flexible licensing, and of course you can publish as many products as you want, all completely royalty-free. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Already Making an Impact in the XNA Scene&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;With several SunBurn games already under development (many for release on Xbox LIVE Community Games) SunBurn is already accelerating game development in the XNA community.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-icedome.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One of the best examples is the Elemental development team &amp;ndash; a small student team that developed its first title, &lt;i&gt;IceDome&lt;/i&gt;, for the 2008 Imagine Cup.&amp;nbsp; Using a beta version of SunBurn the team developed &lt;i&gt;IceDome &lt;/i&gt;in only a few months and with incredible results.&amp;nbsp; Not only does the game look fantastic, but they also landed in the Imagine Cup top 20 finalists (awesome work guys!). &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How Do I Learn More?&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The best way to learn more about SunBurn is at our website: &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/"&gt;SynapseGaming.com&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; If you have any questions about SunBurn please feel free to ask on our forums.&amp;nbsp; And we&amp;#39;re looking forward to hearing from you in the &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/forums/"&gt;community&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;-John Kabus&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=861" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description><enclosure url="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.00.08.61/blog_2D00_launched.jpg" length="14737" type="image/jpeg" /></item><item><title>SunBurn Coming and More Details!</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/02/05/sunburn-coming-and-more-details.aspx</link><pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:46:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:762</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>2</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=762</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/02/05/sunburn-coming-and-more-details.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;Last week I talked about the upcoming launch of SunBurn &amp;ndash; Synapse
Gaming&amp;#39;s latest lighting and rendering technology.&amp;nbsp; We received a lot
of emails asking about SunBurn, the community, and pricing.&amp;nbsp; So in this
blog I&amp;#39;m going to answer some of those questions and talk a little
about the SunBurn beta, the types of projects using SunBurn, the
community, and pricing and licensing.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
SunBurn Beta a Huge Success&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#39;s been almost a year since we announced the SunBurn beta, and
looking back it was a huge success.&amp;nbsp; The response to our announcement
was staggering.&amp;nbsp; We received far more interest than we imagined
possible, from both individuals and teams working on some really
amazing projects.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-car-alt.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Even more exciting was the response from people
doing work on products other than games &amp;ndash; organizations working on
automotive and infrastructure visualizations, groups developing
simulations, and educators alike &amp;ndash; all interested in using SunBurn.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The
wide range of interest and our diverse beta group really helped us
build a very flexible architecture, friendly and easy-to-use editor
suite, and a solid content pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Already Making an Impact in the XNA Scene&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Even though it&amp;#39;s not yet released SunBurn is already making an
impact in the XNA scene.&amp;nbsp; With several SunBurn games already under
development (many for release on Xbox LIVE Community Games) SunBurn is
already accelerating game development in the XNA community.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-icedome.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One of the best examples is the Elemental development team &amp;ndash; a small student team that developed its first title, &lt;i&gt;IceDome&lt;/i&gt;, for the 2008 Imagine Cup.&amp;nbsp; Using a beta version of SunBurn the team developed &lt;i&gt;IceDome&lt;/i&gt;
in only a few months and with incredible results.&amp;nbsp; Not only does the
game look fantastic, but they also landed in the Imagine Cup top 20
finalists (awesome work guys!).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
SunBurn Community&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Part of SunBurn&amp;#39;s success is our community, which offers a friendly
development environment to find help, swap ideas, learn tips and
tricks, or just talk about your project with us and other community
members.&amp;nbsp; The community is also full of examples, resources, and
documentation that we are continually working on to help people get the
most out of both SunBurn and XNA.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-barrels.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Accessible Prices&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#39;ve worked hard to make SunBurn&amp;#39;s licensing flexible for studios
and development teams, while keeping it affordable to indies and
hobbyists.&amp;nbsp; SunBurn&amp;#39;s &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/indie/"&gt;Indie Edition&lt;/a&gt; offers a simplified version of SunBurn&amp;#39;s tools and technology &amp;ndash; at under &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;$80&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt; it&amp;#39;s an excellent way to get started.&amp;nbsp; SunBurn&amp;#39;s &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/pro/"&gt;Pro&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/community/"&gt;Community&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/products/sunburn/studio/"&gt;Studio&lt;/a&gt; editions are full-featured, offer development on Xbox 360, and come with access to bonus development examples and resources.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
How Do I Learn More?&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The best way to learn more about SunBurn is at our website: &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/"&gt;Synapse Gaming&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Please feel free to ask any questions you have in our forums.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Also stay tuned for the follow up SunBurn launch announcement!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
-John Kabus&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/"&gt;Synapse Gaming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://bleedingedgeindie.blogspot.com/"&gt;Bleeding Edge Indie&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=762" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description><enclosure url="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.00.07.62/blog_2D00_coming.jpg" length="16561" type="image/jpeg" /></item><item><title>SunBurn Ready to Launch!</title><link>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/01/27/sunburn-ready-to-launch.aspx</link><pubDate>Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:41:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">fb4c913c-ded0-4940-9749-e3fef31e246d:713</guid><dc:creator>JohnK "bobthecbuilder"</dc:creator><slash:comments>1</slash:comments><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=713</wfw:commentRss><comments>http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2009/01/27/sunburn-ready-to-launch.aspx#comments</comments><description>&lt;p&gt;With over two years of research and development and a year of
focused peer feedback, SunBurn &amp;ndash; Synapse Gaming&amp;#39;s latest generation of
lighting and rendering technology &amp;ndash; is getting ready to launch.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;What&amp;#39;s SunBurn?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;SunBurn
is a feature-rich and flexible lighting and rendering engine that
enhances the look and visual style of practically any game or product
using XNA Game Studio, making it standout to potential customers,
publishers, and funders.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-icedome-alt.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Built on top of Microsoft&amp;#39;s XNA Game
Studio, SunBurn is a natural evolution of the framework.&amp;nbsp; It offers the
same flexibility, ease-of-use, rapid-development, and with full support
for XNA Game Studio and its powerful content pipeline.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;Enhance XNA&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#39;s
no secret that we&amp;#39;re impressed with XNA Game Studio &amp;ndash; it&amp;#39;s an excellent
framework for rapidly prototyping and completing practically any type
of game.&amp;nbsp; And XNA offers console self-publishing on Xbox 360 in
addition to Windows publishing &amp;ndash; which is unheard of, and a massive
opportunity for all game developers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But as a game framework XNA
only provides the rendering basics.&amp;nbsp; SunBurn extends the XNA framework
by providing a powerful lighting and rendering engine out of the box,
the tools and components to customize or write your own rendering
systems, and a suite of editors that offer real-time in-game editing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-reactor.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Some
of SunBurn&amp;#39;s features include 100% dynamic lighting and soft-shadows,
cinematic effects like HDR and soft natural fill-lighting, a powerful
material system offering parallax, bump, color specular, emissive
mapping, and more.&amp;nbsp; As well as support for custom user FX shaders, very
flexible licensing, and of course you can publish as many products as
you want, all completely royalty-free.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;Tools for Artists and Developers&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Designed
for both individual and team environments, all of SunBurn&amp;#39;s tools are
built from the ground up to be easy to use, flexible, and familiar.&amp;nbsp;
SunBurn&amp;#39;s editor suite provides real-time in-game editing of scene
lighting, shadows, materials, and environment (HDR, fog, background,
...) &amp;ndash; all in an application familiar to anyone who&amp;#39;s used a modeling
or game scene editing tool.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/images/image-car-alt.jpg" style="max-width:550px;" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;SunBurn&amp;#39;s architecture and content
pipeline tools are modeled closely after XNA Game Studio, making them
familiar to most XNA developers.&amp;nbsp; The included coding examples, project
templates, and documentation offer details on common development tasks
like getting started with SunBurn, building custom renderers, creating
a simple tiled terrain, and using SunBurn with XNA skinned animations.&amp;nbsp;
And as always our development team is available in the SunBurn
development community to answer questions, swap ideas, and offer tips
and tricks.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;How Do I Learn More?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The best way to learn more about SunBurn is at our website: &lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/"&gt;Synapse Gaming&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Please feel free to ask any questions you have in our forums.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also stay tuned for my follow up blog talking more about SunBurn, some of the projects using it, and pricing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-John Kabus&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a target="_blank" href="https://www.synapsegaming.com:443/"&gt;Synapse Gaming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://bleedingedgeindie.blogspot.com/"&gt;Bleeding Edge Indie&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.synapsegaming.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=713" width="1" height="1"&gt;</description><enclosure url="http://www.synapsegaming.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.00.07.13/blog_2D00_ready_2D00_to_2D00_launch.jpg" length="17423" type="image/jpeg" /></item></channel></rss>