Gdc '08

P

PARANOiA

Veteran
Since it's pretty much here, I thought I'd kick it off by giving you a glimpse of the floorplan, thanks to a Whirlpoolian. Look at that MS booth!

Overall my expecations are low, however Sony did rock GDC last year. Hopefully there's some good news all round. I fully expect to see Gears 2 in some form, along with a lot of Home and LBP news.

Any B3D'ers attending?
 
If we're going by proximity + column = buy!, then I'm more intrigued by the implied Microsoft - Mary Margaret connection.
 
Microsoft has something big to announce tomorrow at 11:30am PST (7:30pm GMT).

gdc08-xna-shroud.jpg


http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/18/gdc08-mysterious-shroud-hides-xna-secret

Vote in their poll on what you think it is. Results so far are pretty interesting. LOL

Tommy McClain
 
Pink XB360 Arcade!!! Okay, reading the article rather than just looking at the picture, perhaps they listened to my grumbles in the XNA thread and are rolling out a home-brew community games service? If so, I want my cut...
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Pink XB360 Arcade!!! Okay, reading the article rather than just looking at the picture, perhaps they listened to my grumbles in the XNA thread and are rolling out a home-brew community games service? If so, I want my cut...
Click to expand...

LOL, well good luck with that.

BTW, Microsoft already announced they're giving away programming tools to students as part of their new DreamSpark student program.

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-18GSDPR.mspx

Video chat with Bill Gates about the program and a Q&A with Joe Wilson about the new program...

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/feb08/02-18DreamSpark.mspx

Shifty, even you got to admit that Microsoft has gone above and beyond what most people have done with evangelizing game developing to students and colleges.

Tommy McClain
 
Oh, sure. But then again, who else has as much cause or scope to reach students? The tools run on PC. Unless Nintendo and Sony are to hand out SDKs to universities, only MS are in a position to provide the tools knowing the colleges already have the hardware. The ubiquitous nature of PCs and MS's OS on those PCs (along with all the development applications for asset creation) means they will always be the learning platform for game development.

And no matter what initiatives they start, they'll never be as influential or downright geeky as old magazines with lines of code that the readers copied by hand!
 
AzBat said:
Vote in their poll on what you think it is. Results so far are pretty interesting. LOL

Tommy McClain
Click to expand...

Yes! I voted on the most popular choice so far :LOL:

I guess im the only one not expecting a Gears 2 announcement at GDC? It somewhat reminds of the "zomg KZ2 on GDC" rumor last year and we know how that turned out :p

Im looking at the floorplan, and I cant see Crytek? or am I blind :oops:
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Unless Nintendo and Sony are to hand out SDKs to universities, only MS are in a position to provide the tools knowing the colleges already have the hardware.
Click to expand...

Which is amusing since most schools I've seen that are doing any form of game dev on non-PC platforms in their curriculum are usually on GCNs or a few old Yaroze machines (either than or AGB running on PC emulator). Besides most tools regardless of platform are on Windows (not that that's really relevent, and I also used to see Wonder Witch kits here and there).

Considering how slick the whole XNA game dev kit is, I'm surprised their isn't more EDU uptake yet, but that could be simply a factor of how young it is. But it's not the tools that really make it significant, IMO its MS having a tidy little managed runtime and framework that allows them to give access to the garage developer while still not granting the same level of access as licensed developers.
 
Why is there so much being placed on GDC these days, everyone seems to be making announcements that are little concern to developers and are increasingly aimed at consumers.
 
archie4oz said:
Which is amusing since most schools I've seen that are doing any form of game dev on non-PC platforms in their curriculum are usually on GCNs or a few old Yaroze machines (either than or AGB running on PC emulator). Besides most tools regardless of platform are on Windows (not that that's really relevent, and I also used to see Wonder Witch kits here and there).

Considering how slick the whole XNA game dev kit is, I'm surprised their isn't more EDU uptake yet, but that could be simply a factor of how young it is. But it's not the tools that really make it significant, IMO its MS having a tidy little managed runtime and framework that allows them to give access to the garage developer while still not granting the same level of access as licensed developers.
Click to expand...

I don't know personally if this is the case, but I suspect schools will be slow to introduce classes that require the use of C# -- especially in more traditional computer science programs where C++, Java, LISP/Scheme,some architectures assembly language are also taught.
 
I think this is a smart move MS sees this as a long term investment. By connecting students with XBOX development environments means, bringing the developers of the future closer to MS 's future XBOX line up ;)
 
Nesh said:
I think this is a smart move MS sees this as a long term investment. By connecting students with XBOX development environments means, bringing the developers of the future closer to MS 's future XBOX line up ;)
Click to expand...

Exactly.. That's what Mathworks has been doing with Matlab in engineering schools. Now, it is the de facto numerical analysis/algorithm development tool in the industry. It is a win-win situation for everyone at end (except Mathworks competitors of course).. The students already know the most commonly used tool when they graduate, companies know the new fresh graduates know how to use the tool on which all their products have been developed on, and at the end, mathworks sells loads of expensive licences to companies.
 
Nesh said:
Looks like there could be some new SKU based on the shadow.
Click to expand...

How about a XNA dev-kit SKU? ;) Comes in a special case with a extra large hard drive(120gb or larger). Also includes XNA Creators Club subscription and XNA Studio. How much would you pay for that? $400-$500?

Tommy McClain
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Oh, sure. But then again, who else has as much cause or scope to reach students? The tools run on PC. Unless Nintendo and Sony are to hand out SDKs to universities, only MS are in a position to provide the tools knowing the colleges already have the hardware. The ubiquitous nature of PCs and MS's OS on those PCs (along with all the development applications for asset creation) means they will always be the learning platform for game development.

And no matter what initiatives they start, they'll never be as influential or downright geeky as old magazines with lines of code that the readers copied by hand!
Click to expand...

I am one of that geeks though I can not complaint how the new tools evolve into... :)

I installed VS Express and XNA 2.0 yesterday. Although I have used C/C++ extensively, I have zero experience with C# until yesterday. But, with the help of a small tutorial, I drew a pretty colored triangle in a window in 1 hour. Then, it took me another half hour to rotate it without looking into any help files (this is my own addition). Past experience + the auto-completion feature on VS (you just type the first few letters of available functions/variables etc, and it opens a window for you to pick the possible one) + pop-up help windows (that writes what the function does and what the inputs are in one sentence) made this possible. It would have taken me at least couple of full day if I have documentation in my old Amiga days (or at least a week if I do not have documentation and I have to read someone else's assembly code). I think we should give kudos to Microsoft to design such tools and make them available for free.
 
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