XNA Ireland Users Group

Congratulation's to Finn Krewer for Gort Community College on taking the overall honours at this years XNA Ireland Challenge 2008. The winning game was SPACE INVADERS : Reloaded  created by Finn, a 17 year old second level student. The distinguished judging panel was particularly impressed by the passion and commitment demonstrated by Finn.  He has clearly enjoyed the process of developing the game and demonstrated it with great enthusiasm to the panel.  The game was clearly a labour of love with significant effort put into the art and design.  Technically the project was well executed with great attention to detail, including the comprehensive menu system, complex HUD per player and the high score table.  What particularly impressed the judges was the originality of the 4-player design and the tactical play that emerged from this approach.

Two highly commended projects were, BASE INVADERS (Carlow Institute of Technology) created by Dale Cantwell, Shane Marks and Paul Delaney and SI2K8 (Tipperary Institute) created by David Brennan.

The event was covered by TV3 and photographs have appeared in the national newspapers and international media. The theme for the XNA Ireland Challenge 2009 will be announced in the coming days.

See http://www.gamesfleadh.ie/xna/xna-rules

One of the most important features additions to the XNA version 2.0 release is the ability to cross platform network games. The XNA Ireland Challenge 2008 focuses on SPACE INVADERS and it will be interesting to see if networking features in some of the entries.

The official launch of the XNA Ireland Users Group will take place on Monday, November 26th in Trinity College as part of the XNA 2.0 European Tour.