XNA Studio Interview

GamingNexus writes "GamingNexus is running an interview with Chris Satchell from Microsoft on their upcoming XNA Studio developer suite for game developers. It talks about the differences between the XNA Studio and the upcoming version of Visual Studio 2005 (which it's based on) as well as how it will support all phases of the gaming development lifecycle (including artists and project managers."

Comments

marketing jackass

[alatesystems]

I hate marketing jackasses. A few choice quotes:

XNA Studio will speed development time and decrease development costs by delivering an advanced build framework and a suite on integrated tools to solve common production challenges.

...and allows programmers to leverage the skills...

...development processes and will ship with process support for Agile Software Development.

Our focus with XNA studio is to deliver the incredible productivity and collaboration services...

...integrated pipeline to streamline data and content

What a jackass.

Re:marketing jackass

[GameSlave]

don't know if you saw the MS Keynote Speech @ the GDC, but it was pretty much the same thing.. alot of marketing-jargon and how they plan on selling more xbox2 units as opposed to just making good games that are fun. jackasses.

Re:marketing jackass

[FidelCatsro]

A freind of mine who works in marketing , a wise man , one of the old breed of marketing .
He said something to me once and it is the only thing a marketing guy has said to me about his profesion that i have ever agreed with , he said "We are a bunch of arseholes , profesionaly that is".Gave me a good laugh

Re:marketing jackass

[tc]

Actually, I wouldn't describe Chris Satchell as a marketing jackass. I happen to know Chris personally, and his background is as a games programmer (you know, actually writing code). He's worked his way up through the ranks, and is now a general manager at Microsoft (deservedly so, in my opinion).

Having said that, I'm definitely going to give him some shit about that interview, because I was drowning in all the buzzwords...

Re:marketing jackass

[oGMo]

I happen to know Chris personally, and his background is as a games programmer (you know, actually writing code). He's worked his way up through the ranks, and is now a general manager at Microsoft (deservedly so, in my opinion).

So... is this is a good thing or a bad thing?

Re:marketing jackass

[DarkGamer20X6]

I have a friend that works for Microsoft, too. Really brilliant guy. Anyway, from what I'm given to understand (and you may have more insight into this than I do), this kind of stuff happens a lot with their employees. I think employee morale is really important to Microsoft; they want everyone to be really psyched up and feel good about the projects they work on.

I certainly agree with the sentiment, but I also think it goes too far too often. I've seen my friend get caught up in the buzzwords, and I'm like, "Chris... (My friend's name is Chris, too), can you tone down the marketing a bit? I think I just heard the programmer inside you cry."

Is this an _interview_?

[johannesg]

I'm asking because it sounds like one long marketing speech...

bmp editing

[alexandreracine]

as well as how it will support all phases of the gaming development lifecycle

What? It's gonna use paint for the graphics?

Re:bmp editing

[drspliff]

I think one of their main features will be a UI interface to bin2h :)

On the other hand, there is a couple of ways they can innovate, or just copy all the work done by previous companies.

For example, Metroworks Studio (i think) for the Playstation, gameboy, gba (and lots of other consoles/handhelds) is probably the kinda thing their going for. It's an IDE with a load of stuff like a fairly decent sprite editor, encoders and tools for native formats to the target (which in microsofts case would be .x, and probably a framework to work with other model formats).

I guess their just trying to supply the glue between various different programs and tools to help people work more effeciently..

Why people can't just write commandline tools, hack up their makefiles (or... EWW.. the Visual Studio Pre/Post build tasks..) that do stuff that would be useful.. Such as adding random burns/scratches/craters to materials, vising and lighting maps etc.

Personally GNU make fulfills all my needs, re-compiles my maps when I change them, ensures a CVS sync when I start and stop working and manages performing a variety of actions on a whole load of different files...

Standard tools already manage the whole pipeline, a UI just adds more bloat and overhead into the mix! Don't get me wrong, there are quite a few really nice features in Visual Studio 2003/2005.. but there are already a heap of very good editors out there that can do the same job and integrate with the way I work, not they way they want me to work. (such as Slickedit, CRISP, Code Forge etc.)

Call me a zealot, call me a troll, but there are some valid arguments in there... somewhere :)

Asset management

[Scorchio]

Every time XNA studio is discussed, they mention how it's going to incorporate asset management and project tracking utilities. Annoyingly, they're often short on details as far as what exactly this entails.

As a programmer, one of the difficulties I've regularly faced is finding the art resources I need to complete my tasks. At some point, the art and programming schedules split, and each group ends up shuffling scheduled tasks in order to deal with unforeseen problems, last minute demos and all the usual fun. What frequently happens when I get a task requiring art assets, is that I need start running around the building on the asset chase:

a) Find the lead programmer/programming manager to find where the assets should be.
b) If the asset location is not known, find the lead artist/art manager and see if they know where the asset is, if it's been completed yet according to the art schedule, and which artist is responsible for creating that asset.
c) Find the artist responsible to find where the asset is located, or the current status if they're still working on it.

It seems to me that there is potential for a centralised schedule and asset tracking system, so that I can immediately check for a programming task what resources (art, audio and/or design) that task depends on, who is scheduled to create those resources and the current status. This works both ways, too - an artist may be waiting for a particular software component to be written before they can see how a bitmap or mesh looks using that component. I've regularly heard complaints along the lines of "I started doing x two months ago, but I needed y to finish; no-one told me y was completed five weeks ago".

I'm interested to see if this is the sort of thing that XNA studio will provide, or if there's still a niche open. Or does anyone have a similar system already in use?

Re:Asset management

[Scorchio]

Ah, interesting. Alienbrain was evaluated a couple of times in the past few years by the company I used to work for. I think the problem was that they were looking at it from the point of view of finding an alternative to Visual SourceSafe. While Alienbrain does provide version control, it seems to do much more than that - in fact, it looks like everything I was looking for!

I think one of the main reasons it was turned down was the price tag. The initial costs to shift the studio over to use Alienbrain were huge. I'm wondering if whoever evaluated it realised what the true strengths were. It will be interesting to see if XNA studio is attempting something similar.

Oh, and Subversion proved a worthy successor to VSS... :)

More Windows Lockin

[HogynCymraeg]

Undoubtedly, this studio will be running windows only libraries, IE Direct X or whatever it's called these days. This is daft in this day and age as there are fantastic crossplatform libraries that enable you to target multiple platforms. I recently bought "Darwinia" (which is an absolutely fantastic game!) and noticed that they had done a linux version. The installer asked for the game CD and off we went! I checked the libraries and they used SDL, vorbis, PNG and a few others.

Re:Part of MSDN

[JAgostoni]

I doubt it. Microsoft is creating several levels (or even sub-levrls) of MSDN subscriptions now that are geared toward your role. No longer will you have complete and full access to all of their products. You will only have access to products that fullfill your role (or the role for which you paid).

What that means is that I am assuming that there will be a MSDN Universal Game Developer license that will include XNA Studio but the MSDN Universal Software Architect will probably not.

I can dig up a link of you really want me to that provides evidence towards their different levels.