Microsoft realeased Visual Studio 2008 yesterday and it made my fingers play with the latest bits and I wanted to exercise my hands on something that I could play with and at the same time learn the cool new features of the latest VS2008. With 'Play' being the keyword I have decided that the best application I could work with(and play at the same time) is this demo program from Vertigo.

Man, they did a great job on this app. The solution is in Visual Studio .NET 2003 (.NET 1.1) but can easily be ported to .NET 2.0 or .NET 3.5(which is what i'm trying right now). Here's some bits about the application taken from Vertigo's website:

In 1997, the computer gaming company id Software released a watershed first-person shooter game called QUAKE II, which went on to sell over one million copies and earn industry accolades as Game of the Year. Later, in December 2001, id Software generously made the QUAKE II 3-D engine available to the public under the GNU General Public License ("GPL").

Now, in July 2003, Vertigo Software, Inc. is releasing Quake II .NET, a port of the C-language based engine to Visual C++ with a .NET managed heads-up display. We did this to illustrate a point: one can easily port a large amount of C code to C++, and then run the whole application as a managed .NET application using the Microsoft Common Language Runtime (CLR) without noticeable performance delays. Once running as a .NET managed application, adding new features is easy and fun.

Quake II .NET Features:

•  Demonstrates how to port C to native and managed C++
•  Shows how to extend Quake II using .NET
•  Whitepaper with tips on porting to native and managed C++

I haven't program in C++ in years but it think this is going to be a great refresher for my rusty C skills. I wonder if Scott Stansfield and his minions are brewing up something like this for .NET 3.5 and XNA? Hmmm... I have to wait and see but in the mean time if you guys are interested you can download this great application from Vertigo's website(complete with source code, demo tips and a developer white paper) here.

Hey Jeff! Maybe you can give me tips on how to beat the bad guys on level 4.