Commercial (3D) game development is hard -- really hard.  As someone on my team said, the time to a first playable level is a momentous occasion in any game development cycle.  The trick here is to get to the first playable level as quickly as possible and then get the project fully funded – few games ever make it past this stage. If a game studio is fortunate to make it past this stage, additional features are added, refined, and stabilized (hopefully) until the game ships.  As with any commercial venture, market reach is critical -- the availability of a commercial game on multiple platforms is only a good thing.

With the XNA Framework, lowering costs and time to market is a key problem that we are trying to solve. Two goals on solving this problem are:

• Cross-platform development of games across Windows and Xbox 360
• Increase game developer productivity -- We want game developers to focus on game play mechanics not hardware mechanics

We feel that the first step to addressing both those problems is by enabling the CLR on the Xbox 360 and bringing a game framework that is API compatible across Xbox 360 and Windows.

So what does that really mean?

For one, Tom Miller is no longer an Army of One.  He has a whole team (dev, test, PM) now supporting his lifelong goal of enabling game development using managed code J

Second, we are folding MDX2 into the XNA Framework.  MDX2 is going to be a critical component for what will be our graphics layer.  We equate the graphics layer as our hardware layer.  Today, MDX2 is Windows only and it is built on top of D3D9, D3DX, etc.

Any developer that has written games for both Xbox and Windows knows that there are quite a few differences between the API’s.  While we definitely won’t be able to get a 100% API compatibility between the two platforms, we are trying our best to reduce the number of API compatibility issues.

As a result of us trying to reduce the compatibility issues between the platforms we have API’s that fall into the following categories:

1) API’s that are replaced with newer cross-platform counterparts

DirectSound gets replaced with XACT and DirectInput gets replaced with XInput. 

At this point some of the questions you may be thinking:

·         What if I need lower-level audio API support?

·         What if I want to build by own audio engine?

·         What happens to mouse and keyboard support on Windows?

·         How will I support alternative input devices that aren’t exposed by XInput today?

 One way to support those scenarios in managed code would be to use MDX 1.1.  We plan on supporting MDX 1.1 for quite a while, especially since customers have shipped applications using MDX 1.1. 

Looking to the future, we (an entire team and not just Tom J) are actively thinking on how we might solve these scenarios.  More importantly, we want to hear from you our customer on what type of gaming scenarios you would like to see enabled cross-platform or even platform specific.  Of course, we can’t guarantee we’ll be able to hit every scenario in our first release of the XNA Framework but we’d like to do our best to minimize any disruption and ensure that communication is two-way.

2) API’s that are eliminated because no cross-platform counterpart exists

DxDiag gets cut.  There is no real equivalent on Xbox 360 today.  MDX1.1 will continue to support a managed wrapper for DxDiag.  Do you have any concerns here?  If so, let us know.

3) API’s that are “evolved” into various other XNA Framework API’s

D3DX.  Ah what happens to D3DX?  This is a toughie.  D3DX contains useful functionality that in a strict .NET namespace way is all over the place.  To complicate matters further, a lot of functionality on D3DX doesn’t exist on the Xbox 360 today.  Our crack team of developers, testers and program managers have some idea on how some of this functionality needs to evolve but frankly there are a lot of customer scenarios that we probably don’t know about.  This is one place where we definitely need lots of customer feedback. 

Overall, the XNA team is super excited on what we are planning on delivering via the XNA Framework.  We want to reinforce that the commitments Microsoft is making to managed game programming with the XNA Framework will go far beyond the original scope of what Managed DirectX was meant to address, and we strongly believe that this will be a very positive move for the game industry as a whole.

Finally, some of you may be thinking,

“I write REAL apps.  I don’t write silly games.  In fact, my software has saved entire countries in Europe as well as head of states.  How does the XNA Framework help me and what is Microsoft going to do to support my apps going forward?”

We’d like to hear from customers using MDX that aren’t building games.  This is another area that Microsoft as a whole is actively trying to solve. 

If your attending GDC 2006 stop by the Microsoft booth (#416) on the show floor and come meet us!. We’ll have kiosks to demo some games running on Windows and an Xbox 360 development kit.  You can also learn about XNA Build as well.

If you have comments, concerns or questions that you may be uncomfortable airing on a public forum, please email us at xna@microsoft.com.

Please check out my team member's blogs for more information about the XNA Framework, XNA Build and XNA Studio.

Michael Klucher http://blogs.msdn.com/mklucher/

Tom Miller http://blogs.msdn.com/tmiller/

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 16:00:00 GMT

Snow Conditions
Snoqualmie Conditions
Mt. Baker Conditions

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 14:31:00 GMT

---

Tom Miller's Blog

Oh yeah, I should have posted this before

Much like Shawn mentioned recently, I too got a twitter account after all this time.  Although I guess I can say that I *still* do not have a cell phone in 2010, so I guess I’m a bit of a luddite myself.

You can follow me @Mill3rman and welcome both of us to the future..

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:26:08 GMT

XNA Game Studio 3.1 Zune HD Extensions

If you were already developing games for your Zune using XNA Game Studio, you’ll be happy to know that moving that game over to the new Zune HD will be remarkably easy.  Today we’ve released the XNA Game Studio 3.1 Zune HD Extensions that will allow you to deploy to your new device and includes a few new API’s as well.

There is also a thread on the XNA Creators Club forums for any questions or discussions.

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:31:36 GMT

2009 Dream.Build.Play winners announced

At PAX this year, we announced the winners of the 2009 Dream.Build.Play contest with Dust: An Elysian Tail taking home the grand prize.

Big congratulations go out to all of the entries, and to the winners, keep up the amazing work. 

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:57:05 GMT

Dream Build Play 2009 finalists…

Once again, the Dream-Build-Play 2009 competition has provided a ton of great games.  The finalist this years have been announced here, and the winner will be picked at PAX in just a few short days.

The talent and ability the people making these games and the quality of the entries we get never ceases to amaze me.

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:00:26 GMT

My blog is a constant source of new and exciting information…

It’s been over a year since my last post, and despite my many promises to myself (and anyone who still reads this thing), I never seem to find time to post here.  Well, other than right now, since I obviously am doing it now.

A lot has happened since my last post.  We shipped Game Studio 3.0 and opened up the Indie Games on Xbox Live, although it was so long ago, it wasn’t even *called* Indie Games back then, it was called Community Games.  I’m sure everyone has heard about it by now, and I still think it’s awesome that you can sell games you’ve created.  Then again, we also shipped a completely new version since then as well in Game Studio 3.1!  Wow, I really am behind aren’t I?  We added cool new stuff like Avatar support in that version.

I even completely forgot about my annual Aprils Fools post!  Of course, I didn’t really come up with a cool topic for that anyway.  I’d make up something outlandish now, but that wouldn’t be nearly as effective since it’s September.

Speaking of Indie Games though, I think I’ve finally decided the game I’m going to write to ship there.  Of course, my idea is way too ambitious for my artistic talent (read; zero), and I have no idea where I’m going to find the time to actually write it, but no matter.  I will finish it and ship it and suffer the ridicule of the masses!

Maybe that will even give me the impetus for writing more here.  We can hope…  If not, lets hope I’ll remember to write something sooner than the next two versions of Game Studio.

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:33:13 GMT

---

Michael Klucher's XNA Blog

No item elements found in rss feed.

---

MSDN Forums: XNA Framework

No item elements found in rss feed.

---

XNA and Xbox 360

Microsoft shows off XNA games running on Windows Phone, full 3D is ...
would be cool if you could load xbox live points on your wm7 phone, and when you use them it syncs with your 360... :) as well have your windows 7 pc work back and forth with your wm7 phone. im sure this will be taken care of one way or ...


Microsoft demonstrates continuous XNA gaming on a PC, Windows ...
Back Up And Copy Xbox 360 Games With Ease! Game Copy Wizard Makes It Simple Want to copy and back up your Xbox 360 games? Find out the easy way. Read more on OfficialWire. Microsoft demonstrates continuous XNA gaming on a PC, ...


Microsoft's XNA Comes To Windows Phones [XNA Game Studio 4.0 Gets ...
XNA is Microsoft's set of freeware tools for developing games on both the Xbox 360 and PC. It was aimed at amateur and independent developers, orginially. However, with the release of XNA Game Studio 3.1 they added more features for ...


Microsoft bringing XNA Game Studio 4.0 to GDC this week, does 3D ...
Microsoft is unveiling its new XNA Game Studio 4.0, which lets developers work on games for Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox 360 and Windows PC. The integration with Visual Studio 2010 that we saw the other day allows developers to build a ...


Microsoft adds XNA Game Studio 4.0 to its Windows Phone 7 arsenal ...
The current version of the XNA Game Studio suite (3.1) allows developers to build games that can run on Windows PCs, Xbox 360 and Zune media player devices. Version 4.0 is going to support Windows PCs, Xbox 360 consoles and WIndows ...


XNA Game Studio 4.0 includes Windows Phone support| Hot News Xbox ...
The company just unveiled XNA Game Studio 4.0, which, in addition to supporting PC and Xbox 360, will also let designers make games for the new mobile platform. Besides being great news for indies, it also means that you'll be able to ...


XNA Game Studio 4 to bring unified game development to WP7, Xbox ...
Michael Klutcher, Lead Program Manger for the XNA Development Platform, revealed XNA Game Studio 4 in a blog post prior to GDC today. XNA Game Studio 4.0 allows for game development on Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox 360, and Windows PC. ...


Microsoft Extends XNA Game Studio to Mobile Phones « Legalize ...
How easy is it to port a game from Xbox 360, Windows or Zune to Windows Phone 7 Series? XNA Game Studio 4.0 makes it possible for developers to update games built on previous versions of XNA Game Studio to work on Windows Phone 7 Series ...


XNA Game Studio 4 News (GDC 2010) - Greg's Cool [Insert Clever ...
“This week at GDC, we're unveiling XNA Game Studio 4.0! This latest version provides a powerful, productive, and portable technology for game development on Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox 360, and Windows PC. New to XNA Game Studio 4.0 ...


Buzzing News » Blog Archive » GDC: Microsoft Announces XNA Game ...
GDC: Microsoft Announces XNA Game Studio 4.0. Gamasutra ... development package, which includes support for its new Windows Phone 7 Series, as well as enhancing features for Xbox 360 and PC game development. ...

---

XNA Comments

Microsoft shows off XNA games running on Windows Phone, full 3D is ...
Sorry, you must login or register to leave a comment! If you have any questions, please refer to our FAQ. Microsoft bringing XNA Game Studio 4.0 to GDC this week, does 3D gaming for Windows Phone. Mar 9th 2010 1:31PM ...


Microsoft bringing XNA Game Studio 4.0 to GDC this week, does 3D ...
Microsoft is unveiling its new XNA Game Studio 4.0, which lets developers work on games for Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox 360 and Windows PC. The integration with Visual Studio 2010 that we saw the other day allows developers to build a single project and ... Comments are currently turned off. You can enable them by clicking "on" above. xxhonkeyxx Posted Mar 9th 2010 1:35PM. Highest Ranked. yes! excellent news. with the combined efforts of the Zune, WP7S and xbox gaming, ...


electric beach » Michael Klucher on XNA Game Studio for Windows Phone
Michael Klucher on XNA Game Studio for Windows Phone. Michael Klucher just posted about XNA Game Studio 4.0 for Windows Phone. It has its first outing at GDC in San Francisco this week. For more on Windows Phone 7, here are a number of people from the Windows Phone 7 Series Dev Team on Twitter: (@ckindel) (@shawnhargreaves) (@ozymandias) (@ai) (@lokeuei) (@mklucher) and (@cschormann) ... Leave a comment. You must be logged in to post a comment. ...


XNA Game Studio 4.0 includes Windows Phone support -- Joystiq
The company just unveiled XNA Game Studio 4.0, which, in addition to supporting PC and Xbox 360, will also let designers make games for the new mobile platform. Besides being great news for indies, it also means that you'll be able to use your gamertag and .... To leave another comment, just use that password. To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. ...


XNA Game Studio 4.0! « Sgt. Conker
... to be available to Xbox LIVE partners only (did anyone actually expect it to be open to everyone?) The dead born Zune and Zune HD support will stay in XNA GS 3.1 (R.I.P.); The buffered audio support is said to have been requested by lots of users; I wonder if that means runtime writable buffers… About Captain boki. Not quite "absolutely fine" yet. Tagged as: News, XNA Leave a comment. Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post ). No comments yet. ...


XNA Game Studio 4.0 Announced at Microsoft Student Partners at UTS
However developing for HiDef lets you take advantage of functionality present on the system, that might not be on other platforms. Alongside those huge features, they have made many graphics improvements, and split Microsoft.Xna. ...


Win Phone 7 Games Include Achievements, Avatars, Gamertags - Game ...
"The other key component of XNA Game Studio 4.0 that we've enabled exclusively for Xbox partners is Xbox LIVE and a premium gaming experience on Windows Phone 7 Series,' he writes. "Through the Gamer Services API's you can pull in ... Loading comments ... -/|\. Earlier discussions Paging in progress... | Other discussions | Show all discussions | Show featured discussions only | Expand all replies Collapse all replies. Start a new discussion. In order to view comments on ...


XNA Game Studio 4 News (GDC 2010) - Greg's Cool [Insert Clever ...
Development for the Zune and Zune HD will continue to exist in XNA Game Studio 3.1, however, in XNA Game Studio 4.0, we're encouraging you to migrate your games over to the Windows Phone 7 Series platform. [GD: Emphasis added]…” Poor Zune… Pisses me off a little. I hate seeing the power of my Zune pretty much wasted and locked away. Now if WinPhone7 devices come out and are even better than my Zune HD (more storage, a great phone, ... Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) ...


Technology Blog » Microsoft shows off XNA games running on Windows ...
Uncategorized | Wednesday March 10 2010 1:50 am | Comments (0) Tags: engadget, engadget-apps, engadget-awards, enorgasm, hands-on, japanese, mar-9th-2010-907pm, mar-9th-2010-908pm, mobile, podcasts, report, spanish, submit, view-replies, windows-phone-7-series ... See, Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0, but wouldn't let us nab a single photo or video of the process. ...


Microsoft's XNA Comes To Windows Phones [XNA Game Studio 4.0 Gets ...
Please note that all comments made are moderated by humans, not machines, so will not appear immediately and that comments made purely for self-promotional purposes will be rejected. When entering your name please do not enter your ...

---

XNA & Managed DirectX

Microsoft XNA Unleashed: Graphics and Game Programming for Xbox ...
He has been creating DirectX applications since 1996 and has developed games using Managed DirectX. Chad created a 3D locomotive simulator for Norfolk Southern that is used to teach children to obey railroad crossings signals. ...


jultima online - RunUO - Ultima Online Emulation
The first approach (2 years ago) wos in c# using the SlimDX library (because Managed DirectX was deprecated). I had never coded a game before and the first approach was a disaster. After some time I made a second approach using OpenTK ( switched to ubuntu). ... Furthermore I had a lot of documentation (Palanthir, Iris2D and finally XNA UO) and without this help i would have never been able to come this far. I used parts of code from all of them (rewritten in java) ...


Amateur Managed DirectX question (pixel shaders) - GameDev.Net ...
Hi folks, amateur question here regarding managed directX usage: I've got an EXTREMELY basic application wherein I am always drawing to the same screen coordinates...specifically, I have two triangles arranged into a square on which I am mapping a texture. Therefore, I am using transformed vertices and just hard-coding the coordinates to make life easy so that I don't have to set-up a ... Matt Pettineo | DirectX/XNA MVP Ride into The Danger Zone � PIX With XNA Tutorial ...


Using Managed DirectX - C# Tutorials | Dream.In.Code
Using Managed DirectX: First managed DirectX program. ... Using Managed DirectX First managed DirectX program ... I have noticed that some people or not fortunate enough to be able to use XNA to write games and others want to write games for less capable machines. To try and solve this problem I want to write tutorials on how to write games using Managed DirectX in C#. I am working on a starter kit to help getting started writing games using Managed DirextX. ...


Rendering text to an image texture - GameDev.Net Discussion Forums
So I'm using managed direct x *puke* and I'm trying to load an image to use as a background and render some text over the top. The idea is that this will be a single texture which is then applied to the back of a mesh. So far I am able to render text to a texture and apply that to the back of a mesh, which is all good. See the code below: m_textTexture = new Texture(device, m_imageToLoad ... Matt Pettineo | DirectX/XNA MVP Ride into The Danger Zone � PIX With XNA Tutorial ...


Reality Check Time for Cross-Platform Gaming Demo - SuperSite Blog
XNA is really a managed .NET wrapper over DirectX, which is (effectively) the native API for XBOX and PC. Microsoft is emphasizing productivity and cost of development here - which is the right thing to do. As the number of platforms ...


Texture rendering colors look a little "off" - GameDev.Net ...
Managed); Surface texSurface = backgroundTexture.GetSurfaceLevel(0); SurfaceDescription description = backgroundTexture.GetLevelDescription(0); // Note: "PixelColor" is a struct containing 4 bytes (a,r,g,b): PixelColor[] textureData = ( PixelColor[])texSurface.LockRectangle(typeof(PixelColor), LockFlags.None, description.Width * description.Height); int CurrentTexturePosition = 0; .... Matt Pettineo | DirectX/XNA MVP Ride into The Danger Zone � PIX With XNA Tutorial ...


Xna Game Studio 4.0 annoncé aujourd'hui à la GDC - Graphic Stream
Les deux familles de développeurs distincts sur le Xna Game studio n'auront pas accès aux mêmes possibilités sur le Live Market Place : Les développeurs "managés" ("managed developpers") pourront intégrer des fonctionnalités Xbox Live ...


About XNA（转载）_Wind2010_百度空间
Managed DirectX出到1.1之后就走到了它的终点，原本准备出2.0，后来就没有了消息，后来微软宣布放弃Managed DirectX，取而代之的就是XNA。可以认为XNA是Managed DirectX2.0，也可以认为不是，随你便。认为是是因为微软把开发Managed DirectX2.0的精力全都 ...


Windows Phone 7 Series et Xna - Graphic Stream
Jusqu'à présent les développeurs Xna étaient vu comme des amateurs de développement de jeux, des gens qui n'étaient pas pris au sérieux et qui utilisaient des technologies dont personne n'avait entendu parler. ...

---

XNA & Torque Game Engine

XNA游戏引擎Torque X_MAN IN THE MIRROR_百度空间
garagegames公司推出基于XNA的游戏引擎TorqueX,Torque X是一个利用XNA技术开发的全新引擎.它使用C#开发并整合了许多Torque的特性. 相关引擎中,还有TorqueX 2D, 用于开发XNA 2D游戏的一款引擎. 介绍下这款3D引擎包含的功能: 1.世界编辑器 ...


Maxonne.blogspot.com - creating games & fun application is our ...
Gonna start on using Torque this Mon. in the mean time, gotta finish the XNA slide and demos for this Sun's MAX gathering. quite a short entry this time, although it's been almost a week without entry. really sorry for that, ...


GarageGames Showcases Torque Game Engine for the XNA Platform
Torque X is the next-generation of GarageGames' Torque technology ported over to C# to run on the XNA platform. Torque X is a full-featured 2D and 3D game engine which will support the intuitive editors being used in Torque Game Builder ...


Simple Googly: Unity3D vs. Torque
Both of them can make games for Windows, Linux, Mac, Wii, iPhone etc (but notably only Unity3D supports browser based games) some of the earlier version of torque couldn't but now they do and even Torque X has to make do with XNA still ...


Drawing multiple sprites in XNA « Indie XNA
If you are starting out in XNA like me I really recommend this. It is a much better way of learning. Starting off with a game engine was hiding a lot away from me. Like drawing sprites onto the screen. Torque X handles drawing and ...


Torque X en XNA - XNA CoderNet
En conclusión para mi, de la herramienta Torque X que podemos descargar de forma gratuita si estamos subscritos al Creators Club, y la versión de prueba si no lo estamos, es una herramienta que nos permitirá realizar juegos 2D para XNA ...


XNA Creators Club Online - garagegames torque x for game studio ...
GarageGames has already migrated key portions of their 2D and 3D game development technologies to the XNA platform, making it easier to design and build a full-featured game in managed C# using the XNA Framework. Torque X 3.0 is free ...


Satori » Game Engines at GDC 2010
At GDC 2010 you can expect to see many demos in the Torque booth. They'll be showing off the full capabilities of Torque 3D, previews of Torque 2D, examples of iPhone games that have shipped with iTorque, and of course InstantAction.com ...


Torque X 3D getting started- Game Wikipedia
The Torque X versions of our engines are built on top of Microsoft's XNA initiative, which utilizes C# for scriptping. Our Torque 2D and Torque 3D engines use a proprietary C-like language, and also have more drag 'n' drop type features ...


XNA Team Blog : Torque X Now Available for XNA Creators Club Members!
Earlier this year at GDC we announced a series of partnerships with several companies that will provide premium benefits to our 4 month and annual members of the XNA Creators Club. Today we are pleased to announce that Torque X and ...

---

XNA & Indie Game Developer

Microsoft bringing XNA Game Studio 4.0 to GDC this week, does 3D ...
There are plenty of good games made with XNA published in an array of places such as Acrade and Indie games; two examples: The Dishwasher, Shooter1Up. What makes you think XNA is insufficient for making games when 5 years worth of XNA ...


Microsoft shows off XNA games running on Windows Phone, full 3D is ...
See, Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0, but wouldn't let us nab a single photo or video of the process. What we can tell you is that ...


Microsoft's XNA Comes To Windows Phones [XNA Game Studio 4.0 Gets …
Microsoft's XMA Game Studio 4.0 will have support for Windows Phone 7 Series. Soon, developers can produce indie mobile phone games for the WP7 smartphones. See the original post here: Microsoft's XNA Comes To Windows Phones [XNA Game ...


XNA Game Studio 4.0 includes Windows Phone support | Gaming News ...
The company just unveiled XNA Game Studio 4.0, which, in addition to supporting PC and Xbox 360, will also let designers make games for the new mobile platform. Besides being great news for indies, it also means that you'll be able to ...


Perplex Beats - Music / Puzzler (Indie Game) - XNA Community Forums
So normally first time players start by just matching the symbols, so they can get use to the game while having fun. Once they get use to how the game plays they then start matching the correct symbol and colour ^_^ ...


XNA Team Blog : Creators Club Communiqué 44
Spring is knocking on our door and it would seem this is making all Xbox LIVE Indie Game Creators more productive than ever. As of March 10, 2010 the Xbox LIVE Indie Games catalog boasts 819 games! Now on to some learning! XNA/DirectX ...


XNA Game Parodies Ico Cover Art // Siliconera
XNA Game Parodies Ico Cover Art. By Spencer . February 19, 2010 . 12:05am. image Yaruhara no Omochi has nothing to do with a horned boy guiding a girl out of a castle. The digital cover art for the Xbox 360 indie game just looks similar ...


Game development | XNA game | Map editor | game programming india ...
atun has developed the “The Legend of Vraz”, a 2D action packed adventure arcade game for Windows PC. The legend of Vraz is the first 2D arcade game in India created with Microsoft XNA Game studio. It is also one of the earliest ...


Counting Down to Seven: Exploring XNA — Global Nerdy
... A catalog of games created by members of the XNA game developer community. You can try out their games, submit games and vote for games to be included in the Xbox Indie Games catalog, whose games can be purchased through Xbox Live. ...


» The Types Of Games That Might Earn You Xbox Achievements … On ...
Today, Microsoft is talking about how the next version of its game development platform, XNA Game Studio 4.0, will support development across the Xbox 360, PC and Windows Phone 7 platform. what you get out of that, as we saw this weekend, ... ran in impressive, slick 3D and was put together in about three weeks on XNA 4.0 (it was slick, but I was only shown about 12 inches of level, so I don't know how big it was). the latter was made by Gravity Bear, an indie studio. ...

---

XNA Game Studio Professional

Microsoft Extends XNA Game Studio to Mobile Phones « Legalize ...
XNA Game Studio 4.0 is a set of software tools that will be used by developers to create games for Windows Phone 7 Series. This updated version of XNA Game Studio will allow game developers to create better mobile games faster by providing: ... Windows Phone 7 Series includes the Windows® Phone Marketplace hub, where apps and games will be sold. Both independent and professional developers can offer games as apps via Marketplace, giving consumers a wide array of games to ...


Aaron Stebner's WebLog : Link to an add-in that enables debugging ...
Since it is a Visual Studio add-in, you can only install it in Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition or higher – it will not work if you are using XNA Game Studio 3.1 in Visual C# 2008 Express Edition. ...


Professional XNA Programming: Building Games for Xbox 360 and ...
Professional XNA(r) Programming Building Games for Xbox 360(r) as well as Windows(r)with XNA Game Studio 2.0, 2nd Edition This softened as well as updated book of a bestseller will get we up as well as regulating fast with office office ...


Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows | RAR ...
With Microsoft's new XNA Framework, the only thing limiting you is your imagination. Now professional game developer and Microsoft DirectX MVP Benjamin Nitschke shows you how to take advantage of the XNA Game Studio Express tools and ...


Game development | XNA game | Map editor | game programming india ...
game programming, Game development,2d arcade games, Microsoft XNA games,MAP edit, professional developers,animation editor,microsoft xna game studio. Here it shows different interactive objects which can be directly add into the map ...


T-SQL Tuesday #004: IO and Virtualizing SQL « Brian's Power ...
(author unknown); Microsoft adds XNA Game Studio 4.0 to its Windows Phone 7 arsenal. This week, at the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft is slated to begin explaining part of its Windows Phone 7 tooling story -- specifically how it ...


Making the Zune HD Sparkle with XNA Game Studio 3.1 – Part 1 ...
Visual Studio 2008 – If you don't already have Visual Studio 2008 Professional, you can download Visual Studio 2008 Express edition. XNA Game Studio 3.1 – Available from the Microsoft Download Center. XNA Game Studio 3.1 Zune Extensions ...


360 Rant Rave » Microsoft unveils XNA Game Studio 4.0 for ...
This new version of XNA Game Studio will allow game developers to create better mobile games faster by providing a comprehensive and powerful set of tools to work with. For consumers, this means that they'll be able to find a ... Windows Phone 7 Series includes the Windows® Phone Marketplace, where apps and games will be sold. Both independent and professional developers can offer games as apps via Marketplace, giving consumers a wide array of games to choose from. ...


Screen WM - Driving innovation and excellence in screen media : News
Using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio 3.1, X48's 15 teams of students spent from 10am Friday 19 to 4pm Saturday 20 February with (virtually) no sleep to produce a game from scratch in a studio environment. ... Andrew Wilson, Course Director for the BSc (Hons) Computer Games Technology and Certificate in Professional Studies Game Technologies at Birmingham City University said: “X48 was a great experience for all those who took part and it was really fitting that it was held ...


XNA Game Studio 4.0 includes Windows Phone support | Gaming ...
XNA Game Studio 4.0 includes Windows Phone support. Microsoft took yet another step today in convincing us that Windows Phone 7 will be a legitimate gaming platform. See more here: XNA Game Studio 4.0 includes Windows Phone support ... Rather than, we don't know, a press release or any other professional method of disseminating a message (Twitter, perhaps?), Harmonix took to Facebook to tell friends and friends-of-friends that Rock Band 3 will be released "this holiday ...

Yesterday I listed the domains for the design model; today I'll list what they're used for.  In later updates I'll post more specifics on these uses, but for now, I’d just like to scope things.  This list is not final, and there are probably additions as I discover things with the case studies.

What the domain model does:

·         Identify weak and strong interactions between domains for a particular game.  These interaction values act as a risk assessment metric and general iteration focus.

·         Identify a set of standard interchangeable standard domains for games. This will help speed up the design process by creating standard placeholders that are easily understood.

·         Identify low-level constraints on domains due to fiscal, time, and resource constraints.

·         Identify logical divisions of human resources, design efforts, and specification.  Combined with the interactions and constraints, interaction between members of large teams can be safely and efficiently structured.

·         It is a descriptive terms in a design document, to clarify concepts while they are still on paper, or being discussed at meetings.

·         They are useful as categories for comparing two or more games.  This, in turn, can be used to evaluate the familiarity or differentiation offered by a title in development.

·         They can be used for structuring pitch sheets or short specs.  They provide a way to instantly describe the efficacy/feasibility of a design by matching with criteria from known other games.

·         They are a framework for designers who have basic game concepts, but need to flesh it out to discover any flaws early in the process. 

What it doesn’t do:

·         Is not appropriate for structuring large design docs at this time.  More research needs to go into this subject.  The reason is, a design doc will tend to discuss the flow of a game, and lay out the individual elements as they come up.  This is very useful when designing a game, as it simplifies the design process by utilizing a chronology (timeline) or hierarchy (flowcharts).

·         Does not provide rules, mechanics, dials, or other “automatic” mechanisms to tune games in progress.

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 21:29:00 GMT

Domain Model for Game Design Part 1

I’m treating the Domain Model for Game Design like an unproven scientific theory.  The Academy of Arts and Sciences states that a theory must have two properties:

1.       It must be an explanation of a feature supported by experimentation

2.       It must be able to make predictions

In this case, my “experiments” are the case studies I’m putting together and the new game I am developing.  To support my model, these case studies should result in prescriptive insight into how these games could be improved, what features would be popular, and what features could be cut.  Of course, most of these things could be determined intuitively once a game is released.  The critical reaction to full game becomes the control case for the case study.  The “experimental results” are the issues rapidly identified by domain interactions, which are identifiable during development.

I was originally going to introduce the domain model by talking about the benefits, but I’m not really trying to justify the model yet.  It’s too raw – I’d rather be generating discussion and criticism than trying to defend an indefensible position.

Instead I’m going to present the 9 (or 8, depending on how you see it) domains that I’ve identified.  In this post, I won’t be going into the justifications for them – there’s plenty of time for that.  Instead, I’ll present the summarized domains within their two categories.

Originally, there were 5 domains.  At this time the domain model encompasses 9 discrete domains.  Each one has been scoped to make it’s interactions with other domains as useful as possible.  The glue between the domains (which I call weak and strong interactions) are were the predictive qualities of the model come into play.

Domains are divided into two categories – Direct domains and Sympathetic domains.  The Direct domains are easiest to explain – these are the elements of the game over which a developer has direct control.  The Sympathetic domains are those which anticipate or attempt to understand a player’s experiences with the game.

The Domains

Direct Domains

1.       Response

a.       This domain covers the display of game state, UI, and instantaneous reactions to player inputs.

2.       Presentation

a.       This domain includes aesthetic elements such as artwork, narrative, audio, and stylistic elements.

3.       Achievement

a.       This domain deals with win states, scores, progression, and all kinds of rewards that reinforce the rest of the game.

4.       Simulation

a.       This domain describes the game’s interactions with its own internal state.  It covers AI, game world simulation, and other updates that are not directly tied to player inputs.

5.       External

a.       This domain covers everything that lives outside of the game.  This could include packaging, manuals, web portals, advertising, distribution, and hype.

Mixed Domains

6.       Physical

a.       This domain covers the control surfaces, displays, peripherals, and general ergonomics of gameplay.  This domain is considered mixed, as it is the actual interface between the developer’s game and the player’s body.

Sympathetic Domains

7.       Skill

a.       This domain deals with the rapidly changing skills that a player develops while playing a game.  This domain influences how a player learns and hones short term (<30 sec) reactions to in-game situations at a reactive or instinctual level.

8.       Management

a.       This domain covers the expectation of player strategy.  It includes conscious player contributions such as resource management, approach, and goal setting.

9.       Immersion

a.       This domain deals with a player’s emotional connection and concentration while playing a game.  It is the domain used to manipulate the player into internalizing mechanics presented in other domains.

 

That’s still a somewhat raw list, and I expect it to change as I run more case studies.  These domains do not imply any sort of hierarchy.  There’s no strict structure that indicates that any given domain is deferential to another domain.  That is purely something that would be scoped by a particular game.

In my next post, I’ll talk about the interaction model for the domains and start to explore the prescriptive properties of understanding weak and strong interactions.  I’ll follow with some uses for the domain model, and then I’ll get to the meat of this topic: the case studies.

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:47:00 GMT

Back on the Blog

River’s End is mostly complete.  It’s not much of a game, but it is a very relaxing experience.  It just needs some polish, a few new graphics systems, and a little more content and it’ll be ready to go.  However, I don’t know yet how or if I can distribute it, so understandably, my enthusiasm for the project has waned somewhat.

To avoid the issue for my next project, my focus will be on game design.  And I’d like to be inclusive though my blog or through the XNA.com forums on how I reach my design decisions – both technical and creative.

River’s End was a superb way for me to familiarize myself with the shortcomings of a tech-driven design.  As I began to ramp up to my next project, I was very near the same mistake, but I was fortunate enough to have colleagues and friends who could comment on early problems and identify another possible false start.

So I began to study the subject of general game design.   Like any good research topic, trying to assimilate the greater body of game studies is truly epic amounts of work.  One of the major problems is a seeming lack of clear goals, or at least, shared goals on the part of the leading academics.  Game Theory seems to me a strictly academic pursuit, but it contains nuggets of wisdom that transcend its specific focus.  Game Studies appear to focus on the impact or rationalization of games. 

On the other side of the Game Design coin is the practitioner’s approach.  This is the domain of designers like Noah Falstein and Marc LeBlanc.  There are the contributors to books like Game Design Perspectives and Game Design Anthology. Some of these are unyielding rules about what makes a game enjoyable.  One extreme example of these approaches is the 400 Project.  Others are general guidelines to encourage new thinking about game design.

There’s more too – far more.  There are almost as many ways of talking about game design as there are game designers. 

I’ve thought critically about aspects of the problem, and like so many sideliners before me, I have come up with my own addition to this theoretical stew, which I will call a Formal Game Design Model for lack of a more discrete term.  My fundamental goal is to make something that makes my games more fun.  I refined the difficult tasks to three goals for a design model.  My goals for a model are to:

Refine game designs by identifying, isolating, and surfacing all specific aspects of a game’s end-to-end experience.

Evaluate game designs by understanding the interplay of game systems and their impact on the overall experience.

Inspire new features or game elements to establish goals earlier in the process.

The model I developed is called “A Domain Model for Game Design” or Domain Model for short.  I have identified 8 domains that are common to all computer and video games, and even many board and card games.  Each domain is describes an aspect of a game that ultimately influences a player’s enjoyment of the game.  The essential quality though is that the model’s static component is the domains themselves.  The dynamic part is the interactions between domains, which, I’m finding are highly regular.

There are lots of ways to use the model, but let me give a quick example.  The Domain Model includes a domain called “Response” which deals with the display of information to the player that informs their choices.  The Response domain interacts strongly with the “Presentation” domain, which covers aesthetics and art design for a game.  Here we can begin to identify areas that are contentious in the design of your game.  Following this example, you might identify aspects of the in-game artwork that makes the UI in the response domain untenable.

This probably sounds like common sense, and much of it is.  The formalism may seem unnecessary and that it may stifle creativity.  However, I don’t see the model as a template or specification mechanism for game design.  I see it as a tool for doing the three things I identified above.

Now, those of you who have read up on this subject may have already seen a striking similarity between this model and the MDA approach by Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek.  I developed the groundwork and the core principles of my model before ever reading about MDA, and I was both surprised and pleased that my system mirrored so many of ideas presented in that paper.  Of particular interest are the interactions between Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics as the essential part of the iterative processes described by the system.  However, my focus is on more discrete “parts” of a game, and an idea of strong and weak interactions between domains.  Domain Model’s goals are similar, but I’ve chosen a slightly different attack vector.

I can’t presume to have the authoritative background any of the authors of MDA have, and as such, I would never say that it’s right for everyone.  I plan to offer it “as-is”, another tool for a designer’s toolkit, and nothing more.  I’ll be vetting this model with my next game project, and I plan to provide case studies that show how several different games can be evaluated with the model.  I’m a technology worker, not a professional designer with decades of experience, so everything I write must be approached as such.

In the coming months I plan to talk more about the model as I refine the concepts.  I’d like to present it as a paper initially.  This is largely something I’m working on for my own hobby game projects, but in the off chance that anybody may find this useful, I’d like it to be generally available.  Perhaps someone out there struggling with a game that just isn’t fun might find ways to improve their title using the little bit of structure I’ll provide in the Domain Model.

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:11:00 GMT

GameFest 2007: Mission Complete

I’m back from GameFest 2007 and I can start to take back parts of my life.  The last 3 months have possibly been the busiest and most stressful of my entire life.  The rewards have been incredible though, and I’m still glowing about the fantastic reception to the XNA Game Studio track.

For those of you unfamiliar with the GameFest conference, the details can be found at http://www.xnagamefest.com/ .  True to the XNA branding of all Microsoft gaming development, XNA GameFest is primarily an event for seasoned industry professionals that want to get the most out of Microsoft platforms.  I like to think of it as a “Game Programming Gems for Microsoft Platforms”.

I volunteered to be the XNA Game Studio content coordinator for GameFest 2007.  As a result I’ve managed to add about 50% more responsibilities to my usual engineering support workload.  Couple that with the unprecedented lineup of holiday Windows and Xbox 360 titles, and I haven’t had a lot of “outside time” this summer.   I managed to get Shader Series 4 our the door as well, which is an exciting landmark in a series of whitepapers and samples I've wanted to do since last summer. Back then the CGP team was working hard to get http://creators.xna.com off the ground and there were no Game Studio samples at all.  The XNA CGP team has come a long way, and they have produced a marvelous community developer portal.

I have probably 50 man-hours of post-GameFest responsibilities, but these will be distributed over the next few weeks.  I should be getting back to a normal schedule just in time for the Seattle Rainy Season.  And that means I’ll be back to working on my leasure game projects.

 

River’s End has been stalled all summer for the above reasons.  During that time I’ve also managed to shift my support responsibilities so that I’m now a primary source for Xbox 360 GPU support.  I’ve learned an incredible amount in a very short time, and I have nothing but new ideas for how to convert River’s End from a pretty game into a jaw dropping graphics showcase.  

Not that I’ve forgotten the gameplay.  I’ve been jotting notes about level ideas and new gameplay mechanics all summer.  I’ve also taken inspiration from the incredible work done by the top Dream-Build-Play entries which we displayed at GameFest.  These games are stunning, and many times they’ve been completed entirely by one talented developer.  They’ve given me the confidence to persue very aggressive design goals for my hobby game projects.

I’ve also got some great ideas for more developer education content.  Things that have come to mind recently have been about project management and scaling for teams.  The upcoming Game Studio 2.0 features should enable some really interesting project management techniques that will make working with artists, managing content builds, and dealing with multiple platform targets into a highly streamlined experience.  It’ll take some research though, so I’m going to factor in these techniques into my leisure-time work on River’s End.  

Be sure to check out the games at  http://www.dreambuildplay.com/main/default.aspx .  They’re all awesome in their own way.  I probably shouldn’t say this, but my fave was Shuggy.  I love 2D gameplay concepts and Shuggy helped convince me that we’ve still only scratched the surface of what great gameplay can be had on a 2D plane.

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:53:00 GMT

---

Shawn Hargreaves Blog

In which hints become facts: XNA Game Studio 4.0

Today we announced what I've been hinting at this past few weeks: XNA Game Studio 4.0 is coming soon* to a phone near you!

Quick summary:

• New platform
  • Windows Phone 7 Series

• New features
  • Integrates with Visual Studio 2010
  • Dynamic audio output
  • Microphone input
  • BasicEffect has four new siblings
    • SkinnedEffect
    • EnvironmentMapEffect
    • DualTextureEffect
    • AlphaTestEffect

• Improved portability and usability
  • Collapsed graphics caps into just two profile levels: Reach and HiDef
  • Many graphics API improvements
  • This involves some breaking API changes
  • Split Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll into several assemblies, to make it more obvious which pieces are available on each platform

I will be writing more about these things over the coming months. If you have questions, the comment box below this post is ready and waiting to receive them...

* no, I don't have a release date for you at this time :-)

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:55:38 GMT

Backward compatibility

If you've been paying attention to my recent posts, you probably noticed I have been thinking about ways we could improve the XNA Framework API. Which begs the question: how much is it possible to clean up an API while maintaining backward compatibility?

Backward compatibility is a terrifying topic for API designers. You just can't win.

If we make breaking changes, people are annoyed because their old code no longer works. And worse, this resets the supporting user community. Books, articles, samples, and engine code must be updated to the new version. This might be ok if it only happens every couple of years, but there is a limit to how often we can expect our community to deal with such a disruption.

But if we never make breaking changes, our product stagnates. Every design mistake and not fully thought out feature is forever cast in stone. Every random quirk of obsolete platforms must be inherited by all future platforms until the end of time. That isn't good for anyone.

In the past, XNA Game Studio has attempted a middle road. We made changes, knowing this could break some games, and required a recompile to move existing projects over to new framework versions, but we provided an upgrade wizard to help with this process, and tried to minimize API changes to make the upgrade as painless as possible. Multiple framework versions can be installed side by side, so old games continue to use the old framework while newer games use the new version. This allows us to make minor tweaks that we do not expect to break most games, knowing that if this causes problems for a few people, they will have a chance to fix their code while upgrading their projects (or of course they can choose to stick with the older version). We occasionally made bigger breaking changes in areas where we felt the benefit outweighed the cost, but every time we do this we see pain when customers try to use older tutorials with newer framework versions, then get confused because things have changed out from under them.

This compromise has worked ok for us so far, but it’s a confusing message: most stuff still works the same, except for some stuff that is different. Your game may or may not “just work” ™

We have learned a lot over the last couple of years. If I had a time machine, I would have many suggestions to send back to when we were originally designing this stuff! But from where we are now, it’s a tough choice. Do we leave things as they are, knowing our design has flaws, or do we fix problems and take the cost of a breaking change?

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:00:00 GMT

DirectX 10 helps people who are still using DirectX 9

It's all very well to say we could simplify caps management by looking at what is actually supported by real hardware, then bucketing everything into just a few of the more common combinations. But there is an obvious flaw in this logic: we can only examine the caps of hardware that exists today! What if we baked this into our API, then a new GPU with entirely different caps was released tomorrow?

Enter DirectX 10.

DX10 has no caps. All hardware is required to support the entire DX10 feature set*. So caps management is trivially simple.

But we must still support the huge install base of DX9 hardware, right?

Here's the awesome part: DX10 has taken over the PC market, even way down into the low power laptop integrated space, to the point where nobody is designing new DX9 hardware any more. The DX9 chips that exist today are all we will ever have.

The arrival of DX10 has frozen DX9 at a single moment in time. This lets us design APIs based on what combinations of caps exist right now, and be confident these decisions will remain valid in the future. Nice!

* note for pedants: ok, some format support is allowed to vary. But the number of optional features is extremely low.

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:45:00 GMT

Collapsing caps

Optional features with hundreds of caps bits do not a great developer experience make. How do I know which caps I need to check on which hardware? What do I do if they are not set?

Some of the caps we have today are just silly. How is a 3D game supposed to react if RasterCaps.SupportsDepthBufferTest comes back false? I don't know of any hardware that doesn't set this, but in theory some could, and what then?

An interesting exercise (well, interesting to me anyway :-) is to compare the caps found on actual hardware out in the wild:

If you compare the full set of caps from many graphics cards, several things become clear:

• This is a multi dimensional problem, far more complex than the above Venn diagram

• Collating that much data is REALLY REALLY BORING

• The distribution of caps is far from random

• Many caps are supported by all hardware

• Surprisingly, some caps are never supported by any hardware at all!

• There is a large bucket of caps that are supported by all "HiDef" hardware (Xbox and recent/better Windows cards), but not by older/cheaper Windows parts such as integrated laptop GPUs

• Thanks to DX10, Windows is rapidly converging toward the "HiDef" feature set (even cheap laptops support DX10 these days)

• There are remarkably few important caps that are supported by just random subsets of hardware

These findings suggest how we could simplify caps management:

• Remove all the stupid stuff that no hardware actually supports

• Collapse the remaining flags into a single enum with two values:
  • Reach = "I want my game to run on as many machines as possible, so will limit myself to the features that are reliably available everywhere"

  • HiDef = "I want to use more advanced things like vertex textures, MRT, and floating point surface formats, and am ok with this limiting my ability to run on less powerful hardware"

It could take just one line of code to check whether a machine supports Reach or HiDef, which makes it easier to understand what features are safe to use. This also helps when trying to create portable games. If you specify Reach profile, the framework could enforce that you don't accidentally use any HiDef functionality, thus avoiding unpleasant surprises of the "huh, that worked on my machine..." variety.

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:45:00 GMT

Some platforms are more equal than others

There are many reasons for differences between platforms, and several ways an API designer can try to rationalize such things.

• Some features fundamentally don't exist, and are not practical to emulate. Earlier Radeon graphics cards do not support TextureAddressMode.Border, and there's nothing we can do to change that.

• Other features could exist, but are too expensive to implement. Sure, we could have ported XACT to Zune, but we would have had to cut other features to find time. Would you be willing to trade XACT on Zune for Avatars on Xbox? No? I suspected as much :-)

• Sometimes things are blocked for business policy rather than technical reasons. Personally, I would love to someday allow full LIVE support for Windows games, but I also understand why the powers that be didn't want that. Pragmatism requires us to figure out the most consistent story possible within the constraints we are given.

So, there will always be some differences across platforms. What should we do about them?

1. We could say "hey, this is not consistent, so let's just cut it entirely from all platforms"
2. We could remove the API only from the platforms that do not support it
3. We could leave the API in place, but have it throw an exception
4. We could expose caps bits to query if the API is supported
5. We could make the API a graceful no-op, ignoring calls and returning default values

XNA Game Studio currently uses a mishmash of all five techniques, chosen for individual features on an ad-hoc basis. This is an area I think we have much room to improve.

The ultimate goal can be summed up in two words: "avoid surprises".

A surprise occurs when a friend tries to play your game, but it renders incorrectly because his GPU does not support TextureAddressMode.Border, and you didn't know you were supposed to check the caps for that. Or when you try to port your game from Windows to Zune, only to realize you must rewrite your sound code because Zune does not support XACT.

The XNA Framework provides a set of features that are available and work the same way on all platforms, surrounded by a smaller set of features that are not so consistent. Trouble is, there is no good way to tell which features are which! It is too easy to accidentally stumble outside the consistent zone.

Let's look again at my list of five techniques, this time with the goal of avoiding surprise:

1. Cutting a feature certainly does avoid surprise, but also leaves us with a lowest common denominator platform. Sometimes this can be the right thing to do, but it's not a good choice for important features that many people want to use.

2. Removing APIs from specific platforms avoids runtime surprise, but creates a different kind of surprise if overused ("huh? This built fine for Windows, but now I get a ton of compile errors on Xbox"). I think this is best done at a very coarse level, where entire namespaces or assemblies are only available on some platforms. If individual classes or methods change per platform, it gets too hard to document and remember all the subtle differences.

3. APIs that throw runtime exceptions are pretty bad. The exception can provide a nice error message, but you only get to see that message if you happen to test on a machine where the feature is not supported.

4. Caps bits are even worse than exceptions. You still have to test on many machines, plus you have to figure out the cause of any compatibility problems, which isn't always obvious even after you notice them.

5. No-op can be a good choice, depending on how the API is used. When the Zune KeyboardState or Windows PictureCollection come back empty, that is a legal value even on platforms where these things are supported, so the caller should not be surprised and will not need special code to handle this case. But if OcclusionQuery always returned 0, that would surprise me, since I'm most likely planning on using the return value for something and am counting on it being correct!

Verdict: #1 and #5 are appropriate for some APIs.  #2 is good at a coarse level, but should not be too fine grained.  #3 and #4 should be avoided.

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:43:02 GMT

---

XNASpot.com

No item elements found in rss feed.

---

XNA Team Blog

Creators Club Communiqué 44

Greetings, Creators!

Welcome to March! This is the month that “comes in like a lion and out like a lamb.” Spring is knocking on our door and it would seem this is making all Xbox LIVE Indie Game Creators more productive than ever. As of March 10, 2010 the Xbox LIVE Indie Games catalog boasts 819 games!

Now on to some learning!

• XNA/DirectX MVP Jon Sedlak has released the “Focused Games Framework” (or FGF). It is a framework used for learning new technologies and exploring ideas. He’s constantly working on adding new features to it, too. If you’re using XNA Game Studio to make your game it is worth checking out!
• The ever industrious Shawn Hargreaves has has several incredible posts over the past week including: A Pop Quiz on XNA Game Studio Features and Hardware, Why Portability Matters, and Differences Between Gaming Platforms. Per usual, they could all make you smarter.
• Another XNA Game Studio Team member and Space Brain, Nick Gravelyn started working on a new tile system and editor for a ninja game he’s working on. He was looking for a the ability to change level sizes in a basic 2D array. So, naturally he solved this by building an extension method for resizing any 2D array that he shares with you in his blog!

 

Finally, next week is the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Many members of The XNA Game Studio Team will be in attendance, will you? Tell us all about what you see there by dropping us a line at creators@microsoft.com and be sure to say hello if you see any of us!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:01:15 GMT

Creators Club Communiqué 43

Hello, Incredible Creators!

Last week we hosted our beloved XNA and Direct X MVPs here in Redmond for our annual MVP Summit! Your MVPs came from all around the world to visit with our product teams in Redmond, WA. We spent a few days sharing information with these trusted members of our community, not just to tell them about what we’re planning, but also to gather feedback from the creators on the front lines, and brainstorm on improvements for XNA Game Studio, Xbox LIVE Indie Games, and…

As of now, we can’t share specifics about what was discussed, but rest assured we’re doing all we can to properly equip Indie Developers everywhere to make really incredible games!

The MVP Summit is a fantastic opportunity for us to hear great feedback in order to improve our incredible community of Creators. We are always listening on the XNA Creators Club Online forums, and you can always send us an email at creators@microsoft.com. Let us know what you want to see next!

Xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

 

Pictures from the MVP Summit

Here are a few photos to share with you from our time with our awesome MVP’s! 

Why you won’t see photos from the rest of the sessions: no photos allowed!

Thank you to Phil Bourke for the delicious Irish chocolates and Richard Thomson for the sweet tunes!

The tech guy at our dinner party learned why we warn all Xbox 360 owners not to move their consoles when a disk is spinning in the drive. Ouch!

 

….Lucky for us, LEGO Rock Band arrived just in time to save the day!

Everyone gathered ‘round to listen to former XNA MVP Nick Gravelyn regale everyone with tales from the other side…

   

Who is the MVP’s mascot? Minnie the Chihuahua, of course!

 

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:48:00 GMT

GDC 2010: Register Today!

Have you registered for the 2010 Game Developers Conference yet? You don't want to miss this opportunity to attend sessions on the latest technology for game development, and meet fellow game developers. When you attend Microsoft Game Developer Days, you'll have access to any of the following sessions for to see what the future of gaming with Microsoft holds for you!

Tuesday, March 9th

Title: Visual C++ 2010: A Turbo Boost in Productivity
Title: System-wide Game Profiling with the Windows Performance Toolkit
Title: Building an Uber-Fast Crowd Renderer for Your Next Xbox 360 Engine
Title: Block Compression Smorgasbord
Title: The Dark Art of ShadowMapping
Title: DirectX 11 Technology Update

Wednesday, March 10th

Title: DirectX 11 DirectCompute–A Teraflop for Everyone
Title: Think DirectX 11 Tessellation! – Lots of options
Title: Developing Games for Windows Phone 7
Title: High Performance 3D Games on Windows Phone 7 Series
Title: Development and Debugging Tools for Windows Phone 7 Series
Title: Bringing the Best of Xbox LIVE to Windows Phone 7 Series

Want More Information?
Follow Shawn Hargreaves (blog/twitter) and Michael Klucher (blog/twitter) for the latest GDC news leading up to the event.

What's next? Register today!

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:45:00 GMT

Creators Club Communiqué 42

Greetings, Creators!

It has been a very busy week for us! This is the time of year that announcements start happening and events come fast and furious! We’re doing all we can to prepare for this and meanwhile we’ve noticed that you’re making some pretty incredible games!

Recently, XNA MVP George “George Clingerman” Clingerman posted a very honest and helpful post-mortem on his Xbox LIVE Indie Game, Kissy Poo. Anyone interested in making a game should take a look at his post.

Superstar and cat lover Shawn Hargreaves always has interesting thoughts in his blog posts this week. The first points out the hazards he encounters when he attempts to predict the future (and explains why he really just doesn’t bother), and the second gives his honest opinion on the state of the XNA Framework today.

Meanwhile, have you started following Former XNA MVP/new XNA Team Member Nick Gravelyn’s Twitter? You should! This week he twittered an XNA Game Studio-related pop quiz question; you can find the answer now in his blog and perhaps learn a bit about Microsoft’s implementation of C# in XNA Game Studio.

Finally, for our Spanish-speaking Creators, we’d like to let you know about a Catalonia, Spain .Net User Group, comprised of university students; who host a regular webcast series that might be of interest to you. In their next episode, they are planning to speak with the Creator of the XBLIG, Kaotik Puzzle, and how his game was made!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:18:05 GMT

Creators Club Communiqué 41

Salutations, Creators!

In recent weeks we’ve seen a few questions pop up about this year’s Dream.Build.Play Competition, specifically in regard to the Old Spice Challenge. We will answer all questions necessary to enable Creators to successfully submit their games; however select details will only be shared with the finalists chosen. To bring more clarity to the commonly asked questions we’ve seen in the forums, we’re repeating the answers here.

Specifically in regard to the Old Spice Challenge:

1. Games submitted to the Old Spice Challenge should include a trial mode in the event that they are chosen as a finalist.
2. Of the games submitted to the Old Spice Challenge, up to five will be selected by the judges to be Contest Finalists and take part in the voting promotion on Xbox LIVE Marketplace.
3. Finalists (up to 5) will have one week to prepare their game for final voting. These finalists will be notified via the email address registered for the Dream.Build.Play competition.
4. The games that are chosen as finalists will need to submit their game through Peer Review on XNA Creators Club Online.
5. Creators of the games selected for the Old Spice Challenge will not be permitted to update their game during the voting promotion. After the voting promotion ends, any Creator with an active XNA Creators Club Online Premium Membership can update their title.
6. Xbox LIVE Users can vote on the games during this promotion. Purchase a game is not a requirement to vote.
7. Any Xbox LIVE User who votes will be entered into a sweepstakes to win a token for a free full version of the winning game.
8. The winning game will receive payment for all token sales of their game.

Additionally, we are aware of the current problem with the CA text file in the collected fonts assets and we’re working to replace them as soon as possible!

As ever, the XNA Creators Club Online forums are a great place to find answers and we’re available by email: creators@microsoft.com.

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:32:07 GMT

---

XBLArcade.com

This Week: Scrap Metal

Drift around corners with guns blazing and take out legendary competitors in the fast-paced, top-down racing game Scrap Metal™. Fight your way through explosive, action-packed missions and defeat cunning bosses to add their vehicles to your garage. Customize your newly-acquired cars and then return to the track to blast through more enemies. Jump online with Xbox LIVE ® to race against your friends and crush their cars with the wheels of your monster truck in pulse-pounding online multiplayer matches. Also, Scrap Metal has full anaglyph 3-D support.

“Scrap Metal” starts their engines on March 10th at 9 a.m. GMT (2:00 a.m. PDT).

Published by Xbox LIVE Arcade and developed by Slick Entertainment, “Scrap Metal” will be available for 1200 Microsoft Points everywhere and is rated E10 for Everyone 10+ by the ESRB. For more details on “Scrap Metal” you can visit: http://www.xbox.com/games/s/scrapmetalxbla/

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the first game of the of the Xbox LIVE Block / House Party promotion, Scrap Metal, by reTweeting this message using the button below. Also feel free to leave a comment talking about this week’s game!

read more

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:40:33 -0500

Boulder Dash coming to Xbox Live Arcade

Today First Star Software, Inc. and Catnip Games officially announced their upcoming production of a Boulder Dash® sequel for Xbox Live Arcade for release in Q3 2010. In cooperation with First Star Software, the owner of the Intellectual Property; and, with the assist of “simple plan production”, Catnip Games will deliver both charming and challenging entertainment to the XBLA worldwide community. The team is using the latest technology to present the unique gameplay and all of the characteristic elements associated with Boulder Dash® in a modern and incomparable style.

read more

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:20:02 -0500

EA, Klei Entertainment to publish Shank on XBLA in 2010

EA Partners, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. and award-winning independent development studio Klei Entertainment announced today an exclusive publishing agreement to bring the provocative new game Shank to Xbox LIVE® Arcade this summer. Featuring a unique art style inspired by graphic novels and golden age comics, Shank blends the intensity of classic 2D side-scrolling action games with a gripping and mature storyline. The cinematic brawler is a finalist for “Excellence in Visual Art” at this year’s Independent Games Festival and will be featured at the IGF Pavilion during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week.

read more

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:57:13 -0500

EA, Hothead Games to publish DeathSpank on XBLA in 2010

EA Partners, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. and leading independent developer Hothead Games announced today an exclusive publishing agreement that will bring DeathSpank to Xbox LIVE® Arcade in 2010. Developed under the vision of The Secret of Monkey Island creator and industry icon Ron Gilbert, DeathSpank blends a story filled with Gilbert’s unique humor and wit with classic and addictive action RPG gameplay.

“The team at Hothead Games is a perfect fit for EA Partners. They are a great example of how the EA Partners program continues to emphasize the importance of building strong relationships with the world’s top indie developers,” said Jamil Moledina, Outreach Director, Business Development at EA Partners. “DeathSpank is an engrossingly fun and hysterically funny experience, and we are all excited to have the opportunity to help introduce DeathSpank to gamers across the world.”

read more

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:42:03 -0500

XBLA Activity: Week of February 22nd-March 1st

At the beginning of last week, we saw the popular Xbox LIVE Arcade first-person shooter classic that lets you battle through 39 levels of mayhem, or fight it out with your friends in DukeMatch, receive a temporary price reduction as part of the ‘Deal of the Week’ promotion for Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers. Not surprisingly then that Duke Nukem 3D climbed to the top of this week’s top 20! But the action didn’t stop there as mid-week saw the release of not one, but three new XBLA titles: Lazy Raiders, Greed Corp and Fret Nice.

XBLArcade.com is continuing our new weekly trend to publishing the Top 20 list of Xbox LIVE Arcade titles every week based on the information posted on Major Nelson’s website. We think this will give you a much better idea what the other 23+ million Xbox LIVE members are playing in the realm of Xbox LIVE Arcade games and perhaps to better help you choose what Xbox LIVE Arcade games you want to spend those valuable Microsoft Points of yours on.

For the week of February 22nd to March 1st, the Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased), are as follows:

read more

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:07:13 -0500