That’s why I decided to create a very simple Currency Exchange Rates API. This API allows you to either get the conversion rate from US Dollar to your desired currency or can directly convert an entered value. The output is plain text, without HTML or XML attributes for easy access from all sources.

How does it work?

Just call the URL of the API with your desired exchange rate as parameter, e.g.

for Euro. This will return the exchange rate from USD to EUR:

Which currencies are supported?

All in all, 126 different currencies are supported. See a list of all supported currencies on the index page.

Are the values up-to-date?

The API updates itself once an hour, so the values you’re getting may be up to 1h old. This should be good enough since these values are for information purposes only.

How can I use the API on my website?

This example shows how to use the API to display 100$ in € (please replace the & stuff in the URL with a normal &, can’t display it correctly here):

How does the calculator work?

The calculator works almost the same way as the API itself. Call calculator.php with three parameters: original, target and value. original and target are ISO codes of the currency, and value is the amount of orignal currency to convert. The output is the corresponding amout of target currency.

How accurate are the values?

The acuracy of the exchange rates can’t be guaranteed. All values are for informational purposes only. See the footer of the index page for more information.

Mirrors (most recent list):

• http://www.multimolti.com/apps/currencyapi/index.php
• http://www.lennart-moltrecht.com/apps/currencyapi/
• http://tp1.com.ar/currency/
• http://www.sann-gmbh.com/currencyapi/
• http://static.hattrick-youthclub.org/currency/
• http://financy.dbeuchert.com/

Please use multimolti.com or sann-gmbh.com since they’re the most stable ones!

Websites using the Currency Exchange Rates API:

• http://momento24.com/en/, “Currency” tab in the sidebar.
• More will hopefully follow soon!

If there are any questions about the API, bug reports or feature requests, please feel free to comment!

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Major changes:

• Mouse sensitivity can now be changed ingame
• Game Launcher added, checks whether XNA Framework 3.0 and .NET Framework 2.0 are installed before launching the game
• Optimized game file package
• Music file not needed to play the game, if missing, the game will just launch without music
• Source code optimized in many parts

Download Airship Assault 1.1!

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1. Airship Assault – First game using MultiInput-technology
2. MultiInput class – multiple mice in your XNA game!
3. How to decompile/reverse engineer/disassemble any XNA Game!

Download MultiInput.dll Version 0.1

I also created a game demonstrating how to use this class and what multiple mice can be used for. I think there are many games that could make use of more than one mouse to enable a cool multiplayer mode. Currently the game is in Alpha stage and doesn’t have many features. It supports up to 6 players (if that many mice are plugged in) who have to stop zeppelins from reaching the other side of the screen by shooting them down. Although there isn’t much to do except shooting the zeppelins, it’s quite funny already.

UPDATE: NEW VERSION AVAILABLE: Download Airship Assault here!

Download MultiInput Sample Game Alpha Version 0.1

Download and install the necessary XNA Framework 3.0 here

Each crosshair can be controlled by one mouse/player. The number in brackets on the bottom is the amout of shots you’ve left in your magazine. Leftclick to shoot, rightclick to reload. When a zeppelin reaches the other side, you will lose a life.

I tested the game only with USB mice, they’re working fine, but it should also work with PS2 mice. If you encounter any errors, please tell me!

Using MultiInput.dll

The usage of this class is really easy. Copy the DLL file to your project’s folder and set a reference to the DLL and a reference to the “System.Windows.Forms” namespace (don’t forget this!). Load the dll using

Inside your Game class, you can use the code like this:

class Game1
    {
        MultiInputController inputController;
        Color[] mousecolors = new Color[] { Color.Red, Color.Blue,
Color.Green, Color.Yellow, Color.White, Color.Pink };

        public Game1()
        {
            inputController = new MultiInputController(this.Window.Handle);
        }

        public override void UnloadContent()
        {
            // YOU MUST!!! USE THIS LINE, otherwise your game won't exit
            inputController.Dispose();

            content.Unload();
        }

        public override void Update(GameTime gameTime)
        {
                foreach(RawMouse rawmouse in inputController.Mice)
                {
                        // do whatever you like here
                }

            base.Update(gameTime);
        }

        public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)
        {
                spriteBatch.Begin();

            // Draw each cursor
            for (int i = 0; i < inputController.MiceCount; i++)
            {
                RawMouse mouse = inputController.Mice[i];
                spriteBatch.Draw(cursor,
new Vector2((float)(mouse.X - cursor.Width/2),
(float)(mouse.Y - cursor.Height/2)), mousecolors[i]);
            }

            spriteBatch.End();
        }

    }

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1. Airship Assault – First game using MultiInput-technology
2. New version (1.1) of Airship Assault released!
3. How to decompile/reverse engineer/disassemble any XNA Game!

Download WortopiaBot 1.0 Perfect Edition

Download WortopiaBot 1.0 Perfect Edition source code

There are 2 versions of this bot, one is called “Perfect Edition” because it always reaches 100% if the program can access the right database. Before I found out that the original Wortopia database is available under open-source license, I used other databases that reached only around 80%. Thus I also created a “Learning Edition” that checks the words from last round and adds them to the database, in addition to the removal of wrong words. If the Learning Edition plays enough games, it should optimize its database  to the same accuracy of the Perfect Edition.

The Learning Edition will be available for download from SourceForge soon.

I won’t give an detailed description of how the program works, if you’re interested, have a look at the source code. I think it is quite self-explaining, but if there are still questions, feel free to comment!

There is also an auto-starter tool that checks when a new round starts and launches WortopiaBot then. This is really useful if you use the Learning Edition and want to optimize the database as much as possible. You will find more about it in the readme file.

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The application features complete profile integration with boxes, tabs and feed stories and fully supports the Facebook user interface with invitations, notifications and so on. Thus it feels as if it were part of Facebook and not an external application.

Go to the FriendMap Facebook Application

The application is based on PHP and JavaScript. When a user creates a FriendMap, the addresses of all friends are send to the Geohash Geocoding Service in order to aquire the geographical location. When the user wants to view the map, a custom map is created using the Google Maps API and fed with the location aquired earlier. This process uses Ajax, so the user experiences a very smooth process of creation.

The Geocoding process usually needs one second, so the first creation of a FriendMap takes depending on the amount of your friends up to five minutes. Friends who didn’t enter an address into their Facebook profile or whose city can’t be found are marked and can be shown and notified in the “Notify missing friends” tab.

Friends who live in the same city are grouped together so that the map won’t be too chaotic.

There is also a function to see the FriendMap of your friends who also installed this application.

The user can also integrate the FriendMap into his profile either as a box or a special tab. In the profile tabs and boxes, no dynamic code (using JavaScript) is allowed, so the Google Maps API can’t be used. Therefore the application creates a custom JPG image showing a non-interactive map. This map can also be embedded in forum posts, etc.

I hope you like this application and install it to your Facebook account. Please give me feedback!

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Download the Pizzaprofi application here!

Download the Pizzaprofi source code here!

This was the task:

Task 1: Pizzavision
Many people visiting a pizza restaurant enjoy to choose the ingredients of their pizza. It would be nice to see a preview of the created pizza on a computer screen. Every guest should be able to choose from 12 given ingredients. Always after adding or removing something, the image of the pizza should be regenerated.
The pizza images should avoid ordering mistakes, be a pleasure for the guest and encourage him to add more ingredients.

1. Realize such a system
2. Document the ordering procedure with the shown pizza images.

I created an application that has got an ingredients list on the right side and shows you a randomly generated image on the left. All the algorithms are based on an initial number that can be set in the bottom left hand corner. Thus you can regenerate every image exactly the way it was if you remember the number.

The application can also save the generated image and shows you the price of your current pizza configuration. It’s all in German since the competition is a German one.

You can find the complete documentation and explanation here.

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Warning: You may violate copyright laws in your country if you try to obtain property (in this case source code) that you don’t own! Check your legal situation before following this tutorial! I won’t be responsible for any criminal offence done with the information provided!

Step-by-step tutorial to disassemble the game

Things you need

• An XNA-based game
• .NET Reflector
• Visual Studio 2005/2008
• XNA Game Studio 1.0/2.0/3.0

Decompiling the binary file

First of all, you need a really great tool called .NET Reflector. You can download it from the official website or from my server. The .NET Reflector can look inside .NET binaries (.exe and .dll files) and disassemble the code to any of these programming languages: IL, C#, Visual Basic, Delphi, MC++ and Chrome.

Once you start .NET Reflector, it should look something like the image above. As you can see, on the left is a list of all Assemblies found on your computer, and on the right the code of the selected one. If you don’t see the yellow part on the right, just go into any Namespace and class and double-click on a function.
Here you can already play around with it and look into the .NET Framework source, maybe you find some interesting parts of code

Back to decompiling your game… I assume you have a complete game on your hard disk (the binary file and a content folder with all the game data inside).
For this tutorial, I’ll use Mircosoft’s PickingSample, I think I don’t violate any copyright laws doing it since it’s open source anyway. If I do, please tell me!
In .NET Reflector, select Open File, navigate to your game’s .exe file and double-click it. The application should immediately show the Assembly in the Assembly list. If you just want to have a look at the code, click at the Assembly and select the class/method you want, the Reflector will show the code on the right.
But we want to have the whole game’s code as a Visual Studio project. Rightclick on the Assembly (in this case “PickingSample”, click on “Export…” and enter the path where you want to project to be stored.

If you see a Window popping up like the one below, tell Reflector to load your XNA Framework binary files (click on the three dots on the right, then navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\References\Windows\x86 and select the required file, in this case Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.dll).

Creating a Visual Studio project

When the export is done, navigate to the directory where you exported the game to and open the project file .csproj (here PickingSample.csproj).

Probably, your Visual Studio will ask you to convert the outdated project file, allow to do it and there you are! Now we have the whole source code in a Visual Studio project and can work on it, make changes and recompile it!

The first compilation of the disassembled code

Press F5 to try to compile the project. The game will crash immediately after startup when trying to load models, sprites, sounds etc. because it can’t find your data files.

All the data files required are within the original game you want to decompile, but converted to the XNB file format. Currently, there is no way to reverse-engineer these files, so we will just let them be as they are. Copy your original game’s content folder into your new project’s \bin\Debug folder and compile the project again. Now it should work!

Missing things in the project

In your new project, all the comments of the original code will be gone, the structure may be different and settings and resource files may cause some problems. But all in all, you have the source code of the original game!

Additional steps

If you still want to get more, like the Windows Explorer icon of the game, use a free tool like IrfanView, drag the .exe file into it, save the icon as PNG and import it into your project.

Trouble-shooting

I copied the content folder into my new project, but the game still crashes when loading the media files!

Look properly at the error message you get. Is it similar to this one?

Error loading “Content\Fonts\Menu”. Cannot find ContentTypeReader Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ListReader`1[[Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle, Microsoft.Xna.Framework, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=6d5c3888ef60e27d]].

In this case, the game was compiled using XNA Game Studio 2.0 and thus the Content Pipeline 2.0, but I was running Visual Studio 2008 with Game Studio 3.0. The new Game Studio seems to have problems using older files, so the only thing you can do is installing Visual Studio 2005 and Game Studio 2.0 again. The same thing for Game Studio 1.0

If you encounter any problems following this tutorial, please comment so I can search for solutions and make this tutorial more complete!

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1. MultiInput class – multiple mice in your XNA game!
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3. New version (1.1) of Airship Assault released!

It analyzes every change that’s made to any of your hard disk drives. All partitions are shown as tabs, and every tab shows the time, the file path and the operation done on the particular file.
Even if you don’t want to find out what an application is doing, you can just try it to see how many file operations are done by system processes you’ve never heard of. Just give it a try!

Drivewatcher 1.0 Download

Please comment if you like it or wish more features!

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