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Microsoft Publishes Free XBox Development Tools
prostoalex writes "Microsoft announced the release of free XNA Game Studio Express tools for developing C# games that run on both Windows and XBox. They're also selling XNA Creators Club subscriptions, which, similar to MSDN subscriptions, offer access to sample code and additional documentation. Also, Microsoft is explicitly aiming towards uniting the Windows and XBox development platforms: 'You will have to compile the game once for each platform. In this release simply create a separate project for each platform and then compile them both. Our goal is to allow as much code as possible to be shared between those two projects, allowing you to use the same source files in both projects, but platform-specific code will need to be conditionally-compiled.'"
If you want to run the games on your own xbox, you need the "Creators Club" subscription...which costs $100/year.
So it's not quite free. And you can't distribute the games to others....unless you distribute the source and they are also members of the creator's club.
The Creator's Club is only necessary if you want the extra content/samples/support or if you want to run XNA games on an Xbox 360 (for now you'll have to have a Creator's Club membership even if you only want to run others' code, but that should change in a future release). If you just want to build Windows games using XNA then there's no reason to get a Creator's Club subscription.
Is it just me, or would this speed up the development of Linux on the XBox 360?
Those of us who haven't upgraded should note that this is only for the 360, not the regular Xbox.
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God spoke to me.
I would love to see Nintendo do something like this. I think allowing development using the SNES dev kit would allow those who want to get into console game development somewhere to start, yet not compromise what they are charging for their professional kit.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
This video on Channel9 shows off running a game on the Xbox. Pretty cool stuff.2 54
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=261
It strictly allows only non commercial development and no distribution including free over the net. There's is another commercial version that'll be released early next year but you still face the Microsoft bottle neck. You can't release commercial games unless they approve of them and take a health chunk of the profits. It'll allow you to develope for the Xbox 360 at a much lower risk but there are no guarentees you'll be able to release the game on Xbox 360. Microsoft still retains the final approval and demands their pound 'O fleash.
#include "creatorsclub.h"
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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I'll get right on working on a version of Open Office that runs on the Xbox :-D Then I can use that incredibly fast direction pad to type my documents. Ooh and I could bring in my Xbox for powerpoint presentations at school and have some fun when I'm not using it for that! The possibilities are endless! You may think that's a dumb idea but have you looked at the public domain roms made from scratch by people in their basements for earlier consoles like SNES, Genesis, and N64? THEY SUCK! Regular people aren't very good at console programming I guess. Office it is! :-D
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Here is some interesting code, using C# and the pixel shader which draws fractals 60 times a second using the XBox GPU. Initially I was skeptical about coding games with managed code (like C#), but it looks like we will see some games written in .Net. The drawing underneath still gets done natively, but you will be insulated to some extent.
Interestingly, Mono is planning to bring XNA to other platforms. Hopefully we will see PS3 running XNA sometime soon (quite possible, since PS3 already runs Mono).
Life is a conviction.
From the FAQ:
Q: What does XNA stand for?
A: XNA's Not Acronymed
Seems even the Evil Empire has a sense of humour.
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
Just find a way to murderlize the King and they'll sell it for $3.99 with a meal
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
I come from a low level graphics programming background. Having played around with the XNA betas that have been out for a while, I must say that XNA is probably the easiest way to get an amateur started with DirectX programming and game development. It seems almost like Microsoft is trying to get the grass roots hooked onto the platform so that the next generation of game programmers prefer the MS platform.
Oh, and people who compare XNA to game engines like Ogre are missing the point. XNA is not a game engine, it's more of a development tool/platform. It does come with lots of library code, but it's not a full-fledged game engine.
Don't think this is a game engine or anything, this is very close to being a wrapper around Direct X, execpt missing alot of features of DirectX including most of DirectInput. It's ok for making Xbox360 games, but there are MUCH MUCH better toolkits for free for PC development then XNA.
The press release says that they're working on removing the Creator's Club requirement for playing XNA games.
The reason you need to be a member of the Creator's Club as of now is because of the XNA framework - a souped-up version of the .NET framework - that your games are built on top of. Your games won't run without it, which means anyone who wants to run your game needs it (i.e., be a member of the Creator's Club.)
DATABASE WOW WOW
I stopped off at the Sony exhibit at GDW in San Francisco, only to be told the complex method of developing for PS. I have to say that, Sony can go fuck themselves! As much as one can dis MS, and I've been an Apple user my entire life, they know how to create a development community. As a matter of fact, I have asked Apple about developing games for the iPod, receiving the same cold shoulder.
Dear companies, not everything is going to make a million dollars, deserving an expensive subscription or development tools. not everything is needs expensive or complex development tools. I develop educational products... Microsoft should create a consistent platform across mobile, gaming, and desktop platforms, kicking the crap out of Nokia/nGage. I'm pretty damn sure they're the only ones listening.
It's nice that XNA is free as long as you only care about the PC... but Microsoft was already giving us free PC programming tools. I'd be curious if someone who actually knows this stuff can tell me if using XNA to develop for the PC is any better than the free SDK's and what not that was out there before?
I think that the "Developers" chair-throwing speech is exactly why MS is #1. Other companies (especially OSS companies) need to get just as excited about supporting developers if they want anywhere near that kind of success.
Sony did this with the yaroze play station, 10 years ago. In my opinion it failed miserably because the conflicting goals of having a closed platform and a community of people developing for it.
I have lost interest in game consoles since then so i don't know how the PS2 w/linux did. Does anyone know?
moi
The one thing that Microsoft does extremely well is document and provide tools to develop software for windows.(free tools such as visual c# express offer non-commercial developers a cheap IDE). It's why there is a much larger number of applications written for windows than for Unix like systems.
By applying the same principles to the Xbox 360 they might just find that more people use the system because of what they can do with it, not because of the numbers.
The applications make the system useful, not the other way around.
I can imagine that Sony and Nintendo are none to amused at this, so I'll just sit back and wait for them to file antitrust complaints.
This was at the bottom of your post. I think it should be more prominent, since this is an excellent point: Windows is a monopoly; getting developers to prefer XBOX to other consoles because of Windows-interoperability is using a monopoly to gain an advantage in another field.
This is no different than if Office had some 'special hooks' into Windows (before Office was a monopoly as well), or things along those lines.
I wonder if this will open the door for legalizing the XBMC (Xbox Media Center). I sure hope so, it looks pretty useful imo.
"When there's no more room in hell, the astroturfers will post on slashdot."
I can see how this would be a great way to bridge the gap between PC and Console games. The game that I'd really like to see the light of day is Shadowrun Online. A game like that has enough variation in character archtypes and abilities that you could easily break it out across multiple platforms. Although characters like mages and shamans might require a pretty keyboard intensive interface, some of the more simple characters likes street samurai's and physical adepts could be controlled with a gamepad interface and probably not need more than 4-6 buttons. A gamepad with a joystick would be a great boon to anyone who wanted to play a rigger, or anyone else who is involved with vehicles. Another game that I am looking forward to that is already in development is APB by Webzen games. They are using the Unreal 3 engine and claim to be developing for the Xbox and PC. It is advertised as being a GTA like game, and as much as people might poo-poo GTA, everyone I know who has been into games since the days of Gunship and F15 Strike Eagle (RIP Microprose) has been wanting a massive online version of a game like GTA. It is the kind of game that we grew up dreaming about, and it is finally coming close to reality a good 20+ years later.
> Microsoft announced the release of free XNA Game Studio Express tools for developing C# games
They had me until the C# part.
Nice way to make sure you don't do a port to something else.
In Soviet Russia, XNA develops with YOU.
Torque
The PS2 linux kit had libraries that allow you to access the hardware. They are the same libraries as us console developers had (almost) There's no speed difference between the two.
The main difference is the open source game devs aren't as good and had less time working on it, and therefore got slower results.
There are some helpful forums here and here is an ebook on GBA software development and the GBA hardware. Be gentle with this guy's servers. He's put the book up (in pdf form, separate chapters compressed into RAR archives) and he doesn't have unlimited bandwidth.
Enjoy!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
We can see this transformation across corporate culture with the flood of web 2.0 software and services. It simply far more profitable to have your consumers produce the content that you service that it is to make content your self. This also shapes the traditional big budget game productions look at what EA is trying to do with Spore or the popularity of EverQuest like MMORPGs where participants produce experiences with each other under the domain of corporate context provider. These experiences are enriched by this appropriation and therefore accumulate social capital, and whats important to remember about capital is that is transferable.
Its only logical that microsoft will try to capitalize on the home-brew game community. When those high up in the corporate hierarchy were shown a moded xbox and the home-brew software library, their question was not how do we stomp this out rather it was how do we appropriate this into our business model.
The tragedy of corporate appropriation is the tendency to make things suck. For example by shifting around generated social capital (ie your coolness becomes our brand) Your youtube videos are 1.6 billion for a few people at the top and free hosting for those at the bottom.
As the service model integrates the qualities/coolness of free & user generated software with open APIs, customizable interfaces and in this case low cost "development kits", the qualities that made free software so desirable are appropriated and generally potentially crippled as generated social capital is siphoned off to disproportionately support the (relatively minor) contributions of a few at the top.
So we see the rise of free service models wikipedia, creative commons, participatory culture foundation, the linux platform etc. (they are still appropriated and ofcourse people profit disproportionate to their contributions but at least there are some structural qualities in place that limit the disproportional profitability such as the GPL, open platforms, copyleft etc. We should probably chose to participate in those spaces if possible or given circumstance and specific goals you decide to make content for microsoft/google/sony, that fine as long as you think about it first ;)
It's just hours old:
http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque/x/
If you already have a Torque Game Builder license, you can also use Torque X to make games
for the Xbox 360. I just discovered the release, so I dunno how similar this will be to TGB,
but they use the same scripting language for all their products. I'm guessing only some minor
porting is needed, and that gives you four platforms to make games for (Mac, Linux, Windows, 360).
I wonder if anyone will ever attempt to use Mono to create a compatibility layer for these games to run on Linux/OSX or even on the original XBox. Presumably this would just be "a simple matter" of reimplementing the APIs used by this toolkit, since Mono is compatible with Microsoft's CLI already.
Although I personally am not interested in this, I know lots of other people are.
I dont see the "you need to buy the subscription thing to play games on your 360" or the "you need to compile from source" or the "managed code only" as that serious.
To me, the 2 biggest lacks is:
C# only. No managed C++ or other languages.
and the real big one: Programs written for the XBOX 360 cannot communicate with the outside world at all (i.e. no networking period). This is by far the biggest limitation of XNA Game Studio 360 IMO.
Since we're on the topic, I have a web site - www.threesixbox.com - dedicated to XNA projects. It already has a good number of user-submitted projects for you to try out, many of which have the source code that you can study and learn from. Currently all the projects a PC-based, so you don't need to be a member of the Creator's Club to try them out.
Even in the X-Box, you're talking to device drivers, not the hardware directly. That IS what you do with DirectX- it's call that because it bypassed many of the software layers in Windows so you could write games. That's supposed to be the big selling point of the X-Box lines is that you can write for XP and do a minimal amount of work to make a console port to the X-Box or X-Box360. Talking to the hardware directly means poking values into the registers on the GPU, etc. Something few of the developers do- and none on the X-Box/X-Box 360 They typically go through a library or device driver on all the consoles to begin with. You might have done development under a console target, so your mileage may vary- but what I know of things differs from what you just said by a lot.
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Ah...now its easier then ever for cross platform development on the PC and consoles. Looks like the unwelcome trend of PC game interfaces with gigantic picture icons, no tool tips, rigid control schemes and tacked-on-ish mouse support shall continue unabated.
Seriously, it sounds like this is an ok idea but the amount of restrictions seem to limit its potential. It appears to lower the barrier to entry...but does it really? It sounds like when you read the fine print they aren't really giving you much. I guess I can't blame them, they make their money on the games not the console...so if they started giving distribution rights away for free they would be screwing themselves.
Microsoft has been trying to have their cake and eat it too by making cross platform games for windows/PC easy. Games are the main thing that ties you average home user to the windows platform. They've kind of been eating themselves since they jumped into the console arena. Cross-platform is a way of saying to users "you still need windows for PC games!" while still growing their console end.
The trouble is, the PC has traditionally offered some advantages over the console in controls, community, etc. Perhaps advantages isn't the right word, rather differences. Most ported or even cross platform games feel like the PC support was stuck on as an afterthought these days, they have since the xbox came out. Its not a PC game...its a console game on your PC. Its only a matter of time before the PC gamers start just buying a xbox instead. And you can see that happening now, I hear a lot of people saying "its expensive upgrading my PC...I'm just going to buy an xbox360 or PS3 instead". Maybe thats what microsoft wants. But its also going to weaken their OS market because people are going to buy less new PCs and stay with their old ones longer.
We'll see how this strategy plays out in the end. Frankly, I think MS would have been better offering a console that was very different from the PC as a gaming platform to prevent dilution of that brand. But, they're a computer company so its not a surprise they stuck with what they knew. (The original xbox pretty much was just a PC anyway right?)
...Microsoft makes a low cost development kit and it is an abuse of monopoly? If anything, this opens up the field to smaller developers who can't afford the multi-thousands-to-tens-of-thousands cost for the equivilent Sony or Nintendo kits.
Seriously, there are plenty of reasons to hate MS, this sin't one of them.
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
Why is it better to pay $250 for a separate system that you probably don't need than to pay microsoft $100/yr to license your games for playing/distro on the xBox? ...Nevermind, now I realize why it's better: The $250 doesn't go to Microsoft! Duh! I shoulda figured that out!
Really, though, I could spend 2 years developing a game with ZERO DOLLARS out of pocket. I can compile and play it on Windows, with ZERO DOLLARS OUT OF POCKET. I can then, if I choose, suscribe to their service and share my game.
That means I can dabble if I want to. I can try my hand at it with NO COMMITMENT. You can't do that with the PS2 Kit. I have to pony-up $250 upfront and if I lose interest or whatever, oh well.
I swear to god, if Microsoft announced they cured Aids or world hunger or cancer you'd still find a reason to bitch. "By curing cancer patients, Microsoft is clearly just trying to re-enforce their monopoly."
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You might ask "why am I so anti-XNA"?
Well three reasons since you asked so nicely.
1. XNA allows you to build stuff for your PC for free, and pay 100 bucks a month for building for the 360? WOW! unless you care about the second half, ANY compiler allowed you to build stuff for your PC for Free. What's worse is unless a prospective employee has creators club (or wants to get it) they can't really see your work unless it's on the PC. So basically you're stuck.
Instead you can get Visual Studio with just DirectX and learn how to REALLY program, rather then relying on an enviroment. If XNA is easy to use, everyone will use it and there will be a lot of worthless demos. Companies want to see that you programmed, not that you did something easy.
2. C# is not a great programming language. Ok it has uses. However making games is NOT one of them. If you program for a console you're probably in C++ if you're not programming for a console you use what language you want. C# might make some stuff easier, but unless you know C++ you're not going to be a real asset to a company.
In addition C# is Microsoft's programming language. It's a bastard of C++ and Java, basically so Microsoft could own a language. Don't buy into it. Java and C++ are both good languages as well, I have heard of few jobs that want C# currently.
3. As people have mentioned to get access you need to pay 100 bucks a month then your friend has to pay 100 a month, then your other friend has to pay 100 a month. It's not a "cheap" development studio. A cheap development studio is your PC. Besides which unless you know how to do multi core processing (don't you DARE say you do unless you've done it and shipped a product, it's much harder then you realize) the 360 is going to be weaker then your PC. It's true you don't have a unified system, but even on the 360 you no longer have it with hard drives and non hard drives. In addition you have to submit to Microsoft's rules at times (mostly during production), which limits your freedom a little more.
This might be an option for some people but if you're doing professional grade work you will almost definatly have a dev kit. If you arn't it doesn't really matter because the work is the important part, not the final product so skip XNA and work on other stuff. The only person who needs XNA is the idiot who MUST program in C# and must program on the 360. Just remember anything you do in XNA will likely be only for the PC and 360, and not for any other console.
Microsoft is doing good positioning themselves, but if you look into their motives it's not for the fans. It's to improve their brands (C#, XNA, Xbox 360, DirectX). Unless you want to only support those brands you are better off moving on.
I for one welcome our new XNA developing overlords.
Godless heathen.
Now, I don't claim to unerstand the terms of the XNA license, but I got the definite impression that you couldn't self-publish games either onto the marketplace or for free distribution - it has to be published through Microsoft.
You can't even share a game YOU wrote with a friend unless they also have a developer account, and even then, it has to be done over the XBL network.
So not only is this bad for developers who want to release their work for free or under their own license, but it forces you into a position of relying on Microsoft to publish your work regardless of your own wishes.
Am I simply misunderstanding something here, or is XNA really as idiotic as it looks to me?
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
I now feel compelled to compare XNA to either Natalie Portman or Hot Grits.
:P
Maybe even Natalie Portman covered in Hot Grits making games using XNA.
I've read these jokes too many times.
My twitter
If these were "REAL" developers tools, they wouldn't only support interpreted byte code. I'm all for giving homebrewers training wheels like C#, but I can't get interested until they're offering full C++ support.
If you re-write Linux in XNA...
I agree you probably want to buy flash, but if you want to develop for free you can. There are many compilers and tools at http://www.osflash.org/