Vernon Hui's Blog

Xbox LIVE Community games is Live!

VernonH — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:00:00 GMT

Xbox LIVE Community games is Live!

Today at 8am, we are excited to announce the release of XNA Game Studio 3.0 and Creators Club Online (http://creators.xna.com). This joint release marks the culmination of a three year initiative to democratize game development and distribution for academics, hobbyists, and indie game developers.

When we released XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 in December 2006, we had a feeling it would be an important development. After all, we were solving a set of common problems faced by all game developers. By offering a managed code framework and by empowering community members to run code safely on their Xbox 360 consoles, we made it easier for creators to write games.

With the release of XNA Game Studio 2.0, we added multiplayer support over Xbox LIVE and made several other improvements. We enhanced our tools with a steady stream of samples, articles, mini-games, and other types of content that are posted at the Creators Club Online throughout the year. As the community embraced XNA Game Studio, we saw that we were redefining who could be a game developer. The response of the creator community to XNA Game Studio has been overwhelmingly positive.

Beginning today, creators from around the world will create games that can target Windows, Zune devices, and Xbox 360 consoles. Creators can then use the Creators Club Online website to submit and sell their Xbox 360 games to more than 10 million Xbox LIVE members via the NXE and Xbox LIVE Community Games.

Dues: parts of this were taken from a Gamasutra article from Dax Hawkins - XNA Community Dev Manager

Password recovered!

VernonH — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:54:00 GMT

Ahh...I have finally re-discovered my password. Geez...this is why I need to come up with a pattern for all the places I log into...

yay!

XNA Game Studio Express released!

VernonH — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 04:03:00 GMT

As many of you have probably heard by now, XNA Game Studio Express and the XNA Creators Club have been released. This allows you to write games for Windows and your Xbox 360. Super cool.

Some folks may be wondering how to get started. First, I suggest you go through the getting started documentation that is included in XNA Game Studio Express. There is a wealth of good information that will help you get started, including system requirements and how to setup your Windows PC and Xbox 360. Next, I suggest you go through the installed documentation which includes a series of How-To to which introduce our framework and how to quickly integrate features (graphics, sound, input, etc) in to a game. Finally, Spacewar is a complete end-to-end application that you follow to create, build, debug, and deploy to your Windows and Xbox 360 console.

Enjoy!

Vern

oh yea, one of the things that I found difficult was finding graphics and other assets. Check out our partners pages for some useful links! http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/XNA/partners/default.aspx

An adventure in building games with XNA Game Studio Express

VernonH — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 18:59:00 GMT

First off, I have to give props to some of the 2D and 3D games that folks who have used our Beta1 or Beta2 software have been telling us about - amazing creativity! Thank you all for contributing to the forums and community.

We recently had an internal team event where everyone on the XNA team got some time to build their favorite apps. This was a bit different than the norm, since there wasnt any directed or targetted testing. It was, "let's use our product the way our customers would and see what we can do!" Having never built any serious games prior to working on XNA, I was absolutely blown away by the creativity on the team. Certainly, we have a number of experienced folks with direct experience in designing and developing games, but there are a number of us who dont .

My game was absolutely lame. I built a 2D Whac-a-Mole type of game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whac-A-Mole). I was able to start from scratch, learn how to construct a game, and complete it in roughly 2 days, complete with user input, graphics and sound. The lesson I learned here though, is that it's much harder to make a FUN game - complete with score, menu system, game logic, etc - than it is to make a game. But for a first time effort - not too shabby, (if i do say so myself)!

Some of the other games were also quite stunning. I happened to have a new hire join our team, and he was able to construct a right-scroll Toss game in about the same time as me. Others on the team were able to build 3rd-person-view camera games (imagine the view when walking around in Oblivion), top-down scrolling shooting games, puzzle games, 3D board games, etc.

If you havent downloaded XNA Game Studio Express Beta2, I suggest that you do it now. It's been available for about a month, and you can get learn about it and here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/XNA/default.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/gse/

Download XNA Game Studio Express Beta

VernonH — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 11:00:00 GMT

On behalf of everyone on the team, I would like to welcome you all to download the XNA Game Studio Express Beta. All of our partners and everyone on our team has worked extremely hard to get this to you!

XNA Game Studio Express enables individuals and small teams to more easily create video games using new, optimized cross-platform gaming libraries for Windows and Xbox 360. This beta release targets the development of games for Windows. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season and will enable development of games which target Windows and upon purchase of a XNA Creators Club subscription, the Xbox 360 as well.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21e979e3-b8ae-4ea6-8e65-393ea7684d6c&displaylang=en

Missing features? Please give us feedback; tell us where we can improve! Share us some of your game ideas, I'd love to see what you guys are all creating out there!

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=20&SiteID=1

woot!

XNA Game Studio Express

VernonH — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:34:00 GMT

It's done!

The XNA test team has signed off on the XNA Game Studio Express Beta. We're in the final stages of testing the download package. Then, the only thing that needs to happen is to propagate the bits up to our download servers around the world.

Stay tuned, I'll post the download link. In the meantime, check out a silly forum that we recently came across: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=681019&SiteID=1

My first entry...

VernonH — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:18:00 GMT

Well, it's been a while since I've posted stuff...on newsgroups, blogs, or whatever. Let's see how this goes...

So, who am i? I'm Vern, and I'm currently the Test Lead on the Microsoft XNA team ...which most recently announced Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express!
(http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/aug06/08-13xnagamestudiopr.mspx)

We're all very pumped!