\Managed DirectX and XNA Framework news
This is looking like a great new game in managed code and its just in beta testing so you can download and test to your hearts content. Its written using the Flat Red Ball 2.5D engine which is itself written with Managed DirectX. More screen shots here and download here.
Ben Ryves is working on a Doom level loader in managed code. Follow the progress on his gamedev journal
Thanks Phil
I can now give you more details on the secret project I have been working on the for the past 3 weeks.
Brian Keller asked me about producing an XNA Framework demo. Once I had recovered from the shock of learning about it running on both PC and Xbox 360 (though right now dev kits only) I, of course, told him I would love to. The Culture and Pocket Jongg demos were already under way and I got to do a conversion of Hexic HD. Its pretty widely (though unofficially) documented that HexicHD runs on a limited functionality flash interpreter and the XNA team thought that moving Hexic over to managed code would make a great demo and provide them with a solid code base to test the Framework and document the changes people will have to make when they move from Managed DirectX to XNA Framework. The downside - no real documentation and 3 weeks to do it. The upside (besides someone finally paying me to write managed code) - source was available and there was access to some of the original developers.
Reading flash is interesting stuff. Its chunks of animation with trigger like actions attached that fire off code that does the game play. Whilst I got a lot of useful information from the code I spent quite a few hours playing Hexic to get a feel for how things work and how the animations play out. Since Flash is all vector based I had an art guy extract the assets into textures. The sound files were available so nothing to worry about there. The game has to, of course, run in HD resolution (1280x720) and though we knew there would not be time for a 100% conversion the idea was to have something that was playable.
Why has it not got as much publicity as the other demos? I'm not 100% sure. There were some logistical problems with the GDC booth meaning it wasn't up and running until Friday but I understand it was running inside the Microsoft suite. Either way its nice to be able to do the publicity for my own demo.
So here are some screen shots (click for the 1280x720 images), a couple of videos (15fps and half size but the game runs around 150fps at HD size) and a picture of The ZMan posing in the Microsoft booth.
Videos: 640x360 (11.2Mb), 320x180 (5.5Mb)
Videos by FRAPS
Friday was the last day. I got myself into the exhibition hall early with a bit of badge swapping and installed the ZMan demo on the booth machine. Brian told me that people were playing it a lot of Friday afternoon. Sadly I missed all the publicity that's life eh ?
The day started out with Practical Parallax bump mapping. Another chance to watch the awesome toyshop demo and see Natalya Tatarchuk speak again. This isn't your grandmas bump mapping. Each pixel ray traces the bump map to calculate which real pixel is visible and which is in shadow.
Next up, Eric Lengyel and a talk entitled 'Advance light and shadow culling methods'. The general problem is - how to you know which objects a light can strike and how do you know which objects outside your view frustum could be casting shadows form these lights. He showed a nice extension to a portal based system that covered all of this nicely.
Last but one, back to ATI for Shadow Mapping tricks and tips. I would have liked to have seen this talk before Tom Forsyth's talk from yesterday as John Isidoro explained some of the things Tom skipped over such as surface acne, 'peter pan'ing and smoothies.
And finally for this year what turned out to be one of the best talks I have seen. Sebastien DeGuy from Allegorithmic and Joshua Glazer from Naked Sky Entertainment answered the questions 'how do you fit a multi level 3rd person 3d game into the required 50Mb specified by Xbox Live Arcade?'. The answer is to use Allegorithmic's patented procedural generation of textures. Procedural generation is nothing new, but their patents cover the ability for an artist to move things around in the generated texture and have it still be procedurally generated. Their upcoming game RoboBlitz has 80Mb of textures represented by 280Kb of data and that's just one level of the game. It takes about 4s to generate them which is comparable with the time it would take to pull the textures from a DVD.
Day 4 was the Microsoft party. No it wasn't all day, its just that because of that my memory isn't quite remembering what else I did!
New from the Microsoft booth, the only reason my demo wasn't running was due to lack of machines. I had several people tell me last night that they saw it running inside Microsoft's suite and meeting rooms. Brian Keller told me he might get it running today, and he will let me at least get a picture of it running at some point. Brian also told me they have had a lot of interest in the managed code stuff. I also talked to someone from Microsoft who is working on something that is related to managed code and gaming. Its something that is not yet announced, but I had heard of it while I was an employee so no official news here until I see a formal announcement.
First talk was called 'Sim, Render, Repeat - an analysis of game loop architecture'. The subject was a little dry but quite fascinating. 2 guys from EA (Madden) basically looked at game loops and the theory (yes there is theory) behind how to get them working and how this leads you to the correct (or at least alternative) solutions for running on multi core hardware.
Then a D3D10 talk with Microsoft and Ritual - obviously this is early days but they gave advice on how to hook a dD3D9 and 10 renderer into your code. They also had a nice geometry shader example doing cubic shadow maps in a single pass
The afternoon I attended 'global terrain technology for flight simulation' where one of the flight sim team talked us through how they do the terrain. Interesting stuff.
And finally, Tom Forsyth and 'extremely practical shadows'. Tom is right up there on my list of 'must see' presentations. He rips through the math and explains it so simply that even a really dumb chimp could understand. He explained all the problems with shadow mapping, presented his smart solutions and finally admitted that even his solution didn't quite work...
Day 3 means the main conference started and the population of geeks swelled to insane numbers.
The first session I tried to attended was XBox live arcade. Well I should say tried to attend - they were flowing out of the door. However, in a surprising fit of organisation, they picked everyone up and moved them to a bigger room. Looks like there is lots of interest in live arcade. There was no mention of the XNA framework and how (or if) that fits into live arcade.
I spent the rest of the day mainly in the ATI graphics sessions. They showed a demo of a new performance monitoring tool which captures a lot of the same information as PIX but displays it in charts in real-time as the application is running. The afternoon sessions were the ATI demo team talking through several of their latest demos.
After taking it easy in the evening the 1st few nights I wandered the expo hall looking for free beer (not enough), free food (not bad but they needed a map to show you where to find it) and free swag (very, very poor - just 1 t-shirt this year. Thanks Intel!). Then a quick dash back to the hotel to drop stuff off and then I was off to the Casual Games party. Pretty good, especially once I found a guy with drink tickets. Though most folk got one ticket on the way in, it was apparent that others had found a way to get more. I got back at 2am so I am a little woozy today.
In terms of Managed DirectX its slightly better than last year. I have had the usual couple of 'never heard of it' and 'why would I ever want to use that'. But I've also had one guy who knew of The ZBuffer and several other folk who totally see the advantages. I've found a couple of things done with managed code which I need to confirm before I put on the site too. It seems the managed code on the Xbox 360 news really hasn't excited many hardcore game developers, at least not the ones I talked to. In other sad news it looks like Microsoft chose not to run my demo on the booth :-( Well I've not seen it yet anyway.
Tuesday was spent at the Direct3D day, the alternative Microsoft Gameday sounded a little too much like last years Meltdown for my liking. A whole day filled with talks from NVidia and ATI about cool graphics effects. Some interesting facts about Direct3D10 including a way to emulate some of the new features on current hardware (its slower but you can try things out) including an ATI demo animating >10,000 characters at the same time, a talk about how they did the water effects in the toyshop demo (did you know that in Hollywood to make rain seem stronger they add milk so that it just shows up better?) and a talk from NVidia on creating metaballs entirely on a D3D10 GPU.
In the evening I headed off to the IGDA reception, seems like unless you have big sponsors you cant get a decent bar or food. We got 1 drink and some pizza..... Since I am a cheapskate who has a cheap hotel out by the airport I had to leave before 8:30 to get the bus back so maybe it got better later.
Nothing too earth shattering happening here. Microsoft made the formal announcement about the XNA framework confirming the rumors last week:
XNA Framework Microsoft unveiled the XNA Framework at the Game Developers Conference 2006. The XNA Framework is an exciting new development and execution environment which will allow game developers to more easily create games which run on the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms. It is being designed with a unified set of class libraries which will allow for maximal re-use of code and assets across target platforms. A custom version of the Common Language Runtime is being built to enable the execution of managed code on an Xbox 360, and at GDC the XNA team showcased some exciting demonstrations of games which were built on an early version of this technology.
But finally I can talk a little about what I have been doing the last few weeks. 'XNA team showcased some exciting demonstrations of games which were built on an early version of this technology' is particularly exciting for me because I developed one of those demos. I need to check with the Microsoft folks about what I can share tomorrow after the demos can be viewed at the expo. Yes last year people smiled politely when I mentioned managed code, this year I have a demo running at the Microsoft booth. I hope this shows the direction that managed game development is heading in. Feel free to send me your questions but understand that a lot of things are NDA so I can't answer everything.
Personally, I attended the Physics for Game Developers, mostly it was good but they jumped to advanced stuff pretty quick in a couple of sessions and blew my mind.
Last night I had dinner with managed flight sim king and new NVIDIA intern Matthieu Laban, somehow we didn't manage to talk much about managed code!
Internet access at my hotel is flakey and expensive so my posting and emailing is limited to the conference between sessions otherwise I recommend you go and read Gamedev.net's coverage.
It seems that some of the Microsoft GDC presentations are already available for download at microsoft.com.
- XNA overview (Brian Keller). An overview of the XNA initiative and how Microsoft is proposing to solve some of the problems. The last two thirds of the talk discusses design and content creation tool integration into the build process and introduces XNA Build and the graphical drag and drop designer that is used to define the build process. There is a demo of building the Mech Commander 2 source using XNA build. There is also some information on XNA studio with is a version of Visual Studio Team System targeted to game development companies.
- XNA Build CTP Tutorials (Michael Klucher). Michael walks through the XNA Build tutorials.
- XNA Build Advanced (Mel MacMahon). Looks like this a a sequel to the XNA Build tutorials talk. Mel walks through building Mech Commander 2 with XNA Build and talks about advanced ways to use the new tool
Thanks Mykre
Links to XNA presentations on microsoft.com
Mike Zintel from the compact framework team posted a very interesting blog post this morning.
I also know that working with the Xbox team has been among the most enjoyable and productive cross group work that I’ve done. I know that my team and the XNA team within Xbox, have been burning the midnight oil to allow us to demonstrate the feasibility of games written in managed code running on a .NET CLR on a final 360 dev kit. And I know that we’ve demonstrated the same game binary (almost the same; oh so close) running on the 360 kit, Windows and on Windows Mobile.
Plus news from Tom:
...I've recently switched groups over to the Xbox team (and the XNA team specifically), and I'm quite excited about the stuff we're working on....Don't think this means I've "forgotten" about MDX though, believe me, I haven't.....Like I said a few blog posts ago, we're starting the revolution of managed code in gaming.
And now David Weller has a choice quote or 2:
...we have some wicked cool stuff to announce and demonstrate at the GDC. We even have a prototype of a CLR-based graphics app running on a 360 dev kit! Drool-tastic..... I do want to say one thing about Tom's departure from the DirectX team...it doesn't mean the end of DirectX support in the Common Language Runtime. Quite the opposite. We love the CLR and we are seeing more and more adoption and usage of the CLR in conjunction with DirectX applications. We will have some exciting announcements in the not too distant future about where we are going along that path....
If you want to read more about the XNA offerings that will be announced at GDC then check out Micheal Klucher's blog and another entry on David Weller's.
Other than '.Net running on 360 Dev Kit' (and I've been asked to clarify that its just a dev kit) and 'something will be demoed at GDC', there is nothing concrete here but I assume that will stop none of you from speculating about what this means. In fact email me with your speculations, I'll post the best....
Speculation from the community. Let me assure you that none of these quotes are from anyone at Microsoft and, as far as I know, are not from anyone with inside information. I thought it might be interesting to see if anyone is close to the truth if and when we find out more.
P.G.: I truly believe that it's a step in the right direction for development. It's been a awesome run so far and the adoption of MDX in the community has been great.
J.M.: Awesome! I can't wait to see what comes of it. I wonder if there will be an easy path to publishing an xbox live arcade game using mdx. Imagine rocket commander on xbox live arcade :-)
M.R.: Chances are that you'll see the CLR come down on the Xbox 360 and used primarily for Xbox Live Arcade games at first. People can develop games for Vista using managed code and the Windows Common Controller (XInput), and if the game is well-received, drop the executable on Xbox 360 Marketplace and bring in the moolah.
T.L.R: I think the sure way for the 360 to be heavily adopted is to make it a hobbyist box...That way they could have a xbox live portal that sold independent developer's casual games
Of course Casey has an opinion: ...has got me grinning from ear to ear. YEA! hope we hear more at the upcoming GDC. er, um ... anyone for NASAs WorldWind on the XBox 360 :)
As does Jason: Now that's interesting! How much more information do we need before we can start "putting together the puzzle pieces" in order to form the full picture?
Does Joe know more than he is saying?: I assure you the time proximity of these posts to each other, and to GDC next week is no coincidence.....So if Tom is 'quite excited' about what he's working on, well it doesn't take a lot of imagination to connect the dots.
J.M.: Mike Zintel seems to have gone off his rocker. Or has he? Games? The Xbox Team? .NET? What's really going on here? This could be huge...
Final quote for now from Dan: In Summary: I. Love. This. Company.
Winner of the craziest theory J.S.: Microsoft is going to make the xbox360 their own version of the mac, meaning a $200 PC (able to run basically any .NET app). Since if they port .NET to the xbox360, they get the ability to do that basically for free, Microsoft owning the hardware, free of all the back-compat baggage that's been stuck on them over the last 20 years
Speculation on Garage Games forum (including a link to a 1 year old prophecy), Flat Red Ball forums and GameDev.Net forums
I've had a reasonable amount of traffic from http://knowledge.ea.com/industrynews/item.aspx?id=13152 and http://www.worldwide.ea.com/industrynews/item.aspx?id=13152, which are internal EA intranet links so this was also of interest to them.
Regular readers may remember TrayGames, a new Casual Games company that has been under development for quite some time. They are especially relevant to ZBuffer readers because they support, and guarantee installation of, Managed DirectX and all of their game, the client and the server is written using the .Net framework. You can re-read the initial announcement and their call for developers.
They have just announced their public beta and since we want more support for Managed DirectX gaming you should all download the client and pass the message on to all your friends and relatives. Don't forget to add ZMan to your friends list.
And in honor of the beta I have done a preview of the service and their initial set of games (I am assured more are coming very soon) - read "An Initial Look at TrayGames"
The Zbuffer has now got big enough that even I have trouble finding stuff and I finally got fed up of going to Google or MSN search. So all new today is a search feature up there on the left. For now its nothing sophisticated, it just runs a search on MSN, but it helps a lot.
3/7/06: PS3 keynote from Sony
If you have some Managed DirectX interest and would be interested in hanging out with the 'cool kids' at GDC then let me know - I will try to organize some kind of get together. Or if you want to get The ZMan's autograph that will be fine too. Here's who I know of so far:
- The ZMan - general superhero and leader of the Managed DirectX rebels
- Todd - who has managed to get his company to pay for another conference even though I have no clue if he's actually using Managed DirectX yet. Todd's job is teaching us all how to get people to pay your way to a conference like this.
- Matthieu Laban - Flight Sim writer and new NVidia employee. His job is to get me a demo of some Direct3D10 hardware, or at least get me into a cool NVidia party
- Graham Wihlidal - author of a book promoting managed code in game development tools. Graham's job is giving me a copy of his book to review. (and any other free books from his publisher would be great too)
- David Weller - well he wrote a book with Managed DirectX in it once upon a time, but the poor fella is too busy being the community manager on the DirectX team to do much coding any more. But he's a nice guy with a Microsoft credit card. David's job is to get me into any Microsoft parties. (So I guess I'm just looking for an ATI person so I get into all the big parties)
- Jonas Beckeman - EndoEngine creator. Jonas I don't have a GDC job for you yet - do you know anyone who is having a party?
When? March 20-24th
Where? San Jose, CA, USA
Website? http://www.gdconf.com
Registrations are open and if you went last year you should be able to log in and get the alumni discount which is very generous.
Should be a good show, I'm hopeful that Microsoft talk a lot about Direct3D 10 since this is the last GDC before Vista (and Direct3D 10) releases.
Sadly I don't count as press so I am as usual paying my own way (though its never too late to accept offers of sponsorship!).
The hotels are already filling up fast so book soon. I will be staying at the Wyndham which is closer to the airport than the convention center, but its still an official conference hotel, there is a free bus and the hotel is cheaper than the local ones which is useful if you want to keep costs down. I got a great deal on a air/hotel package through Orbitz that was even cheaper than the special prices on the conference site.News
- Game developers conference announces details from Gamasutra
- Wada, Mizuguchi, Garriott announced as speakers and a concert from Gamasutra
- Phil Harrison, Sony, keynote on PS3 from Gamasutra. See all keynote speakers including Will Wright
Added screenshot and links to more
This is something I've been aware of for a while but I've been waiting for some kind of public announcement to talk about it.
KPL is a new beginners programming language that was originally targeted towards kids (Kids Programming Language), though they are finding that its not just kids that are interested. The language has very nice encapsulation for sprite based graphics to allow simple 2d games to be written with a lot less code and runs in an IDE which is quite similar to Visual studio.
Channel 9 has a new KPL video that walks through the product and shows some demo code.
So why is this on The ZBuffer? Because as you will see around 20:00 into the video KPL v2.0 (currently in beta) encapsulates 3d graphics using Managed DirectX to make 3d programming far simpler. Before you all start telling me how this *must* be slow, its really not and anyway the purpose of this language is about ease of use for beginners, not for creating 300fps bump mapped MMORPG's. There's a few screenshots in the KPL forums (though they appear to be suffering from some jpg compression issues).
What's the current situation with using DirectShow with Managed code?
Early versions of Managed DirectX contained the Microsoft.DirectX.AudioVideoPlayback assembly, which was a wrapper around some of the DirectShow SDK. The whole DirectShow product was moved into the platform SDK (download) and removed from the DirectX SDK in April 2003. According to official statements there are no current plans to improve or create any other managed interfaces.
DirectShow FAQ
There are no current plans to implement a "Managed DirectShow" platform. You can use COM interop to create DirectShow client applications in managed code, but creating filters that depend on the Common Language Runtime (CLR) is not recommended for performance reasons.
Deprecated DirectX APIs
DirectShow: DirectShow is no longer recommended for game development. All of the DirectShow components (headers, libraries, utilities, tools, and samples) were removed from the DirectX 9.0 SDK Update for April 2005. DirectShow is available in the latest Platform SDK Install.
MVP DirectShow FAQ
Microsoft provides an AudioVideoPlayback object for managed code..... Filter programming is generally done in unmanaged C++ because of the dshow architecture. Microsoft has not announced any plans for additional support for managed code in dshow. My personal opinion is that additional support is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.
That doesn't help me - anything else I can use instead?
- Lime Green Socks a managed DirectShow resource
- DirectShow.Net a 3rd party managed wrapper that does much more than AudioVideoPlayback every did
- DirectX Capture a DShow wrapper for doing Audio/Video capture
- Managed DirectShow filters very cool but as mentioned above not recommended by Microsoft
- DanielP more samples
What about technical support?
