Technical tips, tricks, and news about game development for Microsoft platforms including desktop, Xbox, and UWP
Since the deprecation of the original DirectX SDK back in ~2011, I’ve been developing and maintaining a number of Open Source projects to fill the gaps left behind when the core DirectX components moved to the Windows SDK. A lot of this was to replace legacy D3DX which had great utility but was effectively abandoned, never to be serviced again. It was also an attempt to modernize the utilities for…
Visual Studio 2026 Update 6 is now available. This update includes several improvements and bug fixes for the Visual C++ compiler and tools known as the MSVC Build Tools 14.51 release including a matching STL release. For a summary of changes for 18.1 to 18.6, see the Visual C++ Team Blog.
Visual Studio 2026 (a.k.a. 18.0) released late last year, so I’ve been meaning to make a post about it. The Visual C++ team has moved to a new release cadence and lifecycle, which is the first thing to read up on. The VS 2026 Redistribution packages are also available (x86, x64, arm64), as well as the Remote Debugging Tools (x86, x64, arm64). For more information see the Visual Studio team blog,…
Over the past few years, I’ve been working more with the vcpkg Package Manager, including support for all my GitHub projects, development of xbox community triplets, and adopting VCPKG for a number of game develompent workflows. In doing so, I’ve found the “vcpkg manifest mode” feature greatly simplifies integration for projects. I have therefore released a number of new Visual Studio Project…
Visual Studio 2022 Update 14 (a.k.a. 17.14) is now available for download, including the updated Community edition. For more information, see the Visual Studio Team blog, Visual C++ Team Blog, and the release notes.
I’ve completed my first releases of 2025 for my various GitHub projects, and there are some changes I felt were worth highlighting. This includes updates to DirectX Tool Kit for both DX11 and DX12, DirectXTex, DirectXMesh, UVAtlas, and DirectXMath as well as a number of changes to my NuGet packages in particular.
Visual Studio 2022 Update 13 (a.k.a. 17.13) is now available for download, including the updated Community edition. For more information, see the Visual Studio Team blog, Visual C++ Team Blog, and the release notes.
Visual Studio 2022 Update 12 (a.k.a. 17.12) is now available for download, including the updated Community edition. For more information, see the Visual Studio Team blog, Visual C++ Team Blog, and the release notes.
Windows 11 “2024 Update” (Version 24H2, Build 26100) was widely released this month. The Windows SDK for Windows 11, Version 24H2 (10.0.26100) is available for download, and is offered as an optional component in Visual Studio 2022.
Visual Studio 2022 Update 11 (a.k.a. 17.11) is now available for download, including the updated Community edition. For more information, see the Visual Studio Team blog, Visual C++ Team Blog, and the release notes.