XNA GameStudio

[Chr0n1x]

XNA Game Studio Express is a new offering, targeted at students and hobbyists for game development. XNA Game Studio is based on Visual C# express 2005 and lets developers target both Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express contains the following:

The XNA Framework Content Pipeline which is a set of tools that allow developers to more easily incorporate 3D content into their games
The XNA Framework is a set of managed code development libraries which will allow game developers to be more productive when creating games for Windows and the Xbox 360.
Game Studio Express also contains a full set of documentation, how-to?s and starter-kits that demonstrate how best to utilize the content pipeline and XNA Framework.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/gamestudio/

Check it out if you haven't already.

[mikeschuld]

Looks like the beta comes out the day before my birthday. Good timing IMHO

[Chr0n1x]

Haha, nice.
Here is another link I found, XNA Team finally has a blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/
Their story is in there. A lot of talk about the secrecy over the 360 that pained them. The rest is also very interesting, it explains what they are doing, how they are doing it and what they did to get here.

[mikeschuld]

Running Managed Code straight on the XBOX 360 should be interesting. Maybe we will have to move the development of the engine over to the new GameStudio platform so we can take advantages of both sides of the market.

[Chr0n1x]

Hmm, wonder how much work that'll have to be, although we are going to have to do that pretty much when we want to convert this engine to XNA. Since it seems you do not need extra effort to use it on the 360 as well, we can offer steps for those who can pay the $95 Creators club charge. I personally don't have a 360 yet, but as soon as I have money to burn im gonna grab one.
Thing is, many people who do this only as a hobby will not be able/want to spend that much money per year on the club. Note that I completely support the idea to transfer, im simply discussing one of the issues with Microsoft's system.
How much is a normal Live Gold membership per year anyway? Just so I can get a comparison. Remember I live in Aus and $95 is actually about $130 here. (Rough guess) A fileplanet sub costs less than that and you get more in the end I think. Unless you are completely obsessed with Xbox360 MP.

[chaoscentral]

well you dont need to have a gold account to take advantage of the creators club. also a Gold membership is around 50 dollars a year, but is only needed if you intend to play online, although I'm not to sure if it comes included with the creators club thing. All I know, is as soon as it's available, I'm signing up.

[mikeschuld]

Personally I find the new XBOX to be a bit pathetic. Now that could be because my video card alone costs as much as that entire system, but having run Oblivion on both the 360 and my AMD64 w/ATI X1900 XTX, I was very unimpressed. Not just with graphics either. Load times and object popping were significantly worse on the 360. Granted this could have to do with Bethesda not optimizing their 360 compile as much as they did for the PC (which would most likely be because optimizing for the 360 isn't as easy as the PC). At any rate, I was very glad to have my old roomate buy the system instead of myself, and it will take some very easy to use development tools before I buy one, since I'll only be using it to write games on.

On a side note, the PS3 is going to be sweet, not really that much better hardware wise as far as I know, but the games that are coming out with it on launch should take your breath away. Assassins Creed being my main interest in purchasing at the moment. I wouldn't mind spending a few hours hanging out with that game's producer either.

http://www.thehazymind.com/images/jaderaymond.jpg

[Chr0n1x]

Problem with the PS3 is the launch price. Like the OPSM editor, there just are not any 'exclusive' games that spark my interest in the PS3. Once it drops in price sure, but atm it is set to cost $1000 here in Aus, thats just a bit too much. GTA4 is coming on both systems at once, and that would be the game that would decide what console to get. I use my computer more, for both games and of course developing.
One thing I must give to the PS3 is the new 'Cell' CPU. That is going to be sweet, it has so many cores and it can be really powerful.

[chaoscentral]

Personally I find the new XBOX to be a bit pathetic. Now that could be because my video card alone costs as much as that entire system, but having run Oblivion on both the 360 and my AMD64 w/ATI X1900 XTX, I was very unimpressed. Not just with graphics either. Load times and object popping were significantly worse on the 360. Granted this could have to do with Bethesda not optimizing their 360 compile as much as they did for the PC (which would most likely be because optimizing for the 360 isn't as easy as the PC). At any rate, I was very glad to have my old roomate buy the system instead of myself, and it will take some very easy to use development tools before I buy one, since I'll only be using it to write games on.

On a side note, the PS3 is going to be sweet, not really that much better hardware wise as far as I know, but the games that are coming out with it on launch should take your breath away. Assassins Creed being my main interest in purchasing at the moment. I wouldn't mind spending a few hours hanging out with that game's producer either.

http://www.thehazymind.com/images/jaderaymond.jpg

If you're getting the PS3 for assassin's creed... I'd save your money, its coming for the 360 as well...

[Kinslayer]

Sup guys!

So now that we announced XNA, I am very happy to come back here and see what's up. I work on the XNA team actually, and have been checking out this site for a while. I think you've done very good work and I am quite happy to help out with XNA and your stuff.

So... to answer some of your questions

How hard will it be to port HazyMind Engine to XNA?

Very very very easy. I played around with your engine a while back and converted it to XNA framework in no time. Can't find the sources I changed though ;( But I know I can do it again. Basically, XNA framework is more .NET style than MDX was. You pretty much have all the infrastructure you need to port yours to XNA. The one big difference is that XNA is NOT fixed function. But that's not a problem since you have a shader system running right now. Just need to make sure everything uses it.

The other part that right now might be annoying is that we don't have an .X loaders in the XNA framework. That's because we have something called "Content Pipeline" that is being developed now (won't be in this coming beta, sorry) that makes importing content from .X and .FBX VERY easy and provides runtime loaders for your code. Should be part of the beta after this one.

How much is Xbox live?

50 US dollars/year is what Xbox live costs. The XNA subscription for Xbox is $99/year that is independant of the Xbox live. You don't need Xbox live Gold to get XNA.

Will this work nicely on the Xbox 360?

Yep! We're doing all we can to make this as seamless as possible between PC and Xbox 360. We're getting quite good perf on the Xbox right now. Don't expect to build Halo 3 though It's more along the lines of the Arcade titles... even the heavy ones. There won't be any Xbox live access through your code of course. But you can do System link if i recall correctly (I am not workign on the Xbox 360 side of the project).

Xbox 360 graphics not so good vs PC

Well yeah! PC will always evolve past a console very fast Just a fact of life. The Xbox 360 does pack a LOT of power though! I doubt your PC is a tri-core system But really.. in the end it's all about the tools and framework that's available. We believe that we'll provide a very compelling and easy to use set of tools for making games on the Xbox 360 for hobbyists and in the very near future the professional developers. People were VERY excited about XNA in Gamefest last week. I think we hit the spot with a lot of our audience.

I'll be visiting here every now and then to see what you guys are up to Have fun!

[Chr0n1x]

Tell me if you can, the unified shader architecture, will that force us to change our shader code or will XNA or the Xbox fix it all up for us? I personally love the idea of a unified Shader Architecture and when ATI (the creators) put one of those processors into a computer everything ran so much faster.

I doubt your PC is a tri-core system

Soon enough we will have quad-core (eg, sometime next year) and even sooner we will have Dual-Cpu motherboards. (See AMD 4x4)

[Kinslayer]

Tell me if you can, the unified shader architecture, will that force us to change our shader code or will XNA or the Xbox fix it all up for us? I personally love the idea of a unified Shader Architecture and when ATI (the creators) put one of those processors into a computer everything ran so much faster.

I doubt your PC is a tri-core system

Soon enough we will have quad-core (eg, sometime next year) and even sooner we will have Dual-Cpu motherboards. (See AMD 4x4)

I do not know the answer to that question off the top of my head now. But i'll send it around now and reply back with the response!

[Chr0n1x]

Any answer on that question?

Onto my main point of this post...
Here it comes! GameStudio(beta) is due really soon, get ready!

[mikeschuld]

I'm at work right now, but I'll be going home early today probably to start porting the Hazy Mind Engine over. I have a full port to .NET 2.0 as we speak (as of last night actually), so like our XNA friend has said, the port should be relatively simple. Guess we'll see later tonight.

[Nelson]

What exactly is the XNA Framework? Is it a Game Engine or a .NET Rendering Engine?

Is the XNA Game Studio just a Game Engine ontop of XNA?

I'd think that XNA offers a higher level of abstraction ontop of the Rendering Engine (Entity Management, Scripting ability, abstracting File I/O on the 360, etc..), maybe I have this all wrong but if this ia a Framework ontop of a Framework specifically for Game development isn't it more than just a Rendering Engine?

I understand it offers neat things like the eliminated of the FFP and a Unified Shader Architecture but I just want to know if it's something completely radical or just a great leap over MDX.