Free Xbox 360 Game Dev Tool!

[AzBat]

Of which 4500-9500 will be crap. But still better than nothing, there I agree. Might still be some jewels there.

With the Live rating system and user feedback, finding one of those jewels shouldn't be much of a problem. Makes for some very interesting possibilities.

This could also be very interesting to see how the current mod community responds. I'm hopeful that they will embrace it, but unfortunately I expect some will want to exploit it. Though from the initial response I've been reading elsewhere, most seem rather excited and surprised.

BTW, TeamXbox has a new 3-page article on the tool:

http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/1688/XNA-Game-Studio-Express-Power-to-the-Gamers/p1/

Has a link to the free Visual Studio Express, plus an interview with a professor from Georgia Tech. They also clarify that the $99/year subscription is not a requirement.

Also found this:

I got some questions answered about it. Here goes:

The beta released at the end of the month will be just on the PC. The release version (at the end of the year) will let anyone with a "creator's club" membership ($99 per year) create builds on their PC to run on their Xbox 360. You'll basically take your Xbox 360 on the same local network as your PC, set it to listen for a code dump from your PC running the Game Studio Express, and then on your PC you hit the 'ol "compile and run on 360" thing. Very similar to the actual pro development environment, only it works on retail 360s (on the same local network, provided you have a creator's club membership activated on that console).

You can share your games to anyone else in the creator's club. Just send the XNA project to them in email, on a memory key, put it up on your site for download, whatever. They load it up on their PC in their copy of XNA Game Studio Express, and send it to their Xbox.

The goal is that, in the future, they'll have a channel for people who are not members of the creator's club to download and play the homebrew games. Like, there's Live Aracade, and there will be Creator's Arcade or some such. Anyone in the creator's club would theoretically be able to submit to Creator's Arcade and MS would examine it to make sure it's not really a pirate game or won't harm your Xbox, then they put it up for everyone to download and check out. That aspect of it is a little further out (think next year) and they're still working on details like ownership and copyright, how they'll examine submissions for safety, etc.
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http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=711831&postcount=8

Tommy McClain

 

[expletive]

Just from reading this thread it seems like great news. I give MS some credit for seeing the potential here and formalizing the whole community and development process. While i'm sure it was a decision based primarily on the monetization (?) of the whole thing, in the end it seems a real win for indie and budding game developers. Also, a win for gamers too!

 

[Titanio]

FAQ: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/

Initially it seems you'll be distributing your games to other club members in a pretty round-about way - you don't share binaries directly over Live, but you have to send all your code/content/assets to the other member, and they compile and build on their own machine (MS endorsing open-source shocker ). Sharing via memory cards won't be possible. All efforts made using this for now must be non-commercial also.

Also confirms it's C# only, and seemingly that you may be limited to file formats (for assets) that MS supports (can you code your own importers?).

 

[darkblu]

FAQ: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/

Initially it seems you'll be distributing your games to other club members in a pretty round-about way - you don't share binaries directly over Live, but you have to send all your code/content/assets to the other member, and they compile and build on their own machine (MS endorsing open-source shocker ). Sharing via memory cards won't be possible. All efforts made using this for now must be non-commercial also.

Also confirms it's C# only, and seemingly that you may be limited to file formats (for assets) that MS supports (can you code your own importers?).

as good as it initially sounded to me, that's turning more into a half-assed move now - i can swallow the c# (i've eaten plenty of other ms shit to have any sensitivity left whatsoever) but distribution only among other club members? WTF - that's not real homebew if it cannot reach the masses and people can freely download and check out your stuff. ..let's hope ms don't remain with that foot hanging in the air there but actually complete that step.

 

[Titanio]

as good as it initially sounded to me, that's turning more into a half-assed move now - i can swallow the c# (i've eaten plenty of other ms shit to have any sensitivity left whatsoever) but distribution only among other club members? WTF - that's not real homebew if it cannot reach the masses and people can freely download and check out your stuff. ..let's hope ms don't remain with that foot hanging in the air there but actually complete that step.

To a degree, as is at the moment, it's like PS2Linux in that regard. Only other people who bought it could enjoy your work. But they're making noises about opening it up later, perhaps.

We kind of knew that from the outset, though (perhaps it wasn't entirely clear). I was more surprised by the technicalities of distribution, that you couldn't just share binaries over Live with other club members. Not that it's a big deal, but kind of interesting.

 

[Sis]

as good as it initially sounded to me, that's turning more into a half-assed move now - i can swallow the c# (i've eaten plenty of other ms shit to have any sensitivity left whatsoever) but distribution only among other club members? WTF - that's not real homebew if it cannot reach the masses and people can freely download and check out your stuff. ..let's hope ms don't remain with that foot hanging in the air there but actually complete that step.

AzBat's post above Titanio directly talks about how they're working to solve the distribution issue. And using C# is actually a smart move, since it'll be easier to sandbox or perform statiic analysis of the code to make sure it's safe.

 

[Titanio]

AzBat's post above Titanio directly talks about how they're working to solve the distribution issue. And using C# is actually a smart move, since it'll be easier to sandbox or perform statiic analysis of the code to make sure it's safe.

Well, C# is understandable from MS's point-of-view, on a number of levels (not least the politics of advocating its adoption), and it is a nice language, particularly for beginners, but some people will certainly have been hoping that straight C++ would have been an option (*raises hand* ).

 

[Sis]

Well, C# is understandable from MS's point-of-view, on a number of levels (not least the politics of advocating its adoption), and it is a nice language, particularly for beginners, but some people will certainly have been hoping that straight C++ would have been an option (*raises hand* ).

Sure, but for this kind of system forcing the games to be managed code makes sense, and it has less to do with the friendliness of c# and more to do with the runtime characteristics of managed code.

I would be saying the same thing if they went with Java, for instance. They may yet allow for c++ to be used, but I would wonder how they'd do verifcation for distribution purposes.

 

[Demirug]

Native C++ would break the one binary for all platforms solution they are seems to looking for. Additional there must be a difference between the Express and professional version of XNA Studio.

 

[Titanio]

I appreciate all of those points, but as an end user, it doesn't make me want a straight C++ option any less

By the way, according to this article, they're looking at a "YouTube" style service for opening up content beyond the $99/year club for 3-5 years down the line

http://news.com.com/Play+your+own+Xbox+game/2100-1043_3-6104939.html?tag=nefd.lede

I hoped it'd be a lot quicker than that. Effectively, for 360, it might be limited to creators only ala PS2 Linux.

 

[darkblu]

AzBat's post above Titanio directly talks about how they're working to solve the distribution issue. And using C# is actually a smart move, since it'll be easier to sandbox or perform statiic analysis of the code to make sure it's safe.

but i thought their platform was secure? or at least they were planning to make it so.

Native C++ would break the one binary for all platforms solution they are seems to looking for.

come on, that's not serious - there're other ways to generate one binary for all platforms other than p-code - what stops them from generating fat binaries?

Additional there must be a difference between the Express and professional version of XNA Studio.

that's a much more likely explanation.

 

[Demirug]

come on, that's not serious - there're other ways to generate one binary for all platforms other than p-code - what stops them from generating fat binaries?

The size of the download. Not everybody have a high speed link.

 

[darkblu]

The size of the download. Not everybody have a high speed link.

Demi, in the average game project the size of your art assets is so much greater than the size of your code that doubling it is nothing you'd lose your sleep over.

ed: not to mention ms are not worried one bit of large donwloadables over the live. how's 900MB for a game demo for you?

 

[Demirug]

Demi, in the average game project the size of your art assets is so much greater than the size of your code that doubling it is nothing you'd lose your sleep over.

Yes but if they use the same limits for this kind of games they use for Live Arcade you will be happy for every byte.

ed: not to mention ms are not worried one bit of large donwloadables over the live. how's 900MB for a game demo for you?

Different business units different rules.

 

[AzBat]

FAQ: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/

Initially it seems you'll be distributing your games to other club members in a pretty round-about way - you don't share binaries directly over Live, but you have to send all your code/content/assets to the other member, and they compile and build on their own machine (MS endorsing open-source shocker ). Sharing via memory cards won't be possible. All efforts made using this for now must be non-commercial also.

Also confirms it's C# only, and seemingly that you may be limited to file formats (for assets) that MS supports (can you code your own importers?).

Titanio,

Thanks for the link. It clears up quite a bit of details...

Q: How exactly can I share my 360 game to other 360 users? Will my game only be available to people with the XNA “Creators Clubâ€￾ subscription? Will it be available to all 360 users that have an Xbox Live account?

A: There is currently no supported way to share binaries on the Xbox 360. Currently, there are four requirements that must be met in order to share a game targeting Xbox 360 which is developed with XNA Game Studio Express.

The individual you are planning to share the game with must be logged in to Xbox Live and have an active subscription to the XNA Creators Club

The receiving user must have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for the Xbox 360

The receiving user must have XNA Game Studio Express installed on their own development PC

The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.

They also say the Xbox 360 will require a hard drive. This is probably because you'll have to download the XNA Framework Runtime from Marketplace. Good news is the Creator's Club subscription will also be purchased via Marketplace either a one-time fee of $99 or $49 for 4 months. The $99 deal sounds alot better, but if you think you can develop or debug your game in 4 months more power to you.

As for the Windows side, you'll need XP SP2, a Windows Live ID, and a DirectX 9.0 card with minium Shader 1.1(2.0 recommended).

Anyway, it seems like a great start for the program. I can really see opening the homebrew games to non "Creator Club" members taking some time. I've read varying opinions on when that will happen, but evidently it could happen as early as next spring when XNA Game Studio Professional ships.

Tommy McClain

 

[expletive]

I appreciate all of those points, but as an end user, it doesn't make me want a straight C++ option any less

The longer term strategy here is for MS to make C# and XNA a marketable skill for game development. Ideally for them, it becomes a mandatory skill.

How do you do that? You make that skill integral to your development platform and then you make it cheap and easy to find that skill. How do you do that? You create a program like this where you're facilitating a academy of of programmers that are young, eager, maybe talented, but definitely CHEAP.

MS did the same thing in the business space against Solaris. Why did MS gain so much marketshare there, even in industries where UNIX reliability was important? Because the TOC of windows is WORLDS cheaper than UNIX due to labor (and also the commoditization of windows hardware). Back in the day the UNIX SA's made 2-3x what the windows guys did. Its a proven formula for MS and i think its really a key part of how MS plans to get the best developers/games on their platform (which MS is now positioning as the combined xbox and GFW combined platform).

 

[Proelite]

Titanio,
Good news is the Creator's Club subscription will also be purchased via Marketplace either a one-time fee of $99 or $49 for 4 months. The $99 deal sounds alot better, but if you think you can develop or debug your game in 4 months more power to you.
Tommy McClain

I think that most of the debugging will be taken place on pc. The creator's club is just for sharing the content, I believe.

 

[AzBat]

The more I think about it, even if I will never design my own game, I'm sure I would at least pay $49 to get unlimited homebrew games for 4 months. That's the same price as one full game or up to 10 Live Arcade games.

The next question is: do those games quit working after the 4 months? What happens to the XNA Framework Runtime after the subscription expires? Just more questions I guess. LOL

Tommy McClain

 

[Proelite]

The more I think about it, even if I will never design my own game, I'm sure I would at least pay $49 to get unlimited homebrew games for 4 months. That's the same price as one full game or up to 10 Live Arcade games.

The next question is: do those games quit working after the 4 months? What happens to the XNA Framework Runtime after the subscription expires? Just more questions I guess. LOL

Tommy McClain

I would guess the games stay on your harddrive, but you won't be able to share or play online with the members of the creator's club. I think this program is more focused on people getting experience making console games, rather than the people who wants to play home-brew.

 

[AzBat]

I think that most of the debugging will be taken place on pc. The creator's club is just for sharing the content, I believe.

Actually it seems debugging happens on both...

Q: How can you debug XNA-based games running on the Xbox 360?

A: Debugging on the console is supported through a remote debugging connection from a Windows desktop running XNA Game Studio Express.

My last post also ponders the question of whether the game will cease to run at all after it's been downloaded to the Xbox 360 and the subscription is over. If the Creator's Club is only for sharing like you say, then it would seem to me that the game should continue to work. However, if there's more to it than sharing, then something tells me the games might cease to work.

Tommy McClain