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 13:00:00 GMT

Snow Conditions
Snoqualmie Conditions
Mt. Baker Conditions

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 11:31:00 GMT

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Tom Miller's Blog

Make money from your amazing game creations!

Today we announced the Xbox LIVE Community Games.  You can read more information about it (including a FAQ) here.

What is the big thing in the announcements that could be considered exciting?  You'll be able to make money from your creations. 

As an XNA Creator Club premium member you'll be able to submit your games to the service, set a price point for your games (between 200 and 800 Microsoft Points), and after a peer review your game will be available to download by millions of game players on Xbox LIVE.  Every quarter, you'll receive a payment for up to 70% of all money your game has earned.  People will be able to play a trial of your game before they buy it as well.

I remember what seems like forever ago now.  I was sitting in my office trying to convince people that you could use managed code to make games.  That it was feasible to run managed code and make a good game on a console as well as Windows.  I remember the reluctance people had in believing that.  Now look today.  Have you seen Schizoid?  A game that has been released and making money.  Now we have this announcement today.  Almost anyone has the potential to make money by writing a game and getting it on the service.  It couldn't be simpler.

 As for me, I'm celebrating this announcement by taking a trip to Vegas.  (Ok, that's just coincidence, but still).

 

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:56:00 GMT

Community Games!

For those of you who don't read the XNA Team Blog the Community Games on Xbox LIVE feature has gone into a beta release!

Plus, the web site looks much cooler now.

So, what does this mean?  It means that premium members can create a game, submit it for peer review, and then have it available on Xbox LIVE.  There's also a new starter kit, a 2D RPG Game.  There is plenty of information and new cool stuff on the new web site, so go check it out!

Tue, 20 May 2008 22:50:00 GMT

Introducing XNA Game Studio Mind Edition...

I'm probably going to get in trouble for announcing this before any press release has went out publicly, but I find it hard to hold back my excitement!  The next version of the XNA Game Studio product line will be the "XNA Game Studio Mind Edition".

I suspect everyone will want to upgrade to Game Studio ME as soon as possible because it will revolutionize game development as we know it today.  Gone will be the days of having to actually write code for the games you want to do create.  We decided to take our contest theme extremely literally and use that to build our next project.  Dream.  Build.  Play.

With the release of Game Studio ME, developers, hobbyists, pianists, small children, Nobel Prize physicists, and even Maytag repair people will be able to bring their dreams to life.  With our new Game Studio ME Brain Wave Actuator (patent pending) writing games is as simple as donning the new apparatus and taking a nap.  Shortly after you fall asleep soothing music will be played in the ear plugs that come with the device, and a series of electrical jolts will be given to stimulate your brain and activate REM sleep.  Once you wake up a few hours later, you can simply go to your computer and click the "Build" button in Game Studio ME (it will be easy to find, it is the only option available) and your dream will now be packaged up as a ready to play game!

I know what you're thinking though.  Is this safe?  Here at Microsoft safety is our number one concern for our customers.  We've only had a handful of people die while using the device, and the number of people still suffering from serious mental defects from the electrical charges has shrunk by dozens!  By the time we have finished our beta testing, we fully expect the odds of serious injury to be less than 10%.  Speaking of beta testing, we're actively looking for volunteers.  You'll have to sign a waiver though.

I must also add that we've ran into one minor problem with our implementation however.  It seems in our zest to follow our contest theme no one took the time to realize that the majority of people don't really dream about things that translate well into games.  As a matter of fact, some of the so called games we've seen have been down-right demented.  To help protect our interests (and your own) we've decided to upload a copy of everyone's dreams to our servers locally.  Here at Microsoft though, we take privacy almost as seriously as we do safety, and you can rest assured that your private intimate thoughts from your dreams will be seen only by those who have a very real need to.  These people will include local law enforcement, Joe from accounting, and we will randomly play some of them during regularly scheduled team meetings.  You know how they say everyone has that dream where they go to school/work in their underwear?  If our team meeting videos prove anything it's that this is a very real statement.

Since we know our customers want and need the new Game Studio ME as soon as possible, but we discovered this "problem" with the games being produced a bit too late for this product cycle, we've decided to release on schedule in the fall, and follow up with a service release next spring.  This service release will be a prescription you can fill at your local pharmacy, and we've dubbed it the eXactPill release.  You will be able to use Game Studio XP once it is released to control what you're dreaming about by simply taking a pill before putting on the device, and thinking about whatever you want your game to be about.

While that is the latest and greatest news from my team, I also need to get a little personal in this space as well.  If there's one thing I'm pretty sure of it is that people are desparate for information on what is going on in my life.  I'm pleased to announce that I was selected as one of the finalists for the prestigious National Award Given to Young Origami Understudies (NAGYOU).  With any luck my rendition of the two-toed sloth will bring home the prize.  I'm really hoping I win, because if I do I plan on taking the opportunity the prize money will give me to pursue my real dream in life, which I'm sure you are all aware is bringing back Boo Berries all year round, not just around Halloween.  Unfortunately though, the contest will pull me away from my every day workings, so I'll be taking a leave of absence from Microsoft for a few years preparing by folding many pieces of paper, then unfolding them, and folding them again.  If my blog posts start to dwindle, this is why.

I have to admit, I feel excited to get all of this off of my chest now.  I haven't felt this good in at least a year.  Must be something in the air.

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:24:00 GMT

I just tried to use four render targets on my Xbox 360 and it failed!!

Dear Mr Miller, you suck.  I'm running in 1080p resolution, and needed to have four simultaneous render targets, and a depth buffer, and I can't do it.

--

Now, to be fair, I didn't actually receive a message like that, but I could see it happening (and I've gotten some similar).  One of the features that we added this last release was the ability to use multiple simultaneous render targets on Xbox (up to four of them).  However, this isn't without restriction.  All render targets that will be used on the device need to fit within the EDRAM (a 10MB chunk of memory). This includes the depth buffer if it exists.  EDRAM isn't very big at all.

Let's take a look at an example.  Your Xbox is rendering in wide screen 720p mode with a resolution of 1280x720.  You set your game to run at this exact same resolution with a surface format of Color (32bits) and a 32bit depth buffer as well.  You also turn on 2x multisampling because you hate jaggies like the rest of us.  All of this data needs to fit into EDRAM, so let's see how big we are.  Each pixel in the back buffer will be 8 bytes (32bit for color, double it for multisampling).  There are 1280x720 pixels, so the back buffer will be taking up approximately 7.3MB of memory.  The depth buffer is the same size, so that's another 7.3MB, and we're looking at a total of almost 15MB of data we need to store in our 10MB chunk of memory.

As you can see, even this simple scenario we overstepped our bounds.  Luckily, we have a mechanism (called "tiling") that allows us to work with this data anyway.  We essentially break our large 1280x720 set of pixels into a series of smaller sets of pixels that *do* fit within the memory constraints.  In the example above, the back buffer could be broken down into two separate "tiles" of size 640x720 with 2X multisampling, and things would work just fine.  With only two possible consumers of this chunk of memory in version one (the back buffer and the depth buffer), you could easily fit the largest possible back buffer sizes within this chunk of memory.

In version two though, we allow up to five consumers of this memory (four simultaneous render targets and the depth buffer).  The memory is broken up equally by all consumers, so in the maximum case, each render target and buffer has to fit within 2 MB of EDRAM.  You can imagine if I called 10MB small what I think about 2MB.  I'm sure you could just think "Well sure Miller, that's fine, but we could just create hundreds of little tiles and make it all fit."

There are two big issues with this.  First, performance would be horrible.  Each tile that is rendered actually will have your *entire* scene rendered on to it, then the results of the tiles glued together.  In a complex scene this could add up very very quickly.  Second (and more importantly) we only allow a maximum of 15 tiles to be created at one time.  If your render target or depth buffer cannot fit inside 2MB of memory with 15 tiles or less, you will fail. 

Knowing that, what size of render targets can you make?  What if you have a 2048x2048 render target (surface format of Color) with no multisampling?  Would that fit if you had four of them at the same time?  A quick and dirty way of figuring it out would be this:

2048 * 2048 = 4MB * 4bytes (color) = 16MB (total amount of memory needed) / 2MB (maximum size) == 8

So, you'd need 8 tiles for this buffer to render correctly, 8 is less than 15 so you'd be safe.  What if you added 2x multisampling though?

2048 * 2048 == 4MB  * 8 bytes (color+ms) == 32 MB (total amount of memory needed) / 2MB (maximum size) == 16

Nope, 16 tiles is too many, this wouldn't fit.  What if you didn't have a depth buffer though?  Depth buffer counts as a buffer in the EDRAM so without it, you'd have 2.5MB per surface available:

2048 * 2048 == 4MB  * 8 bytes (color+ms) == 32 MB (total amount of memory needed) / 2.5MB (maximum size) == 13

13 tiles, you'd fit again!

It's also important to point out that not all tiles are created equal.  Tiles aren't calculated based on a memory size, but on a pixel size.  Odd shaped (ie, non-square) render targets will create odd shaped tiles, and the last tile may be larger than needed to account for that.  For example, if you have a 1280x720 surface and 3 tiles used in that, you can be assured that you don't have 3 separate tiles each of size 426.67x720.  Each tile is rounded up to the next size it can be (normally a mutliple of 32).  In the case above, that 1280x720 surface would really be three tiles of size 448x720 with the third title having some "empty" space in it.  So if you do your little math above and it comes to exactly 15 tiles, you still may be too big if the tiles aren't the size you'd expect.

Do I really expect someone to try to create and use four simultaneous 2048x2048 Color render targets with 4x multisampling and a 32bit depth buffer?  Well no, because as you've seen here, it would fail!  However, if it does fail, at least this hopefully explains why!

By the way, in reference to my fake first question.  You can actually do this just fine, so long as you aren't using 4x multisampling, and even with 4x multisampling, it just barely doesn't fit with a depth buffer (1900x1080x16bytes == 31.3 MB / 2MB == 15.6 tiles).  Four 2x multisampled render targets at 1080p would fit though.

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:06:00 GMT

Why CornflowerBlue?

This post will be purely speculation by me! 

Take a time travel machine back in time to early 2003.  It might have even been late 2002, but I think it was 2003. I was coming up with the concepts and code that would eventually be my first kick start book, and was rendering everything on a bland black background.  For some things, black makes sense, but it's hard to see shaded objects (and particular shadows, etc) on black objects.  Black in general is a horrible color to use as a clear color.  If you clear your scene to black, then render a model and see nothing but black, what went wrong?  Was the model not drawn because your camera is facing the wrong way?  Was the model drawn, but not colored because your pixel shader wasn't set?  You could tell the difference if your background wasn't black.

I needed something brighter, and white was out of the question.  I can stare at a white screen all day as I type text, but a white background with a single 3D object on it is just too contrasting and is ugly in my opinion.  So i needed a color that was light, but not too light, dark, but not too dark, and it needed to be something that I would feel comfortable using for just about anything.

So, as I was inside visual studio, I typed "System.Drawing.Color" then hit the extra period and started scrolling through intellisense, stopping at ones that sounded promising and trying them out.  I eventually narrowed it down to a light shade of blue.  I had narrowed my choice down to "LightBlue" "DodgerBlue" "PowderedBlue" "RoyalBlue" and "CornflowerBlue".  For various reasons I eliminated a couple more and came down to a list of three left.

I had to choose between CornflowerBlue, RoyalBlue, and DodgerBlue.  I tried various models on each of the background colors, and finally decided that RoyalBlue and DodgerBlue were too "bold" and contrasted too much, but CornflowerBlue was a much more "calm" color, and everything I tried looked good against it.  Plus who wants to use a color called "RoyalBlue" or "DodgerBlue" when "CornflowerBlue" is such a cooler name.

If you've read my Kickstart book, the vast majority of sample code in there clears all of the backgrounds to CornflowerBlue.  Every sample I've written since that point in time does as well.

Can I say with any sense of certainty that everyone else uses it because I did way back then?  Probably not, I'm sure there are people who haven't even read that book!  At times though, I like to delude myself and think I started the craze way back then. =)

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:55:00 GMT

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Michael Klucher's XNA Blog

New Home!

I've moved! You can now find my blog at http://klucher.com, hope to see you there!

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 20:55:49 GMT

Go Neville!

I found this great video via the Canadian Developers blog on MSDN. This was from an game camp that took place at the University of Waterloo on January 19th, 2007. Neville talks a little about his game that he created "Super Paddle Ball 2" and hints that we may get to see a sequel "Super Paddle Ball 3" soon. This kinda stuff is awesome to see! Go Neville!

Did anyone else in Canada happen to attend the event?

Video: Game Camp Waterloo 2007 - Neville Samuell
Fri, 26 Jan 2007 17:37:32 GMT

Happy 2007!

A quick post to say Happy New Year to everyone! Here's looking forward to a great 2007!

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 08:02:09 GMT

Two Week Wrap-Up Post

Okay it's been a while since I blogged on my personal blog. So I present to you my "wrap-up" post for the last two weeks, sorry that it's compressed and bounces around but time flew by too quickly to keep up!

We released XNA Game Studio Express!

That's right! Shocking news but it's the truth :-) as evident by my posting on the team blog here. Seriously though, I doubt I really need to tell you that as you already knew but I wanted to say it was great to come in Monday morning and get everything released. Shawn and Kevin also joined me for the release at work and they have some great posts about the event that are worth reading. On a slightly more funny note here is a picture we took of me showing off my mehndi tattoo that I got of our release date at the company party the prior night.

The whole process was really a blast. I ended up coming into work early and passing the time by watching some movies I had already seen from Xbox Live Marketplace. For my double feature I picked The Sum of All Fears and then The Core (I know what your thinking!). It was just a convenient way to burn some time before 2:00AM rolled around. One surprising thing was how on the ball everyone is with releases. People were noticing things coming online as we're working with them even early in the morning! 

I've now been at Microsoft a whole year!

Only one day after releasing the final version of XNA Game Studio Express, I hit my one year anniversary at Microsoft. Needless to say it's been quite a year! I'm not sure but I think it's pretty rare for people to develop and ship a product within their first year of Microsoft so I am pretty proud of that. I know some people may think that working at Microsoft is like being a number or something but that's so far off from the truth. Pretty much I get up and go to work with a bunch of my friends to try and solve problems and make great software. If you've ever been interested in working for Microsoft I'd say go for it, it's a great environment to be in.

Where did the power go?

Last Thursday, we got hit with a huge storm that was all over the news, with winds up to 70 MPH it left almost 1 Million people without power. Between the wind knocking my house around like it was a small branch on a tree and that I was without power for a week it really ended throwing things off. It could have been much worse so I am glad nothing major happened. There certainly has been some strange weather in the last few months. Between floods, snows, and now the storm I think I've had all the extreme weather I need for the next 10 years or so.

Thanks for all your feedback!

I just wanted to thank you all for taking the time to leave some comments on my "feedback" posts. We really do use the information and suggestions you have so keep them coming! I'll probably be posting more soon, everything from suggestions for the XNA Team Blog to features in future versions, so hopefully I'll come across topics that you have opinions about. Again thanks for taking the time to leave comments on that stuff!

Well that about covers everything for right now, I'll get back to a regular posting schedule but in the mean time have a very Merry Christmas and I hope you all are enjoying the release of XNA Game Studio Express!

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 18:34:33 GMT

Supporting the Tablet PC and UMPC Platforms?

As I mentioned in a post on the XNA Team Blog we're currently investigating feature options for the next version of XNA Game Studio Express.

One of the ideas we've kicked around is supporting features in the Tablet PC and UMPC platforms. Features like the touch screen and "ink" on the Tablet PC are things that come to mind and I think this could enable some unique games using the input scenarios above.

My questions for those of you using XNA:GSE are, do you own a Tablet PC or UMPC and would developing games for that take advantage of things like the stylus input appealing to you? Do you think it would be something you would use?

Another question or concern as mine is how do feel about implementing these types of things into the XNA Framework if it can't be used on the Xbox 360? One of the goals we've had is keeping feature parity between the Xbox 360 and Windows, Do you think it would be frustrating to have the pen as an input device available to you but only working on Tablet PC's?

Let me know what you're thinking!

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 00:05:39 GMT

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MSDN Forums: XNA Framework

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XNA and Xbox 360

XNA Team Blog : Xbox LIVE Community Games is Open for Business!
Some people are reporting having trouble logging on to Xbox.com to sign the new Terms of Use. If that includes you, try signing this through your Xbox 360 console instead. ... XNA Creators Club Online ...


stjoenews.net | Xbox 360 releases new dashboard
One cool new addition to the Game Marketplace is XNA Community Games. Play games created by gamers just like you! If you're a gamer who wants to submit games to Xbox LIVE, get the full scoop at the XNA Creators Club Online site. ...


Wheelman rolls out on Feb. 16 - Xbox 360 News - QJ.NET
Xbox 360 News- 24/7 Coverage of the Latest Xbox 360 Homebrew, Games, Hacks and Exploits. ... (2141). Xbox Live. (2175). XNA Studio Homebrew. (48). Titles. Archives. November 2008 � October 2008 � September 2008 ...


XNA community games? - AVForums.com
Anyone have any idea whats going on with the XNA community games? They seem to be available on the American xbox live marketplace but the European. ... AVForums.com > Gaming > Microsoft Console Gaming > Xbox 360 ...


European Game Releases - New Xbox Experience Special Preview (Part ...
In Games Library, you see a mightly big collection of games which are on your Xbox 360, everything from your disc based 360 games, Arcade titles, XNA games, Xbox Originals and Demos. And yes, I did say 360 titles but why? ...


GameSetWatch - GamerBytes Special: Inside XNA Community Games, Part 1
In just two days, the "New Xbox Experience" will be downloaded by millions of Xbox 360 users, and with that comes the XNA Community Games section, showcasing indie and hobbyist titles which will cost 200-800 points ($2.50-$10) to ...


NEW XBOX 360 FIRMWARE! [poll] - Zune Boards
View Poll Results: What is your favorite new feature with the xbox 360 firmware? Backed up Games, 4, 40.00%. Avatar, 2, 20.00%. XNA Games, 0, 0%. Parties, 1, 10.00%. I Hate the xbox 360 new update, 1, 10.00% ...


Indie Games Invade Xbox 360 - GayGamer.net
Indie Games Invade Xbox 360. community_games.png. Today the New Xbox Experience is finally upon us, and after I set it up and made my avatar I decided to wander around the new settings and features for a while. ...


1st Indonesian Xbox 360 Game: MVP Xbox Supports Local Software ...
@arhiez: versi PC-nya udah ada bos, kan kalo bikin pake XNA Game Studio Express, jalan both di Windows dan di Xbox 360... soalnya Xbox 360 kan running .NET Framework juga (lebih di-optimized buat gaming tapi). ...


The Koalition - The Urban Gamers Blog » Why Some Feel XNA Is The ...
For those who don’t know XNA is game programing software created by Microsoft, that can make games for Xbox 360 & PC. Its not an easy point, click & drag game program, but if your a coder or have some determination to learn the code if ...

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