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42 Comments
- bobmcsmith, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27"+The XNA framework is supposedly very easy to use.
Do I believe any of it? No, not really." - Sarki
As someone who has tried 3D before, failed miserably, and is now making a 3D game in XNA (quite successfully). I believe it. - rockforever, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22"Yet hobbyist game development is all but dead."
WTF??? Just about any game on the internet is made by freelancers or a group that just calls themselves a company. Theres MILLIONS of flash games out there written by groups of friends. Remember Newgrounds? Theres still lots of people doing that. - Trention, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18It's not so much a duplicate as it's just more in depth about the same topic. Dugg.
- tidalwav1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13At nklnch (first post):
You couldn't be more wrong.
Myself and three of my friends designed an entire Halo 1 level of our college campus; we even have a website for it (http://wpimap.com --no, I'm not trying to spam Digg, we don't make any money from this and it's not a blog.)
We did it with 3DS Max, Photoshop, and Sapien and Guerilla (Halo dev tools.) Something like XNA probably would make production of similar future projects much easier and streamlined. - rstarr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Dugg, no bad can come from this. I just can't wait till non-coders get their hands on these homebrews.
- MagicBobert, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10I've been toying with XNA quite a bit recently and it's very, very easy to use. Not to mention this is the first time development tools for a console have been available at a consumer price point.
BTW this is almost identical to the story posted on Monday (launch day). - rstarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Eh, there's already a ton of horribly crappy games, only with very large budgets. Crappy games from a no budget guy aren't really bad, just a bit annoying.
- koonchu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I've heard that regardless of the XNA version you use, you cannot simply burn a disc of your game and share it. Anyone who wishes to play your game must also possess the XNA framework/source. (i.e.- if your friend doesn't have the XNA dev studio installed, they won't be able to see what you've created AS IS on their 360)
I'd love to get this clarified. - MCHampster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4No, no, no. Lots of bad information.
The XNA FAQ (http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/) is clear: the only people who are able to run stuff written with XNA Game Creator Studio on their Xbox 360 are those that have paid for the Creator's Club. In order to run the stuff on their 360, they will need to download the original source code, compile it on their PC's and then deploy it to their 360. This is covered in the 7th question in the link above - "Q: How can I share my Xbox 360 game built with XNA Game Studio Express with other Xbox 360 users?"
Now, Microsoft, I'm sure will be taking some of the better stuff they see and deploying over Live. However, I remember reading somewhere (sorry, can't find the link) that they will be paying the developer of the game if they do that. There is also a contest that will be opened soon where winners will get their games published on Live (perhaps this is what I'm remembering). - Dextrose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That is true -- you cannot burn a disc and play it. If someone else wants to view your demo or play your game -- the have to have the framework installed as well.
In general, XNA is cool -- but severely hampered in a few low level technical ways -- i.e. directly loading and easily manipulating game content. While it can supposedly still be done -- it's a lot of effort to have to work around something that would otherwise be a piece of cake in native C/C++.
Regardless -- XNA is cool -- if not for the very reason that it gives others the chance to learn and fiddle. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Believe it dude. The only thing it doesn't solve is art. I was able to get together a functional game in 16 hours.
- polyGone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Me thinks you would need some 3D skills as well, arrrgghhhh.
Sorry, someone kicked me in the pirate...... - betterth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I seriously doubt it. The only way it would be possible would be if the developers themselves created an "XNA Bridge" that gave their own libraries and code to your XNA install on your PC so that you could interact with their engine. Otherwise, it would be impossible for XNA to make changes to their engine.
They'd also have to have prebuilt support for mods, like the Elder Scrolls. I could see it possible though, if the dev was willing to release their dev tools specially coded for XNA support. Run the mods off of your harddrive. That would be ***** cool. - theImposs1ble, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4i dont blame them really. it could be bad for microsoft to allow people to write whatever programs they would like and run them on any ones xbox.
I would be skeptical to download just any ones stuff off the internet and put it on my computer, same with my 360.
However having XNA work with my visual studio 2005 is very cool for me. It allows me to get used to programming for the XBOX 360 so I could potentially get a job doing game development.
This is good news for all gamers. look at it like this...
big high schools and colleges have better athletes. The larger the pool of talent, the better the outcome of the team.
same for game development. if we have more talented game developers out there, we will start seeing more innovative games with less bugs, etc.
great job microsoft, invest in your future in gaming and our as well. give people a better way to make games and make it easy for developers to use and you will end up with better games to sell your consoles. - RogerH, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Samurai: I don't think you understand the point of the creators club. It is meant for aspiring developers to see their OWN creations running on an Xbox 360. This is not meant as a way to share your games with others.
I attended the XNA launch event in Redmond, and as of now Microsoft has not finalized how they want distribution to work. I would imagine this is for legal reasons, as anyone could release un-authorized reproductions of copyrighted material.
They are, however, testing the waters with this creators club feature, and are about to release a contest where the best XNA game will be distributed on Xbox Live.
If I were to speculate on how game sharing would work, I would have to imagine that Microsoft will need to put into place some type of program to compensate developers who do not wish for their games to be released for free, and also they would need some type of certification program to verify that the game does not have bugs, it does not infringe on anyone else's copyrights, it is not offensive (hot coffee, anyone?), it has proper features one would expect from a game such as the ability to pause, exit the game, etc.
I think the availability of resources within Microsoft to enforce this type of a program is the main limitation which is preventing anyone from distributing their creation online. Also, if any independent game maker was able to submit their game for distribution I would have to imagine that the ESRB would also be inundated with requests, where as right now mass-distribution comes from a relatively small group of publishing giants.
However, the beauty of XNA is that it allows you to first create a game for Windows, and then port it to the 360 with minimal changes needed. So, I suspect that, for now at least, the creators club will serve as a way for developers who have created and distributed XNA games for windows to "test the waters" so to speak, and see how much effort it would require to port the game to the 360.
If an XNA game was released for Windows and took off in popularity, I'm sure that the the Xbox team would be in contact with those individuals to help publish the game on the 360, so I would recommend this to anyone considering "breaking in" to game development, or just wanting to try it out on the side. - justice7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23D skills if you are rendering Vector3 objects
You can totally get away with a sprite based game if you wanted to. - betterth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2On second thought this is actually a great way to open up modding along the lines of Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights. Content modification, ie adding new content or modifying existing content. The devs could release a tool like Bethesda's toolkit, and export its own mod file, which you could put on a disc and put on your xbox.
This method seems like it doesn't require XNA though.
As far as total conversion mods, like what is done with the Source Engine, etc, that doesn't seem likely. The team would have to make their proprietary source available for their engine, and a lot of dev's use prebuilt engines anyway (like the Unreal Engine) and this simply isn't an option, removing this ability.
BTW, this is all speculation... - Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This is intended purely as a hobbist / casual developer tool. Its not for developing premium professional content. The cost is cheap (as in Free) and its not intended for resale of games developed by it.
Your barking up the wrong tree and just trying to make a generic statement against Microsoft without understanding what this is all about.
Read this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/ - Darcy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Here's a good video if anyones interested:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=261254
It answered a lot of questions for me. - fiddelm3742, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Am i the only one that remembers Net Yaroze?
It was a promotion by Sony Computer Entertainment to computer programming hobbyists in 1997. However it did come with a hefty $750 price tag
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Yaroze - betterth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"the samsung is super duper duper duper hidef, it does 1080p, and I didn't even know the 360 does 1080p"
"so this is actual real _live_ code here..."
glad the narrator/filmer is a complete nub. - Dextrose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@koonchu
I'm not quite clear on this yet -- but -- I believe if you wanted to show/demo the game on somebody else's 360 (i.e. not your own) you'd have to install the framework on their PC and establish the connection with their 360. Essentially you'd have to replicate the development environment setup. Again -- this is my current understanding of how it works.
However, I have noticed in the 360 dashboard that there is a place to view XNA demos -- so maybe it's easier than I think. - Dextrose, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I believe there is supposed to be a "Pro" version of the framework released sometime next year -- directed squarely at Indi "commercial" developers. I'm sure that version will not require any disclosure of source code.
- betterth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It sounds like you can compile it in the environment and upload to it to the Creators Club. Then, someone else can download it and run it. I think the 360 already has native support to run XNA compiled programs, I think I've seen it in the dashboard.
And, if your game is popular, it'll be online for anyone to try/buy. - betterth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2From a commercial standpoint, it's terrible. From a competitive, which small-non commercial group can make the best game, it's great.
Sure, some jackass rips of your code and makes it better. Guess what, all of his improvements, you can completely rip away from him for your product.
Similar to open source, except you're all competing to have your product put on the Xbox Live Arcade.
I think it has the ability to be beneficial and spark more competitiveness with the talented teams. - koonchu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Dextrose:
How would one be able to show a created game on the 360? Would XNA be installable on the 360? - rev4bart, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Here are some "real" FAQ:
- You HAVE to use "C# Express". Means you have to know how to program in C# (no vb.net etc.)
- You can make games that are VERY powerful. Check this game out and listen to the audio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OHJpeCwOmk
- Like a post said above, I failed with making 3D games (too much effort) before this is 10x easier!!!
- XNA Creator's Club is COMPLETELY USELESS now. All you can do right now is play your game on the Xbox360. There is no exclusive content, no way to share your game with others (who don't have the club membership), no extra documentation. All this is supposed to come later..so get it later when stuff is out.
- XNA does not support networking over the XBOX 360, you can however do it using the XNA framework on the PC
- XNA does not include an easy sound framework..u need DirectX9 SDK downloaded, which isn't too hard to get a handle on
Bottom line, its a great product for making games..but its a 1.0 release..so beware of the sales pitch and before u drop the 99/year wait for some exclusive content. Your not going to make "Gears of War" in 3 days with this product, you can make some fun games and learn a lot about programming, vector math and physics etc. - MCHampster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1See my comment above, there is zero network support for XNA right now, so you could not write an Internet browser and any media player you could write would have to be recompiled to include any media each time media is added. As for a dashboard, yI'm guessing that all of the XNA stuff is running within a managed environment so there is going to be no way to replace the main dashboard as there is no way to launch other executables.
- SoftwareSamurai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"However, the beauty of XNA is that it allows you to first create a game for Windows, and then port it to the 360 with minimal changes needed."
---
Yeah, MS said that with the XBox AND the XBox360, and in both cases, they were totally wrong. Sure there are some similarities in the OS APIs, but to shine on us developers (and YES, I AM a video game developer, working for one of the big boys) with the "Oh just write the game for Windows and you'll be able to port it over in just a few weeks" warm-fuzzy is down right wrong. They made enough changes to the XBox's OS to make it a royal pain to "port" over to, and believe me, the XBox360 is a _very_ different machine all together. (They give that line to the newbie-CEOs to get them hooked into creating a game for their platform. It's only after spending major dollars that the software engineers wise up and find out it ain't that easy - but by then it's too late to switch to some other platform without looking like a fool.)
My argument against this specific XNA effort is that it's sophomoric: Sony tried it with their flop called "Net Yaroze", and MS is following right along in their footsteps. Don't get me wrong. As a way for the pre-teens and wannabees to script-kiddie something that looks like a game and gloat to all their friends, this is great. But as a professional video game developer, this is a joke plain and simple. And when the MS reps tell us that they have "not finalized how they want distribution to work", that just means they have no idea what to do next, sans sitting back and waiting to see how many fanboys out there actually come up with a good idea for a game. Sony had the exact same plan, and we saw how many games go from "Net Yaroze" to OTS (On-The-Shelf)?
Now IF MS decided to make good on their promise of a truly integrated professional development environment for PC, XBox, XBox360, etc. that satisfies us professional video game developers (and doesn't cost an arm and a leg), then maybe it will be interesting enough for my company and I to take it seriously. Until then, we (the pros) will snicker at their effort and continue to hack other company's compilers into VS.NET's IDE for fun. - PecanHead, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3So how do they prevent people from writing decoders for "taboo" video formats like Xvid or h264? Or for that matter porting XBMC to the 360? Could you just download the source code for (the yet to be created) "360MC" and compile it with MS' free toolchain?
Surely MS isn't going to sabotage their own plans for world domination via video codecs... - daleksarewimps, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1i read somewhere that XNA will allow game mods for 360 games.
is that true? - Anrkist, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Other then horribly crappy games? I agree.
But there will definatly be some games that shine. - greyfade, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@MCHampster: that is by far the worst way they could have done it. no one is going to be very interested in distributing games like that until Microsoft opens it up more - or, heaven forbid, lets people actually run their homebrew stuff without publishing it through Microsoft.
my bet is that Microsoft will see extremely limited participation in the creator's club and prematurely (and STUPIDLY) kill it off. i will be very surprised - nay, SHOCKED - if they actually bother to let people release their stuff. - mizzack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Is it just me, or does Frank's second keychain have his SSN in clear view on it?
Well it fits the formatting of an SSN anyway... - MCHampster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1What you are saying is possible, but the problem is you would have to recompile your media center application to include any videos you want to play. There is zero network support right now in XNA so you wouldn't be able to read files off of a file server to play.
- SoftwareSamurai, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2On thing for developers to consider: Currently this XNA "Creators Club" FORCES you to share you game by uploading your SOURCE CODE. That's right! Everyone gets to see your source! And while some would say that's great, those of us looking at this from a business standpoint can see how this is nothing more than a marketing gimmick.
("Net Yaroze" deja vu, anyone?) - Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2yeah, because there are no successful "open" source projects.
- Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Ignore, digg is beeing silly posting the same thing twice
- ShyGuy91284, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Good idea.... But I'm concerned MS is just going to screw over the developers in favor of an easy money source. They could easily take dvantage of hobby developers and give them maybe 5 cents per game sale while they pocket the other $15.95 or what ever they sell them for to cover "transfer and publicity costs".
If I recall correctly, about 1/5 to 1/4 of the final retail sale of a previous-generation game went to the developers while the rest is split between the retailer and publisher. If MS tries to pull a fast one and screw over the little guy, this Linux/Mac fan who has been warming to Microsoft and just got an XB360 may have a bitter taste in his mouth driving him away.... - nklnch, on 10/12/2007, -13/+8Software developers have had tools like this to make PC or web games for ages for free. Yet hobbyist game development is all but dead. Why would XNA and 360 change this?
- khushnood, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Its beyond my cup of tea to understand this story.
- Sarki, on 10/12/2007, -19/+10+You can get your game on the console
+You can sell your game
+The XNA framework is supposedly very easy to use.
Do I believe any of it? No, not really.
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