\Managed DirectX and XNA Framework news
Since xbox *wired* controllers are just USB we've been able to use them with XNA since day one. However, not everyone owns wired controllers and why buy extra when you already have wireless ones. Well if you you buy the Xbox 360™ Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows then you can join in the fun. Ignore the fact that the Microsoft site says 'coming soon' - you can buy it on Amazon today.
John Shute just blogged that this means that you can also use the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel with XNA on the PC now. There are actually many different racing wheel vendors - I'm not sure which is the best but one of these are on my shopping list for when I get back from GDC:
Joseph Molnar has posted a pretty well thought out article discussing homebrew development for consoles. Worth a few minutes of your time Here Comes Homebrew: Barriers and Predications.
You might want to read the previous articles too.
Gunston posted the link to this 1980s classic Chuckie Egg that he has rewritten for XNA. You can read more about it in his MSDN forums posts #1 and #2
This question has shown up in the MSDN forums several times in the last couple of weeks (#1, #2, #3). Nobody at Microsoft appears to want to make an official statement so I though I would sum up the situation and share my opinion - if the folk at Microsoft don't like it then they know my email address and they are welcome to tell me the real story at any time.
- Managed DirectX 1.1 is frozen. Its still a great API and since its part of DirectX 9.0 will be supported for a a reasonable period. DirectX 9 ships with Vista and the Aero shell uses it so its not going to die. There are probably some bugs but it went through several versions and is pretty stable. However bug fixes are unlikely.
- Managed DirectX 2.0 was cancelled in favour of XNA development. Personally I think of XNA as most of what MDX 2.0 was going to be with the added bonus of content management, xbox 360 deployment and a nice game architecture.
- XNA is the only managed directX API that Microsoft are actively working on to my knowledge. As mentioned above it has several advantages over MDX 2.0 however it also has several segments of the API missing such as parts of D3DX. Its currently the best choice if you want support in the forums or future bug fixes. There has been public talk of future/pro versions. The XNA team is far bigger than Managed DirectX ever was and there has been lots of high profile marketing too. On the whole this seems like a safe bet.
- Neither MDX nor XNA has 64 bit native assemblies - more and more people are asking for this. The 32 bit assemblies run just fine on 64 bit machines but since there is a 64 bit version of native DirectX we feel a little left out.
- None of the APIs give managed developers access to DirectX10 abilities - this isn't huge deal as there is limited/expensive hardware and since its only available on Vista the customer base is much smaller. However every day this becomes a bigger issue. Ralf has been working on an independent wrapper. Since XNA has a large Xbox 360 focus and Xbox 360 is not DirectX 10 there could be a feature conflict here.
So right now we are in a waiting game. There is nothing announced on the future of Managed DirectX, there is no official guidance to move everything to XNA, there is no hint of 64bit or DX10 wrappers.
Bottom line is that everyone needs to make their own decisions based on their requirements. The majority of people I talk to seem to be asssuming that XNA is the way of the future and are moving over to that. If your project is for a large corporation then maybe you can get your Microsoft rep to give you some answers. I would LOVE to know the response.
Fixed all the old links, added some new ones including Shadows in 2d
Mykre is a regular in the MSDN forums and has been an MVP for (Managed) DirectX for a year or so. his blog is mostly XNA/Managed DirectX with some art/modelling stuff and the occasion gaming post thrown in for good measure.
Tutorials
With the lack of progress on CPU clock speed in the past year and multi core/proc machines being the way of the future we are all going have to get used to multithreading when we hit the limits of one thread (don't all go assuming you NEED multi threading until you actually do). With XNA giving access to 4 threads it can be a useful skill there too.
Some forum posts on multi threading with XNA
- Ways to architect your games
- Setting affinity important on xbox
- Advice from Shawn on best practises
- More on affinity and the Xbox 360s abilities
- Gotchas for input in other threads - it doesn't always work
Some other blog and community site entries that talk about multithreading games
2/27/07 - added Ben and 'Dream Team' news
Once again its almost time for GDC and The ZMan will be in attendance. I will be in San Francisco from Sun 4th - Sun 11th, March so if you will be attending, or you just live locally and would like to grab a beer (or non alcoholic beverage of your choice) then drop me a line so we can make arrangements.
- Charles Cox will be there and doing hand on labs for GSE
- Micheal Kulcher and other XNA team members will be there
- Ben will be there
Ben's announcement also has some very interesting news. Apparently Microsoft have several (well at least one) 'Dream teams' that will be writing complete games in 3 days, presumably using XNA. This will be some great publicity for XNA at a conference where 2 years ago people said 'Managed code - what is that'. Of course Crazy Coder Ben is going to show his super powers and code a multi player RPG. It's a big project but I won't be betting against him!
Of course based on my severe lack of updates of late I do wonder if anyone is left reading this. If you are then I appreciate your patience. Its tough enough to keep the updates coming when everything is going well and the slightest disruptions to life and/or work can really get in the way. I can refute all the speculation over on IRC - TheZBuffer is not to be considered dead until I say so. I will certainly posting stuff about GDC up on here. Until then Ziggy seems to be doing a great job even if he is a bit of a google adwords whore!
Paul over at Bespoke Software has released the source and a demo of his ray tracing project. Ray tracing and XNA are not really best buddies, one being for high quality images, the other being for real time graphics. But he is using XNA to render the final output as well as to read the input. Its certainly a work in progress as he clearly states. But one to keep an eye on.
Micheal is a PM on the XNA team at Microsoft. Original MSDN blog, New personal blog He often also posts on the XNA Team Blog
Significant posts:
Australia is a damn big place but if you happen to be close to Wagga Wagga on March 31st - April 1st then you need to check out Code Camp Oz. Whilst I don't see any XNA sessions on the official schedule, Brian's blog says there will be....
If you go I would love to see pictures and a report of any XNA sessions
