[![](/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/11_scene.png "11_scene")](/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/11_scene.png)

Those who know me know I used to do [quite abit of development](/posts/?s=xna) in c# using Microsoft's XNA platform.



Well I like to check back in every now and then with some of the big players in the community to see what's going on.

One of those players is [Catalin Zima](https://www.catalinzima.com/), who is famous for producing many great shader and effect samples.

One of Catalin's reccent project particularly caught my eye however as I had tried to tackle the same problem several years ago when I was in my final year of university. That is, Dynamic 2D Shadows Calculated on the GPU ([/posts/shadowshader-in-rendermonkey/](/posts/shadowshader-in-rendermonkey/))

[Catalin's approac](https://www.catalinzima.com/2010/07/my-technique-for-the-shader-based-dynamic-2d-shadows/)h to the problem is far more elegant that my brute force iterative approach. He uses a clever technique of distorting the desired casting image about the light in such a way as not to require iterative pixel lookups.

If you are interested in the more details in the technique I encourage you to check it out over on Catalin's blog: [https://www.catalinzima.com/2010/07/my-technique-for-the-shader-based-dynamic-2d-shadows/](https://www.catalinzima.com/2010/07/my-technique-for-the-shader-based-dynamic-2d-shadows/)

I received a very pleasant email yesterday from a fine chap Michael Lindholm. He was enquiring about my old project [LieroXNA ](https://www.mikecann.blog/category/lieroxna/)and whether I was still working on it. As it sound like some people are still interested in the project Ill copy / pase the email for the record here:


<address>Hi mike :)

I have read your blog several times now over the last few months(about LieroXNA) and thought i should just let you know i find your LieroXNA project very interesting :)
very impressive work with those particles aswell, very nice work :)
infact... not to long ago i was in the IRC channel #XNA and people was talking about "that XNA liero game with all the particles" so apparently you have made an impression on the world ;) hehe

but the last post seems to be from 2007, are you still working on the project?

Also, One thing that makes me very interested in Liero and XNA related projects is the fact that i am my self working on a Liero3D game in XNA, if you are interested you can find info about it here:
[https://liero3d.blogspot.com/](https://liero3d.blogspot.com/)

PS: Sorry about my bad spelling (Dyslexia)

take care
<span style="color: #888888;">/Michael</span></address>------- and my reply: --------

<address>Hi Mike,

Firstly its great to hear from someone who appreciates my work. Im surprised that people know about my old little project. Unfortunately it is a dead project now :(

I actually took the game to a high standard, and took it to eidos publishers in Wimbledon to see if they were interested in the game. Unfortunately, despite the backing of my employers Eidos werent interested in an XBLA game not after their other XBLA disasters. From that point on I lost heart in the project, I dont know why but I didnt want to continue it on any more.

Whats worse is I have actually lost everything! I have lost the source code and the binary everything, I cant believe my own stupidity. All I have left is a power point presentation and some screenshots :(

[![lieroxna1](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/lieroxna1-300x224.jpg "lieroxna1")](/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/lieroxna1.jpg)[![lieroxna2](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/lieroxna2-300x224.jpg "lieroxna2")](/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/lieroxna2.jpg)

The game play was actually very good fun, we played quite a few 4-man games in the office.

I may pick up the project again some point in the future, but it wont be for profit, it will be for fun.

I just checked out your 3d-liero project and I must say it looks very interesting! How are you doing the 3d destructibility? Voxels with a polygon mapping algorithm? Have you ever heard of voxlap? [https://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm](https://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm) very interesting project from a while back, was very interested for a while, was thinking of woking on a voxel engine for my university, but decided against it in the end, the complexity is immense.

Well anyways, im starting to ramble, its good to see you continuing on with liero and I wish you best of luck, ill be watching with keen interest.

Mike</address>Well the result of this is I have been digging around and have found "some" old source code, its not complete, but over the coming weeks im going to take a look at it and see if I can get it in a state where I can post it up here, it would be a shame to let this one rot.