http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/XNA/default.aspx for those that havent already begun to play with XNA, now is your chance. I hope to see some B3D creations in the Creator's Club.
It's agreat concept,but what are we realistically looking at in terms of community made content...in terms of quality.
I don't know about the rest of you but i'm very excited about the possibility of the XNA framework and what the whole "user-generated-content" experience will bring to games.. As a developer I know i've a PC full of game designs and ideas i've been compiling since I was about 12 and its good to know that I can finally have an environment with the accessibility, the tools, the flexibility and most importantly the opportunity for distribution (on a market-wide scale) to hopefully one day see at least *some* of them realised in the non-commercial space.. I've been doing hobbyist development for a long time now and one of the biggest hurdles I found was having to deal with the chores of spending a vast amount of time I don't have (what with uni and now with my professional work) having to write my own code to setup a convenient & efficient content pipeline in order to do anything more adventurous than "3D asteroids/tetris or a barebones flyer/racer".. It seems like MS are going out of there way to ensure that they can provide the community with as much support as possible to ensure that as much of the creative talent that is present, CAN be expressed on the platform without the worry of having your life commitments overwhelm your ability to complete an ambitious project you started.. Also i'm sure it wouldn't take long before we start to see many popular open-source engines getting ported over to the platform (e.g. Ogre3d) and these will greatly encourage many of the windows-based hobbyists to consider porting over there wares.. Then theres the positive effects it will have on the quality of the XBLA titles (once the top-end user-created content starts moving into the distribution space, the XBLA titles will have to up their game in terms of offering more quality/content if they want to entice gamers to pay for such content when they could play games that are approaching it for free).. Also there's the fact that it will *hopefully* contribute to the growth of interest in s/w related study from up-coming talent in the academic space (hobbyists doing more comp science courses at uni and aspiring to become industry professionals).. Good times for us all!
How does XNA help with content pipelines? Does it integrate the content creation tools (StudioMAX or Milkshape, PhotoShop or PSP or GIMP, etc.) somehow? Or do they provide basic (advanced?) tools like a map editor with suitable file formats?
They have good support libraries with support for loading a wide variety of media formats into your game environment (alot like the D3DX libs but with a bit extra) and the biggest factor is the use of MDX and C# means anyone wanting to build a game from scratch won't have to write NEwhere near the same amount of code to get something functional off the ground like I did when i wrote my first DirectX 9 game (a 3D strategy board game).. Also the XNA framework is miles better than what I use for C++ development (VS 6.0 ) so it's another useful method of speeding up the entire development process in terms of reducing as much tedium as possible and being able to exploit working code for your own uses straight off the bat.. I'm not sure how much easier it would be to get more complex assets into a game (animation data for example) since I haven't spent too much time looking at it yet.. However I'm gonna be getting on board as soon as my Xbox360 arrives so I can port some of my C++ projects into XNA and see how they run on the H/W..
I'm considering writing a small lib that sits atop XNA and helps out with rendering. Maybe throw in some threads here, kittens there, see what happens. Just an idea at the moment.
B3yond3D even. Into... 4D! Anyway it'll be fun to watch what comes out of this; no doubt some play-worthy games already in the pipes.
"Create an original game using XMA(TM) Game Studio Express. You could win fantastic prizes and global envy." http://www.dreambuildplay.com/index.html I wonder if the authors will get a cut of the profits MS makes on contest entries after they go up on XBL. Or if it is just a fixed prize and the coveted global envy. Also I was just reading the FAQ and learned just today that XNA is not acronymed and does not stand for anything!! wtf? The problem I see is that nearly none of that open source or hobbyist code is going to be in C#. But I'm not sure how strict MS is on this. Are they enforcing just C# or is it any managed language that will compile to the Intermediate Language. Where did you get the impression you could compile C++ code for it? "Managed C++" maybe. But I don't see any confirmation in their faq.
It's unclear at this point of you can compile even Managed C++. For example, you can't use other CLI languages like F# and VB.NET, because they use features available only in the full .NET framework, while XNA on the 360 is based on the so-called Compact Framework. So far, only C# is officially supported and guaranteed to work.
Well that's a downer. Do you know if you can run native code at all? Or will the xbox360 only run user code on their CLR.
You'll never be able to run native code on the 360 as a member of the creators club. Assemblies will be kept pure for security reasons.
As far as I'm aware XNA is gonna be C# and MDX only for the forseeable future (but i'm not sure considering no professional development house attempting to use it for a commercial project will probably want to use C# or managed directX..) This is why I said such engines will be "ported" to the platform (granted it would have to be a complete re-write and maybe some of the flexibility of the engine may not be able to be maintained.. But i'm sure with careful and intelligent design they could probably get it close..) I didn't get that impression.. That's why I said i'd be "porting" my C++ based games onto XNA, re-writing the code in C# and to use the seperate API..
What about the network? IIRC it's Microsoft's decision that 360 has no web browser, but someone can supply a web browser app via this scheme. Or some free online game.