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

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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

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Michael Klucher's XNA Blog

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MSDN Forums: XNA Framework

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XNA and Xbox 360

Top 21 Community Games on the Xbox 360, XNA Roundup #21 ...
Top 21 Community Games on the Xbox 360, XNA Roundup #21 You asked us for another top 10 community game list, but heck!


Jelly Car — demo of XNA Creators Club game for Xbox 360 | PSP lover
Currently about seven demos of XNA games are available from Xbox Live. Sorry to say, the demos can only be used until the middle of March 2008. Well,


GDC 2010: XNA Game Studio 4.0 | InsideXbox | Channel 9
I wrap up GDC 2010 with an interview with Shawn Hargreaves about XNA Game Studio 4.0. I think Microsoft picked a perfect event to show off XNA Game Studio 4.0. With XNA 3.1 developers were able build games that ran on the Zune, Xbox 360 ...


Xbox 360 Games on Your iPhone? Yes. But Not From Microsoft
The iPhone app that Novell created is an open source derivative of an Indiana Jones games that Microsoft is showing off running on Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox. The game is built using Microsoft's XNA framework, which is based upon ...


Leunas: Achievement Unlocked: XNA Game Studio 4.0 for Windows Phone
At GDC this week we're giving everyone a first look at the latest and greatest, XNA Game Studio 4.0, which provides a powerful, productive, and portable technology for game development on Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox 360, and Windows PC ...


Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0
The introduction of XNA Game Studio 4.0 will go some ways in making game development for the Windows Phone 7 platform a whole lot easier, since developers can create a game/app and make tweak it to run the Xbox 360 and Windows-based PCs ...


Microsoft showcases new XNA Game Studio | TG Daily
Microsoft is showcasing the latest iteration of its XNA Game Studio for Windows Phone 7, Xbox 360 and Windows-based PCs at GDC 2010. Company spokesperson Michael Klucher explained that Game Studio (4) featured accelerated 3D API's ...


Pictures of an XNA based Game on Windows Phone 7
Last week I put up a video of an XBOX Live game being paused from a desktop and continued on a Windows Phone 7 device then an XBOX 360. Well this is a picture of another game that is based off of the XNA 4.0 platform. ...


Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 to make Windows Phone 7 game ...
Developers will now have an easier time creating games for Windows Phone 7 with the help of XNA Game Studio 4.0. This new tool allows developers to create a game/app and make slight modifications to it allowing it to run the Xbox 360, ...


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 ...

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XNA Comments

Windows Phone 7 gets Silverlight & XNA, but no old WinMo apps ...
Windows Phone 7 gets Silverlight & XNA, but no old WinMo apps. 12:06 AM farhan , Posted in Technology , 0 Comments. Microsoft deferred pretty much all technical questions at MWC 2010 about Windows Phone 7 to their upcoming MIX ...


GDC: XNA Studio 4.0 & Windows Phone 7 Series, Part II
GDC: XNA Studio 4.0 & Windows Phone 7 Series, Part II. File under: News. By: Chuong Nguyen | Date: 12-Mar-10 | - Comments. You've now seen the 3 screens of game play on Windows Phone 7 Series, and in this video segment, Microsoft gives ...


#XNA #book idea looking for an author: XNA Cross-Platform Cookbook ...
Or if you think this is a great idea, a stupid idea, or there's something you'd like to see covered, drop your brains into the comments below. If you have followers who might like to write about XNA, please retweet this post. ...


More on XNA Game Studio 4.0 and Windows Phone Support « Sgt. Conker
About Captain boki. Not quite "absolutely fine" yet. Tagged as: News, Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7 Series, WP7, WP7Dev, XNA, XNA 4.0 Leave a comment. Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post ). No comments yet. ...


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 they exist, they work, and at least Microsoft tossed us some screenshots ... Comments: on | off. Comments are currently turned off. You can enable them by clicking "on" above. gtharea Posted Mar 9th 2010 8:54PM. Highest Ranked. Beautiful. ...


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, ...


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 ...
“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. Hardware accelerated 3D API's on Windows Phone 7 Series; Visual Studio 2010 integration with our toolset; Added buffered audio support to the Audio API's; And much, much more! ... Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) ...


Microsoft plans on XNA games on Windows phone « Specs, Reviews and ...
It's been rumored for a long time, but Microsoft has always refused to comment on Xbox Live for Wi... Microsoft releases new version of Windows Live. Microsoft has released a new version of Windows Live for mobile phones, ...


Pictures of an XNA based Game on Windows Phone 7
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }. Jacob March 11, 2010 at 4:10 pm. I just heard about an HTC phone called the Incredible. I have not heard anything about this phone at all except for it has a 8 megapixel camera. ...

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XNA & Managed DirectX

Book Review - XNA Game Studio Creator's Guide - XNA, Managed ...
XNA, Managed DirectX and Game Programming. Home � Contact. Recent Posts. ReMIX Australia and The Creators Club � XNA 3.0 First Community Applications for the Zune � XNA 3.0 CTP has Been Released � Xbox Gamer Tag Widget for Community ...


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. ...


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. ...


GDC 2010: Windows Phone 7 will be a managed code platform, news ...
"We've designed the new Direct3D API [just introduced in XNA 4.0 Game Studio] in terms of managed code. Everything has been optimised for game development," said Michael Klucher, program manager for the XNA community game platform. ...


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 ...


Microsoft Speaks on Xbox Live Integration in Windows Phone 7 ...
... that one of the big things with Windows Phone 7 is integration with the Xbox gaming platform, and while at GDC, joystiq managed to grab hold of Ron Pessner, the general manager of Xbox Live and Michael Klucher the XNA Game Studio manager. ... They asked if all developers will be required to use both XNA and Direct3D and is it possible to port games from platforms such as Flash and Java. To which the reply was that everything for Windows Phone 7 is based on the .net ...


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 ...


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. ...

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XNA & Torque Game Engine

Now Available: Torque X for XNA Game Studio 3.1
GarageGames' Torque X for XNA Game Studio 3.1 is now available for Premium Members.


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 ...


Gephoria: TGB vs XNA
I recently have been playing with Torque Game Builder (TGB) and Microsoft's XNA game engines, both are fun, I'm finding it easier to utilize Torque game builder probably because I've used it before though. XNA's programming in C# seems ...


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, ...


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 ...


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 ...


The Daily GameDev.net - GameDev.Net Discussion Forums
Zune HD developers are being "encouraged" to migrate to the Windows Mobile 7 platform, basically meaning that XNA on the Zune will stay at 3.1 and won't move forward to 4.0. Is this a sign that the Zune will be phased out? ... I also hope it gets announced before the discount ends. I can't justify the cost either, but you know, this is my hobby, so it's something I will think seriously about especially after wasting all that cash on Torque. ...


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 ...


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 ...

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XNA & Indie Game Developer

SWSX Interactive, Day 1 | Castle Bravo
The first was "Take Over the World With XNA Indie Games", with Chris Williams presenting. Pretty small crowd, but I think people were still registering and getting their bearings at 2 PM. He did a very general overview of XNA, ...


Shawn Hargreaves Blog : In which hints become facts: XNA Game ...
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. ... we hardly knew ye...) What API changes do we need to be aware of on these other, not hotness-super-sexy-new platforms, and what does this means for Indie Games. Tuesday, March 09, 2010 4:20 PM by Daaark ...


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 ...


MSDN Blog Postings » Blog Archive » Getting our Game On
Including exposing the power that XNA Game Studio already exposed to indie game developers. Create a simplified/consistent hardware ecosystem; Launch it all for developers in early 2010. This is all coming to fruition! ...


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 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 ...


GDC 2010: Games are a key element of Windows Phone 7 , news ...
"There have been over one million downloads of XNA Game Studio so there are a lot of people who are familiar with the tools. We're really excited to see what developers will come up with for Windows Phone 7," Pessner said. And with the likes of EA Mobile, Gameloft, Glu Mobile, Capcom and Oberon also signed up to provide games for the holiday 2010 launch, it seems both the indie and major elements of the market will be well covered. ...


Game development with XNA: Beyond the basics
... XNA with it being officially supported on the new Windows Mobile 7, XBOX 360 and the PC so come along, have some pizza, check out what you can do and have some fun exploring the possibility of developing your very own indie games! ...


Colony Defense Developer Interview
Interview with Xbox Live Indie Game Developers of Colony Defense. ... I had never programmed a game before, although I have always wanted to. Throw 3D in there (math!?!) and it was one of the biggest challenges I personally have ever had. If it wasn't for all the awesome resources out there for XNA, it never would have happened. There are some super smart and very helpful people that hang out on the XNA creators forums and their posts, along with all the great blogs out ...


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.

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XNA Game Studio Professional

GDC: Microsoft unveiled XNA Game Studio 4.0 for Windows Phone 7 ...
This latest 4.0 version of Microsoftâ ™s XNA Game Studio (game development... ... Pioneer new 4 Channel Mixer DJM-2000 will rock your world � Akihabara News 6 hours ago. Let's says that you are a professional or occasional DJ and want to get the best of your tune, a Mixer is definitely the very basic stuff you need and in this world Pioneer is by far one of the most popular choice. ...


All about Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7 Series « MobileTechWorld
Portability: XNA Game Studio 4.0 makes it possible for developers to adapt games built on previous versions of XNA Game Studio to work on Windows Phone 7 Series without re-coding the entire game. Also, once a developer has created 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. ...


MSDN Blog Postings » Blog Archive » Getting our Game On
Michael Klutcher, who's a program manager for XNA Game Studio and Xbox LIVE has a great post here you should really read. The key news we are focusing on here at GDC are (I stole this from our official press briefing docs): ... 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. ...


Innovation Showcase : Creating Games for Windows Phone Using ...
engadget reports that Microsoft just demoed a pair of 3D games running on a ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0 . Click here to read the report in detail, or click the video below to see a game running on all. ... He holds a Ph. D. in Management Science from the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a professional certification from American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS), ...


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 ...


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 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 ...


Microsoft Gets Mobile Gaming Right. Apple, Sony, Google Should ...
“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 a user's Gamertag and 2D .... and Windows Phone 7 (actually 6.5) Series Professional Edition, unless of course, Microsoft decides to throw caution to the wind and produce Windows Phone 7 (actually 6.5) Series Mobile Edition. Only time will tell. ...


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 ...

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

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Shawn Hargreaves Blog

Reach vs. HiDef

I must confess, I oversimplified when I labeled the yellow circle in this post as “Windows laptop”. Sure, the Reach profile in XNA Game Studio 4.0 does correspond to what features are widely available across different Windows machines (which makes it valuable even for Windows developers who do not care about other platforms), but this profile also matches the capabilities of Windows Phone 7 Series. The great thing (in fact the reason this whole profiles idea works) is that it turns out the abilities of the phone hardware closely match the baseline Windows feature set.

Things to know:

• The features listed in black are required and supported consistently across all platforms and hardware
• The few features which are not 100% consistent are listed in red
• HiDef is a strict superset of Reach
• If you run a Reach game on a HiDef platform, the framework will still enforce Reach rules. This lets you test your phone game on Xbox 360 or a high end Windows PC, and get helpful exception messages if you accidentally try to use a feature that is not supported on the phone.

With no further ado, here is an overview of the two graphics profiles:

	Reach	HiDef
Supported platforms	Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox 360, and any Windows PC with a DirectX 9 GPU that supports at least shader model 2.0	Xbox 360, and any Windows PC with a DirectX 10 (or equivalent: see below) GPU
Shader model	2.0  (but Windows Phone does not support custom shaders)	3.0+  (Xbox 360 supports custom shader extensions such as vfetch, which are not available on Windows)
Max texture size	2048	4096
Max cubemap size	512	4096
Max volume texture size	Volume textures are not supported	256
Non power of two textures	Conditional: cannot use wrap addressing mode, mipmaps, or DXT compression when the size is not a power of two	Yes
Non power of two cubemaps	No	Yes
Non power of two volume textures	Volume textures are not supported	Yes
Max primitives per draw call	65535	1048575
Index buffer formats	16 bit	16 and 32 bit
Vertex element formats	Color, Byte4, Single, Vector2, Vector3, Vector4, Short2, Short4, NormalizedShort2, NormalizedShort4	All of the Reach formats, plus HalfVector2, HalfVector4
Texture formats	Color, Bgr565, Bgra5551, Bgra4444, NormalizedByte2, NormalizedByte4, Dxt1, Dxt3, Dxt5	All of the Reach formats, plus Alpha8, Rg32, Rgba64, Rgba1010102, Single, Vector2, Vector4, HalfSingle, HalfVector2, HalfVector4. Floating point texture formats do not support filtering.
Vertex texture formats	Vertex texturing is not supported	Single, Vector2, Vector4, HalfSingle, HalfVector2, HalfVector4
Render target formats	Variable (see below)	Variable (see below)
Multiple render targets	No	Up to 4. Must all have the same bit depth. Supports alpha blending and independent write masks per rendertarget.
Occlusion queries	No	Yes
Separate alpha blend	No	Yes
Blend.SourceAlphaSaturation	Only for SourceBlend, not DestinationBlend	Yes
Max vertex streams	16	16
Max stream stride	255	255

 

When I list the HiDef profile as requiring a DirectX 10 GPU on Windows, I don’t mean that XNA Game Studio 4.0 uses DirectX 10 or 11. It does not: our Windows framework is implemented using DirectX 9. But the HiDef profile requires a GPU with roughly Xbox 360 level capabilities: MRT, floating point surface formats, vertex texture fetch, etc. These are optional caps in DirectX 9, but we need them all to support HiDef (think of it as DirectX 9 turned up to 11). In theory it is possible that a DirectX 9 GPU could support all these caps, just like every DirectX 10 GPU exposes them all when we access it via the DirectX 9 API, but in practice I know of no such DirectX 9 chip. Rather than confusing everybody by saying “HiDef requires this complex set of caps”, it is easier to simplify this to just “HiDef requires a DirectX 10 GPU”. A nice benefit of accessing DirectX 10 hardware via the DirectX 9 API is this means HiDef games can run on Windows XP as well as Vista and Win7.

You will notice that rendertarget format support is still allowed to vary. There were just too many differences in format support for us to successfully standardize this. We have a caps API for querying what formats are available, but more importantly, we have a built-in fallback mechanism. The format parameters used when creating rendertargets and backbuffers have changed from “format” to “preferredFormat”. We will try to give you the exact format you asked for, but if that is not supported, we will automatically fall back to the closest possible match, looking for a format with similar bit depth, number of channels, etc. In most cases this means you can just write code and have it run across different devices without bothering to check caps. For instance if you make a phone game that asks for a Bgr5551 rendertarget, then run this on Xbox where 16 bit rendertargets are not supported, we will automatically switch to Color format instead.

These Game Studio 3.1 vertex element formats are no longer supported by any profile: Rg32, Rgba32, Rgba64, UInt101010, Normalized101010.

These Game Studio 3.1 texture formats are no longer supported by any profile: Dxt2, Dxt4, Bgr555, Bgr444, Bgra2338, Bgr233, Bgr24, Bgr32, Bgra1010102, Rgba32, Rgb32, NormalizedShort2, NormalizedShort4, Luminance8, Luminance16, LuminanceAlpha8, LuminanceAlpha16, Palette8, PaletteAlpha16, NormalizedLuminance16, NormalizedLuminance32, NormalizedAlpha1010102, NormalizedByte2Computed, VideoYuYv, Video UyVy, VideoGrGb, VideoRgBg, Multi2Bgra32.

Some of these formats were removed because they are not supported by enough hardware, or in some cases no hardware at all. Others were removed because they were redundant, as other formats provide the same functionality but with a slightly different bit layout. For instance we no longer have both RGB and BGR versions of the same formats.

Game Studio 4.0 changes the Color type from BGRA to RGBA byte ordering. Most games will never notice the change, as we not only updated the Color struct, but also changed our texture and vertex declaration creation code to match. If you have code that creates Color format textures directly, setting their contents from a byte array rather than a strongly typed Color[], you will need to swap the order of your red and blue channels.

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:25:00 GMT

XNA Game Studio on Windows Phone

I set out to write an article about the unique features of XNA Game Studio on Windows Phone 7 Series, but while trying to populate my outline, I realized, wow, there actually aren’t many things different about Game Studio 4.0 on the phone compared to Windows and Xbox 360! That’s bad news for this article, but I think good news for our platform as a whole. With Game Studio 4.0, we made a concerted effort to increase portability and consistency across our target platforms.

In some areas it was obvious how to achieve consistency. For instance, Windows Phone 7 Series includes a Zune media client, so we could port our existing Zune media APIs. Input is similarly straightforward. If you only want to access a single touch point, you can use our existing Mouse API. If you need multitouch (the phone supports four simultaneous touches), you can use an API similar to what we previously shipped for Zune HD. This touch API works on Windows 7 PCs with multitouch displays, too.

Other areas, especially graphics, were more challenging to design. Had we just ported the Game Studio 3.1 graphics API, we would have been left with a confusing mess of non-overlapping caps that would make it hard to port code between Windows, Xbox, and the phone. But we didn’t want to force a lowest common denominator approach: it would make no sense to limit Xbox 360 games to only those features which are also available on mobile hardware!

Our solution was to take a long, hard look at our graphics API, tweaking, polishing, and refactoring to increase consistency wherever possible, and relying on a coarse bucketing of features into Reach and HiDef profiles for things that just weren’t possible on the phone. I am tremendously proud of the results. This tuning is valuable even for developers who are not targeting the phone, as it fixes common causes of error on all platforms, and helps make your game compatible across different Windows graphics cards.

The phone supports full hardware accelerated 3D, but we are not exposing programmable shaders in this release. Charlie Kindel summed up the reason for that in a great article about focus and priorities:

“We will do a few things and do them very, very well; we are better off not having a capability than doing it poorly. There are always future versions.”

Instead of programmable shaders, we augmented the existing BasicEffect with four new configurable effects: SkinnedEffect, EnvironmentMapEffect, DualTextureEffect, and AlphaTestEffect. These are designed to run efficiently on the mobile GPU hardware, and I think do a good job of providing enough flexibility for developers to create awesome looking games, while also meeting our goals of being able to ship a robust and well tested product on schedule.

The phone features an image scaler which allows games to render to any size backbuffer they like, and have it automatically stretched to fill the display, with black bars along the edges if the backbuffer and display have different aspect ratios (an idea that will be familiar to Xbox developers). This scaling is handled by dedicated hardware, so does not consume any GPU resources, and it uses a high quality image filter that gives much better results than bilinear filtering like you would get if you did this yourself on the GPU. The scaler is important for two reasons:

• At launch, all phones will have a 480x800 (WVGA) display resolution, but we will add 320x480 (HVGA) in a future update. Of course you can detect the native resolution and program your game to adapt to this if you want, but the scaler allows games to pick just one resolution, always render at that fixed size, and still run correctly on phones with different native screen sizes. For bonus points, we automatically scale touch input to match your chosen resolution. 

• 480x800 is a lot of pixels! This is a great resolution for displaying text, browsing the web, etc, but it can be a challenge for intensive 3D games to render so much data at a good framerate. To boost performance, some games may prefer to render at a lower resolution, then scale up to fill the display.

We also implemented an automatic rotation feature, so (unlike Zune) you don’t have to write special code to handle portrait, landscape left, and landscape right modes. Just tell us which way up you want to be, and we’ll adjust your graphics rendering and touch input accordingly. This is implemented via special magic in the graphics driver, so there is no performance penalty from choosing a rotated orientation.

When I think about Game Studio on the phone, a recurring theme is that we did a lot of furious padding beneath the water, in order to ship an API that glides smoothly over the surface of the lake. Quoting Charlie Kindel again:

“We will build on the shoulders of giants; where possible integrate instead of create.”

(that’s XNA he is talking about there! He called XNA a giant!!! tee hee…  :-)

In addition to the XNA Framework itself, we integrated existing pieces of awesomeness such as the Direct3D runtime from Windows. But there were also many places where we had to build large and complex things from scratch. For instance, in cooperation with our hardware partners we created an entirely new graphics driver stack, optimized from the ground up for mobile GPU hardware. The strange thing for me is that, while I plan on writing many articles about the API improvements and new features, I probably won’t be talking much about the hard implementation problems I have been working on this last year. Our goal was not only to solve these problems, but to make them go away so thoroughly our customers need never know they existed in the first place.

Did we succeed? Ultimately, you will be the judge of that.

I had a great experience yesterday, working on the demo for my GDC talk. I coded most of it last Thursday, using our Windows framework, with mouse input to switch between the five built-in effects. When I moved this code over to the phone, it “just worked” the first time I tried it on an actual device. Yesterday I found myself with a couple more spare hours, but I had the wrong build on my phone at the time, so I went back to the Windows version of the demo, blinging it up with rendertarget transition effects. Once again, this updated version ran exactly the same on the phone as it did on Windows, which made me feel pretty good!

I can’t wait to show my demo at GDC this week, and later on to show you all the things we have been building so you can try them out yourself.

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:40:11 GMT

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

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XNASpot.com

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XNA Team Blog

Creators Club Communiqué 45

Aloha, Creators!

What a busy week it’s been! Earlier this week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, we announced XNA Game Studio 4.0 and shared a few details about some of the features it will offer all developers.

XNA Game Studio 4.0 beta is slated to become available to the public in the next one to two months. It provides indie developers the ability to develop games for Windows Phone 7 Series devices as well as integration with Visual Studio 2010. Existing and future XBLIGs will also benefit from added buffered audio support to the audio APIs as well as many other features! You’ll want to stay tuned for additional announcements we're planning at MIX 2010! Additional details will be available when we’re closer to release.

XNA Game Studio 4.0 also enables Xbox LIVE Gamer Services APIs for managed developers (managed developers are a select group of developers under contract with Microsoft). This means managed developers will be able to provide a premium gaming experience on Windows Phone 7 Series that can include a user’s gamertag, 2D Avatar, Achievements and asynchronous turn-based gaming; these features are not currently available to non-managed developers. Interested in become a managed developer? Specific details can be found at developer.windowsphone.com

While XNA Game Studio 4.0 is a shift to include studio developers, we haven’t forgotten our amazing indie developers. There are additional improvements Creators will enjoy through XNA Game Studio 4.0, and we’re so excited to share more of these details later this year.

For now, be sure to tune in to Windows Phone 7 Series dev team members on Twitter: (@ckindel) (@shawnhargreaves) (@ozymandias) (@ai) (@cschormann) (@lokeuei) (@mklucher). Don’t forget to check out  Michael Klucher and Shawn Hargreaves’ blogs and, you can even watch video posts from GDC of them through Kluch’s Vimeo account!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

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

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XBLArcade.com

Konami announces 3D Ultra MiniGolf Adventures sequel

Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. has announced that 3D Ultra MiniGolf Adventures 2 will be available for download on the Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. The latest iteration of one of the hottest downloadable minigolf games to date, 3D Ultra MiniGolf Adventures 2 brings innovative graphics, incredible open worlds, and exciting new courses that allow players of all ages to get right back into the swing of things this winter.

In 3D Ultra MiniGolf Adventures 2, players are challenged to navigate their ball beyond obstacles using the help of secret shortcuts, game-changing power-ups and traps to sabotage the competition. Players can also manipulate the game by using special pick-ups to destroy course obstructions or even interfere with competitors shots.

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Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:11:32 -0500

Play Serious Sam HD with the developers on March 13th

Croteam, the creators of the first-person shooter Serious Sam: The First Encounter on Xbox LIVE® Arcade, will play their game with Xbox LIVE® Gold Members in an Xbox LIVE Game with Developers event. If youre a Gold member (if youre not a Member, upgrade now!) join Croteam and XBLArcade.com on Saturday, March 13, from Noon – 4:00 P.M. ET for some serious (har) action.

Return to the golden age of frantic, non-stop shooting action with Serious Sams trademark onslaught of enemies rushing towards you at every turn. From the charging Sirian Werebull to the screaming Headless Kamikaze and the multi-story Ugh-Zan, all of the infamous minions of Lord Mental are back as you battle through more than 12 levels of bedlam set against the expansive backdrop of ancient Egypt with every square inch upgraded and reworked to create one of the most visually stunning experiences on Xbox LIVE Arcade.

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Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:58:36 -0500

XBLA Activity: Week of March 1st-8th

The Xbox LIVE Arcade action-packed strategy-based game that lets you fly planes, zeppelins, and even drive tanks to help your unit succeed in protecting its base, receive a temporary price reduction as part of the ‘Xbox LIVE House/Block Party’ promotions for Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers. And with no arcade title being a part of the ‘Deal of the Week’ promotion, it shouldn’t be surprising then that Toy Soldiers climbed to the top of this week’s top 20!

Every week XBLArcade.com will be publishing the Top 20 list of Xbox LIVE Arcade titles 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 March 1st to March 7th, the Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased), are as follows:

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Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:37:37 -0500

XBLA DLC: FunTown Mahjong - Zen Garden Theme

FunTown Mahjong brings the traditional Chinese board game to Xbox 360®, with a well-balanced design and unique style that is sure to keep you coming back for more. Play against friends over Xbox LIVE®, or take on the challenge of the A.I. opponents. With a tutorial for new players and featuring the 16-tile Mahjong rule set, FunTown Mahjong is great for Mahjong players of all experience levels. Get ready, youll need strategy, wisdom, and luck to win!

FunTown Mahjong - Zen Garden Theme: Unlock the full version of FunTown Mahjong to play even more of this traditional Chinese tile game! The full version includes the ability to compete against your friends on Xbox LIVE or against AI opponents. The Zen Garden Theme allows you to play Mahjong in a Japanese garden surround by red and white Sukura blossoms and the springtime vista of Mount Fuji Mountain. FunTown Mahjong - Zen Garden Theme contains no new achievements and is available now for 160 Microsoft Points. There are no refunds for this item.

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:37:02 -0500

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!

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