I've moved! You can now find my blog at http://klucher.com, hope to see you there!
I found this great video via the Canadian Developers blog on MSDN. This was from an game camp that took place at the University of Waterloo on January 19th, 2007. Neville talks a little about his game that he created "Super Paddle Ball 2" and hints that we may get to see a sequel "Super Paddle Ball 3" soon. This kinda stuff is awesome to see! Go Neville!
Did anyone else in Canada happen to attend the event?
Video: Game Camp Waterloo 2007 - Neville Samuell
A quick post to say Happy New Year to everyone! Here's looking forward to a great 2007!
Okay it's been a while since I blogged on my personal blog. So I present to you my "wrap-up" post for the last two weeks, sorry that it's compressed and bounces around but time flew by too quickly to keep up!
We released XNA Game Studio Express!
That's right! Shocking news but it's the truth :-) as evident by my posting on the team blog here. Seriously though, I doubt I really need to tell you that as you already knew but I wanted to say it was great to come in Monday morning and get everything released. Shawn and Kevin also joined me for the release at work and they have some great posts about the event that are worth reading. On a slightly more funny note here is a picture we took of me showing off my mehndi tattoo that I got of our release date at the company party the prior night.
The whole process was really a blast. I ended up coming into work early and passing the time by watching some movies I had already seen from Xbox Live Marketplace. For my double feature I picked The Sum of All Fears and then The Core (I know what your thinking!). It was just a convenient way to burn some time before 2:00AM rolled around. One surprising thing was how on the ball everyone is with releases. People were noticing things coming online as we're working with them even early in the morning!
I've now been at Microsoft a whole year!
Only one day after releasing the final version of XNA Game Studio Express, I hit my one year anniversary at Microsoft. Needless to say it's been quite a year! I'm not sure but I think it's pretty rare for people to develop and ship a product within their first year of Microsoft so I am pretty proud of that. I know some people may think that working at Microsoft is like being a number or something but that's so far off from the truth. Pretty much I get up and go to work with a bunch of my friends to try and solve problems and make great software. If you've ever been interested in working for Microsoft I'd say go for it, it's a great environment to be in.
Where did the power go?
Last Thursday, we got hit with a huge storm that was all over the news, with winds up to 70 MPH it left almost 1 Million people without power. Between the wind knocking my house around like it was a small branch on a tree and that I was without power for a week it really ended throwing things off. It could have been much worse so I am glad nothing major happened. There certainly has been some strange weather in the last few months. Between floods, snows, and now the storm I think I've had all the extreme weather I need for the next 10 years or so.
Thanks for all your feedback!
I just wanted to thank you all for taking the time to leave some comments on my "feedback" posts. We really do use the information and suggestions you have so keep them coming! I'll probably be posting more soon, everything from suggestions for the XNA Team Blog to features in future versions, so hopefully I'll come across topics that you have opinions about. Again thanks for taking the time to leave comments on that stuff!
Well that about covers everything for right now, I'll get back to a regular posting schedule but in the mean time have a very Merry Christmas and I hope you all are enjoying the release of XNA Game Studio Express!
As I mentioned in a post on the XNA Team Blog we're currently investigating feature options for the next version of XNA Game Studio Express.
One of the ideas we've kicked around is supporting features in the Tablet PC and UMPC platforms. Features like the touch screen and "ink" on the Tablet PC are things that come to mind and I think this could enable some unique games using the input scenarios above.
My questions for those of you using XNA:GSE are, do you own a Tablet PC or UMPC and would developing games for that take advantage of things like the stylus input appealing to you? Do you think it would be something you would use?
Another question or concern as mine is how do feel about implementing these types of things into the XNA Framework if it can't be used on the Xbox 360? One of the goals we've had is keeping feature parity between the Xbox 360 and Windows, Do you think it would be frustrating to have the pen as an input device available to you but only working on Tablet PC's?
Let me know what you're thinking!
Nope, I'm not talking about my social life (or lack thereof) on my blog. This weekend is pretty exciting, we'll be around making sure everything is in place for the Monday release of XNA Game Studio Express and the XNA Creators Club on the Xbox 360.
Keep your eyes on the XNA Team Blog as that's where we'll post once everything is available. Also worth noting our final Documentation is now up on MSDN if you want to get a head start!
Catching up on my weekend news I came across this article asking if the Nintendo Wii can save adventure games. For the record I hold classic point and click adventure games even higher then the also loved platformer category of games. One of the first adventure games I played was Leisure Suit Larry 5 on my Macintosh LCII (More on this some other time). While I'd love to see adventure games make a comeback is it really the Wii that would allow that? What about something like XNA Game Studio Express?
Wait! I'm not trashing or saying anything bad at all about the Wii. The article sites that because you can use the Wiimote as a mouse cursor it lends itself to adventure games better then the Xbox 360 or PS3. I can't say for certain if that's true or not but I remember playing games like King's Quest V or Maniac Mansion just fine on my NES four directional controller with two buttons.
I'd like to think something like XNA Game Studio express could help bring on the same revolution. While I love being able to fire up a classic adventure game from time to time, the real exciter for me would be to play some totally new adventure games where I don't already know the solution. I'm hoping that when we release that we'll see some great adventure games that I can play on my Xbox 360 written by other adventure fans that created them.
I think any particular type or title of game that's extremely popular is bound to get noticed by large studios, this could let them know there's a lot more of us out here who are desperate for the next adventure game then they'd think!
I love IMDB! For those of you who aren't familiar with the Internet Movie Database, it's a site that catalogs every movie with all the actors and crew that worked on the film. What's great is you can answer eternal movie questions like "What else have I seen her in?" and "Did his career ever go anywhere?" not to mention it's a must for anyone that has ever played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. What's cool too is the team at IMDB that enters this data does a great job of making sure even the smallest parts and crew get included in the list.
But what about video games? To me the film industry has a strong culture of making sure people are recognized for their work. But video games seem very much the opposite where it's easy to find information on a game's secret codes or plot, but what about the people who worked non-stop to give the consumer a great gaming experience. While IMDB does have pages for some popular games (Many are not listed on the site) IMDB focuses mainly on the voice actors that work on game. A few examples: ATV Off Road Fury lists only one person that I know who worked on the game, and I am willing to bet he added himself, which he should as he deserves credit for his work. Taking a look at a more recent and notable example Gears of War has more people listed but I don't believe this scratches the surface of all the people that made this a great game! Not to sound vain, but work is something you should be proud of and get credit for whether it be a commercial title or a game whipped up by a group of guys at school, there should be some record of it. IMDB treats Indie films the same, they even have a special section for them here.
Do I fault IMDB? Absolutely not! They are the Internet Movie Database not the Internet Video Game Database. So that brings me to my question of what's the equivalent? The closest thing I've ever run across is Mobygames and they have a lot of great stuff that IMDB has, however it still feels incomplete. I seem to think of titles all the time that are missing and as you start to move more into the indie/hobbyist space again the information doesn't seem to be there unless the user has added it themselves.
Anyway that is my observation of the day. What are your thoughts on this? What systems would you like to see in place to allow people to easily get credit for their work?
Hopefully you caught it on our team blog, but the XNA Game Studio Express team is hosting a party at the Millennium campus (Where many of Xbox employees work) Monday evening December 11th starting at 6:30PM. You can find out all the details from here, if you're able to make it I hope to see ya there!
Naturally like many of the employees of Microsoft (Not to mention being a gadget junkie!) I picked up a Zune when they came out. While the brown is good cool, I couldn't resist the black with blue highlights.
The sad thing is I haven't had much of a chance to load any real music on it, just a couple of albums to test it. I got this idea in my head that 256K MP3's weren't good enough and I needed my entire collection ripped in Windows Media Losless, even though they get down converted when you copy them over to the Zune.
As I had bought a bunch of albums recently that I simply hadn't had time to rip I figured the Thanksgiving holiday weekend would be a great time to get started. For ripping my CD's I've been using Easy CD-DA Extractor from Poikosoft. For finding album art that the program can't, I've been using none other then Live Image Search.
It took a long while (Almost two weeks!) but I finally have everything done. So far the only issue I ran into is that it looks like on soundtracks I should have put the track artist as the album artist as that's how the Zune PC Client seems to work, it'll take some time but I can fix that with out re-ripping things.
I'm pretty happy because now I have my entire library that I can listen to at home in really high fidelity or take my library on the go and listen to them on my Xbox 360 at work. Not to mention I can now share my musical tastes with others and send them over an album or two.
This is a small post but I had to share this. Laura Foy put together this hilarious parody video of Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back". Anyway all I can suggest to you is go watch the video right away.
Joe Nalewabau, the Program Manager Architect on the XNA Game Studio team has broke his two year long hiatus on his blog and started blogging again! He's actually been quite active posting in the last week and he'll be talking about some really cool stuff such as sharing. You should head over there and have a look or add it to your RSS feeds.
A lot of you have left feedback about some of the tools you use for creating graphics, thanks for that information, it helps quite a bit!
One thing that I wanted to try and do was let people know about a few low cost (or in this case free) tools that I've come across that I think are pretty handy. One of those is Paint.NET, which is a fairly complete solution for 2D texture or sprite generation. They've recently made their 3.0 Alpha release available on the Paint.NET website. You can also keep up with the latest development on Paint.NET by visiting Rick Brewster's Blog. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
[I'm currently listening to: The Kill by 30 Seconds To Mars on URGE.]
I just wanted to post a quick "Thank You!" for everyone who made it out to UAT's Technology Forum last week. I hope you got a good look at some of the high level stuff we're doing around XNA Game Studio Express. It was really exciting for me to see how engaged and excited other people were and it was even cooler to know some of you have already started using XNA Game Studio Express. If you're new here or just missed some of the links make sure to keep an eye on our team blog for all the large scope articles and information. If you've grabbed XNA Game Studio Express Beta 2 and are looking for some help, head over to the MSDN Forums where you can get your questions answered. As more presentations come up whether from me or other team members I'll make sure to let people know about it. Finally if you have any more questions or things that were unclear feel free to contact me directly or leave a comment about them here.
[I'm currently listening to: Already Over by Red on URGE.]
If you happen to live in the valley of the sun, also known as Phoenix, Arizona, you'll have a chance to hear me talk a little about XNA Game Studio Express and demo some of the upcoming Xbox 360 functionality. I'll be hosting a session at UAT's Technology Forum on Thursday November 2nd from 11:10AM - 12:10PM at the UAT theatre. Registration for UAT's Technology Forum is free and you can do so from this link. I was a little late with my session description (sorry guys!) so I'll post it here incase it doesn't make the site in time:
Console development may be a mystery to many who are not already established as a professional in the videogame industry. XNA Game Studio Express is a new offering, targeted at students and hobbyists for game development. XNA Game Studio Express is based on Visual C# Express 2005 and lets developers target both Windows and Xbox 360. Be one of the first people to see what it’s like to develop a game for the Xbox 360 using XNA Game Studio Express and look at new the new features not currently available in the beta such as the XNA Framework Content Pipeline which allows you to consume art content easily.
Anyone that's attending, (or even if your not) feel free to leave suggestions of what you would want to see. My main plan is to focus on the Xbox 360 experience. I'm really looking forward to getting in front of some people to talk more about XNA Game Studio Express and I can't wait. Hope you can make it!
[I'm currently listening to: H! Vltg3 by Linkin Park on URGE.]
