\Managed DirectX and XNA Framework news
Added part 2
Looking at XNA part 2 - more Rory whe gets very excited about being i degree away from Luke Skywalker. See Frank Savage demo SpaceWar, XNA Racer, live debugging and deploying to an xbox and much much more...
Looking at XNA part 1. The unique interview skills of Rory Blyth vs Boyd Multerer (XNA Prodct Unit Manager). Includes some interesting revelations on where the name XNA comes from! Since this is part 1 I expect there will be more coming. Boyd also confirms that the XNA framework will get to your xbox from a download from Xbox live marketplace.
XNA at Microsoft Gamefest and if you've not seen this one before you can see Boyd and David Weller talking about XNA at the gamefest conference back in August
Old news I know but for the 3 of you who have not seen it yet here is the 1st sighting of several XNA games as well as some extended footage of others we have seen or heard of before. See the announcement and watch the original on Lets Kill Dave
Featured Games:
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I previously mentioned that Rob Miles was speaking in an XNA session at Tech*Ed in Barcelona. Well MSDN did a short interview with him as part of that event.
Rob Miles talks about using XNA in University classes
As some have noticed my little dry spell is over. Between work and regular life I wasn't posting as often as I should. It didn't help that I was on vacation during the XNA beta 1 launch and I just can't convince my family in the UK to get wireless connections (heck some of them are still on dial up!). But now we start the ramp up to December the 11th which shall henceforth be known as XNA day.
So I apologise in advance for any content I post in the next few days that you have seen elsewhere - I like to keep the ZBuffer as a reference copy of everything you might ever need. Maybe you will see something you missed in the excitement.
A short video from the Xbox 360 Fall preview event showing the garage games folks running a Torque Game Builder game running on the xbox 360. (you have to watch a short ad first).
The Queensland MSDN User group is holding a meeting on the 28th of November based on the XNA Framework and Game Studio express and will have two of the XNA Team in attendance.
Tues 28 Nov 2006 - 17:30 for 18:00, finishing approx 19:30
QUT Gardens Point Campus, Lecture Theatre S403
Jeremy Spiller has been featured on the zbuffer before with his Managed DirectX control but unless you spend time browsing around his web site you wouldn't know that he is one of the great game developers (read an interview) of the late 1980s/early 90s on the CoCo3. Well now he is recreating his 1989 classic in full 3d and so far its looking like a really fun game to play. The soundtrack is really very good and the action is synchronized up to the music. Check out the video, then download the beta and take a look at the screen shots. I really hope he ports this over to XNA - this will look great at HD resolution on the big screen.
Check out a second Zenix3D video from Jeremy (note he is better than me!)
Video by Fraps
Elliot Pace has released a game demo of a Managed DirectX game he wrote. Some nice graphics in there - though I'm not sure if I managed to kill anything when I played. I'm not sure how you get more money either. He's provided the source code.
Video by Fraps, and thanks to whoever sent me this link - I forgot who it was !!
Entombed is a nice looking Dungeon Master clone that was being done with VB and Managed DirectX. Looks like Dave is hoping to move it to XNA. Check out the site for more screen shots.
AndyQ posted a link to his XNA Dominoes 'demo' (Read about the latest update). Its EXE only at the moment. I put together a quick video
Video by Fraps
I collected a bunch of the XNA videos into a XNA group. Check them out.
YouTube XNA Videos
I'm sure I have missed some - so feel free to add them to the group. I have moderation turned on to try to keep the group on topic.
An interesting video showing a game being downloaded to an Xbox 360. Its tough to see exactly how it operates and NDAs preclude me from commenting further so interpret as you will. They have some problems initially but eventually they are playing Space Wars on the Xbox.
There's another video of the event but that's mostly introductions.
With such an exciting technology there was always going to be some good books, but can they appear in time for the release? It appears not.
Amazon is currently showing 2 titles and we know David Weller is working on a third.
- Professional XNA Game Programming by Benjamin Nitschke (Due April 2007)
- Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express Creator's Guide by Stephen Cawood and Pat McGee (Due May 2007)
- "Unknown XNA book" by David Weller (Due who knows when!)
As David has mentioned on his blog he is currently writing a book about XNA. However its not showing up in Amazon yet and I know nothing about the details. But We know David has had successful Managed Gaming books published before so that counts for something. Watch this space for more details.
XNA Racer is a starter kit that will be available to Creators Club subscribers. It was coded by Benjamin Nitschke in just 4 weeks (though Ben is some kind of super human coder who never sleeps!) and shows what can be done in the hands of really good game developers.
A great video from some XNA event showing more of XNA racer than we have seen before.
There are few enough VB.Net tutorials or sample code for Managed DirectX or XNA. So nice to see a site with a set of XNA tutorials in VB from Alan Phipps. The tutorials all work with beta2, however there is currently no 3d tutorials since the content pipeline does not work in VB.Net
11/2/06: Added screen shot
From Xbox.com's announcement on the Fall Xbox Dashboard Updates:
New Features
Support for upcoming release of XNA Game Studio Express (separate download and subscription required.)
Of course this does us no good at all in the short term becuase we know that we won't be able to use retail Xboxes until XNA GSE releases, but its nice to see things starting to happen.
I updated my 360 today and this is the only obvious XNA part:
When you select that option at the moment you just see any downloaded demos.
Added information on UK launch event
Interesting article on Gamasutra with some XNA facts and figures and this surprising snippet
The new version of the software is described as “near final” with the actual final version due to go live on December 11 and XNA Game Studio Professional available next summer.
I can't find any other news reports with this date so I have no clue how accurate it is (and no its not one of the things I know myself either - I do have a close relationship with Microsoft but they've never shared an actual release date with me!)
With a bit of help from Gregory Wurm form LearnXNA.com we tracked down some announcements of a UK Launch Event for XNA starting on Wednesday Dec 13th - looks like its academics only and limited numbers. Seems pretty official. Nice event too - Peter Molyneaux (Lionhead) and Nick Burton (Rare). Plus a multi day training event at the Rare offices.
The XNA developer center has been updated and there is a new logo...
Finally.... get your downloads started.... direct from LetsKillDave - Download Microsoft Game Studio Express and XNA Framework here
Read about how to move beta 1 code over to beta 2 and read about some of the changes between beta 1 and 2 (hopefully the docs will have more details).
