XNA Team Blog

Creators Club Communiqué 03

Last week we had to bid farewell to Charles Cox, content producer and all-around swell guy. Thankfully, this community and this team doesn't let that slow them down. We're all working hard to help you create the best games you can in preparation for the release of XNA Game Studio 3.0 on [REDACTED], 2008 and the launch of Xbox LIVE Community Games on [REDACTED], 2008!

One of the features that we added in the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta is ClickOnce publishing support for XNA Framework-based Windows games.  Aaron "Code Paladin" Stebner  went over the behind-the-scenes details for this feature and explained how to configure and use it in a Windows game.

In a fit of productivity Pete took it upon himself to convert all of the Creators Club XNA Game Studio 2.0 samples to 3.0 using the beta! Check them out! Like anything we link here, they aren't official so use them with care. Let Pete know if you find any problems, too.

XNA MVP George "Maverick" Clingerman fashioned a cool way of placing controller images inline with the text in his game. He shares this sample on his website, xnadevelopment.com.

Having trouble with collision detection? Sure, we all do. Four-Two games offers two sweet tutorials on 2-D Collision Detection and Response.

Our own beloved Michael "Rock Star" Klucher has a sweet inside look at the new XNA Game Studio Connect complete with secret screenshots. Have a look at his blog!

Finally, this week many people head to Japan for the Tokyo Game Show. I highly recommend this particular eatery, because you are served by trained monkeys.

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 02

It looks like everything came through the Xbox LIVE downtime with flying colors. Sadly, the stock market didn't fare so well yesterday. Coincidence? Who could say?

Meanwhile, in the world of XNA Game Studio and making rad games to share on Community Games there were lots of good nuggets of learning and doing.

Here at Creators Club Online we finally launched a new section of the 2D Tutorial featuring videos from our brilliant community! In the coming months we're hoping to share more of the tutorial videos that you guys have shared with us. In addition to that we've posted a new sample which demonstrates basic artificial intelligence navigation in 2D, using waypoints 

Nazeeh's Little Corner of the Web offered a really comprehensive look at developing games for the Zune. Although Community Games doesn't work for other platforms, yet, we hope it can someday.

More Zune-centric love could be found at BadCorporateLogo. Our own Stephen "Super Striker" Styrchak offered a helpful post about Debugging Games on Zune with XNA:GS 3.0.

XNA Development teammate Eli "Master Mind Freak" Tayrien addresses some questions about what audio formats the XNA content pipeline can accept, and what formats it converts to on his blog. This should help those of you that are wondering how your wav, wma, and mp3 files are converted to prepare them for your game.

Finally, one bit of Internet wonder courtesy of MVP/Wunderkind Catalin Zima. Behold the Ninja Cat.

As ever, if you have anything you would like to submit for upcoming communiqués, please send them our way to creators@microsoft.com.

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Xbox LIVE downtime and You

By now you might've read that in anticipation of everything awesome that is happening on Xbox LIVE later this year (including Community Games) Xbox LIVE will be offline for maintenance on Monday, September 29 to tidy up properly. Don't worry! It is only for 24 hours.

Creators should be aware that during this time:

• Creators will not be able to deploy or debug games on the Xbox 360
• Creators will not be able to peer review games in the Community Beta
• Creators will not be able to launch and/or run Community Beta games on their consoles
• Creators will not be able to submit their games to Creators Club
• Creators Club Online (creators.xna.com) will be offline during this time, including the forums and educational sites

During this time we're also having to say goodbye to the Community Games beta.

This means that after September 29th you will not be able to submit games through the Creators Club website until the launch of XNA Game Studio 3.0.

Games already in the catalog can still be found on the Creators Club Marketplace, but no new submissions will be permitted.

You'll still be able to share your game files manually and launch them on your console using the Games Library XNA Creator Club twist.

After September 29 some parts of Creators Club related to peer review and submission will be closed for renovations. However, we'll still be there. The forums will still be live and you'll even see some new content coming along shortly.

So, that will leave you about 24 hours where you won't get to do anything with Creators Club games on your console. Don't worry, once Xbox LIVE returns so will all of your Creators mojo.

This news might leave you with an unexpected amount of free time. We respectfully suggest a few things to help you pass these idle hours:

• Defragment your hard drive
• Clean your keyboard, mouse, phone, and controllers
• Teach your dog C#
• Bake cookies
• Learn Spanish
• Make a really cool drawing of a unicorn for Kathleen

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 01

Every Tuesday we'll offer you a few things from all parts of the internets that you magnificent creators might find interesting. If you find something cool, please feel free to share it in our forums or email us at creators@microsoft.com!

Shawn "Supreme Brain Wizard" Hargreaves has a ton of useful information specifically related to the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta, including info about Rich Presence, Trial Mode, and Invites. Check them all out over at his blog.

Thunderfist from Sandswept Studios learned quite a lot about the FBX file format while working on a hack-n-slash side scroller. He's shared his lessons in his article: XNA FBX and Custom Loader.

Over at The Z-Buffer there is a handy-dandy table that clearly lists all of the API changes between Game Studio 2.0 and 3.0.

Michael Klucher, the XNA Team’s Rock Band 2 Lead Singer and Program Manager, offered this quick tutorial on using XNA Game Studio 3.0's Screen Capture functionality for Zune and Xbox 360.

Some may argue this really has nothing to do with much of anything related to making games, but I found it to be awesome. To the open-mind it could have a very great deal to do with making a great game. It is a kitten giving a unicorn a massage.

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta is GO!

That's right! You can download it now! We'll be asking your help to put this baby through her paces as we lead up to the official release later this year. It is your input that makes us stronger, faster and better.

Download XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta at Launch Center

If you do find any bugs or just have a suggestion on ways we can make XNA Game Studio 3.0 more awesome head over to Microsoft Connect to submit them to us.

xxoo

~kathleen

XNA Community Manager

p.s. In case you missed Michael's post last week here is a list of the changes:

Zune

• Compatibility with the upcoming Zune 3.0 Firmware release. Please note that the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP will no longer work once you have upgraded your Zune device to the 3.0 firmware.
• Improved deployment stability.
• Support for Zune deployment on Windows Vista x64 Systems!
• You can now use the Remote Performance Monitor for Zune games.

Xbox 360

• Xbox 360 project templates (You will not be able to develop on the Xbox 360 until our final release. We felt this was important to include so that you could get projects converted over and look at the system, even if you are not able to run the games, yet).
• Support for the Big Button Pad.

Framework & Visual Studio Features

• Enumerate and play back media on your Windows computer or Xbox 360.
• Simple sound effect support on Windows computers and Xbox 360.
• Support for Rich Presence (lets friends know what’s going on in your game).
• Support for Invites (ask your friends to join you in a multiplayer game) and Join Session In Progress (after you see what your friends are doing, you can join their current session with just a couple of button presses, even if that’s a different game to the one you are currently playing)
• Compress your content and save space with the new content compression features!
• ClickOnce packaging support for distributing your XNA Framework games on Windows.
• Upgrade your project from XNA Game Studio 2.0 using the Project Upgrade Wizard!
• Take screen captures of your game running on Zune through the XNA Game Studio Device Center.
• Support for .NET language features like Linq
• Create multiple content projects and leverage cross project synchronization in Visual Studio.
• FBX importer improvements: read materials containing multiple textures, and export custom shader materials directly out of Max or Maya.

XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta Release On Its Way!

Michael Klucher
Program Manager – XNA Game Studio Team

On behalf of the XNA team I am excited to announce the upcoming availability of the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta. This is a significant milestone and represents the completion of all our features for XNA Game Studio 3.0! We’ll have much more information with the final release but here’s a quick glance at some of the key features and additions in the beta:

Zune

• Compatibility with the upcoming Zune 3.0 Firmware release. Please note that the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP will no longer work once you have upgraded your Zune device to the 3.0 firmware.
• Improved deployment stability.
• Support for Zune deployment on Windows Vista x64 Systems!
• You can now use the Remote Performance Monitor for Zune games.

Xbox 360

• Xbox 360 project templates (You will not be able to develop on the Xbox 360 until our final release. We felt this was important to include so that you could get projects converted over and look at the system, even if you are not able to run the games, yet).
• Support for the Big Button Pad.

Framework & Visual Studio Features

• Enumerate and play back media on your Windows computer or Xbox 360.
• Simple sound effect support on Windows computers and Xbox 360.
• Support for Rich Presence (lets friends know what’s going on in your game).
• Support for Invites (ask your friends to join you in a multiplayer game) and Join Session In Progress (after you see what your friends are doing, you can join their current session with just a couple of button presses, even if that’s a different game to the one you are currently playing)
• Compress your content and save space with the new content compression features!
• ClickOnce packaging support for distributing your XNA Framework games on Windows.
• Upgrade your project from XNA Game Studio 2.0 using the Project Upgrade Wizard!
• Take screen captures of your game running on Zune through the XNA Game Studio Device Center.
• Support for .NET language features like Linq
• Create multiple content projects and leverage cross project synchronization in Visual Studio.
• FBX importer improvements: read materials containing multiple textures, and export custom shader materials directly out of Max or Maya.

We hope that early next week you’ll give the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta a download and run it through its paces. As we mentioned above this beta will be very close to what our release looks like, so if you encounter ship stopping issues (crashes, hangs) please let us know through Microsoft Connect! We’ve paid close attention to your feedback and we’ve added many of the features you requested. If your feature didn’t make it in this release, don’t worry we’ve still got more to come! If you have ideas on ways we can be better share them with us through Microsoft Connect. There you can add or vote on feature suggestions that you would like to see.

We’ll post on this blog as soon as the download becomes available early next week!

Gamefest 2008 Presentations: Now Available on PC!

This year's Gamefest included exciting announcements about Games for Windows - LIVE and Xbox LIVE Community Games. Now, you can enjoy the interesting and informative Gamefest 2008 presentations from the comfort of your own home! We've posted many of the presentation's slides and audio at XNAGamefest.com Enjoy!

New Content Available: AI Flocking, Shadow Mapping, and Multipass Lighting Shaders!

The XNA Team announces a new set of educational content for XNA Game Studio:

• Artificial Intelligence: Flocking - Learn how to enable complex, emergent behavior in groups by using simple logic.
  
• Shadow Series 1: Basic Shadow Mapping - Learn how to cast basic shadows on a scene, with a movable camera and self-shadowing.
  
• Shader Series 5: Multipass Lighting - Learn how to utilize multipass rendering to illuminate objects with many lights at once

Introducing Our New Community Manager!

Hello!

At last Creators Club (and XNA.com) has a new community manager! My name is Kathleen Sanders and you may have seen me in other places around the internets. I’m a lifetime lover of video games and a longtime believer in the power of independent creators in all aspects of entertainment, particularly gaming.  There are greater challenges for a passionate, independent developer of games than any other medium.  Any jerk with a webcam can end up on YouTube screaming something worthless into the void. Creating a game, even the most basic game, takes an impressive investment of time and effort. Despite the barriers to entry, there are thousands of indie game developers out there looking for people to play their game. This fall, Xbox LIVE Community Games hopes to give them access to a few million of those people.

I’m not a space brain. I don’t know how to make a game yet, but that serves to increase my admiration for those who do. I consider the way that you can take an insane amount of numbers and letters and shove them through my TV screen as something I can play is a sort of space magic to me. To help me with that side of things will be Charles Cox. He’ll be helping get more developer education content out to you about every two weeks – starting today!

Here’s Charles now to tell you about what we’ve got for you:

If you’ve been looking to make your own 2D and 3D shaders to enhance the basic drawing functions provided by SpriteBatch and BasicEffect, these utilities are your ticket. They’re the full shader source code with supporting documentation so you can start plugging in your own shader code to ramp up your games’ graphics. You can download it right now in the Utilities section of the XNA Creators’ Club Online Website.

For those of you hungry for more content, stay tuned – later this month we’ll have a set of new samples including an AI flock behavior sample, the next installment of the Shader Series, and a shadow mapping sample.

Back to Kathleen!

Thanks, Charles - for my part, I’ll be working with our partners throughout Microsoft and beyond to increase awareness of what we’re doing here. I’m going to be your voice and advocate. I want to make sure that the world knows about what you’re making and how you’re doing it. You’ll see more content hitting Creators Club and beyond to this end. You guys are the reason I’m here so please feel free to ask me any questions you might have (within reason – don’t be creepy) and share your ideas with me. On the forums and XBL my handle is ‘Cookiecups’.  Also – we’ll be at PAX! Be sure to let me know if you’re going to be there!

xxoo
~kath

Movipa Mini Game Released!

The XNA Team is excited to announce the release of the mini game, Movipa. It is available for download now!

Movipa is a complete mini game for XNA Game Studio. The project comes ready to compile and run, and it's easy to customize with a little bit of C# programming. You are also free to use the source code as the basis for your own XNA Game Studio game projects, and to share your work with others.

Movipa was developed by AGENDA/Zenryokutei.

Movipa is a puzzle game involving moving images that demonstrates the following components:

• Non-continuous rendering of puzzle tiles via texture coordinates
• Asynchronous asset loading
• Game state saving and loading
• Multiple gameplay modes
• Complex scene-description system for layered 2D scenes.
• Skinned animation system, from the Skinning Animation sample.

Further details and the download of the Movipa game can be found here.

New Community Spotlights on the XNA Creators Club Online Website

We're happy to present three new Community Spotlights - in-depth interviews of people and teams in the XNA Creators Club community!

In this edition:

An interview with Torpex Games, creators of Schizoid, a brand-new Xbox LIVE Arcade game, and the first game on Xbox LIVE Arcade to be made using XNA Game Studio. Learn about their team, their game, and tips and tricks for getting the most out of XNA Game Studio.

A question-and-answer with Albert Ho, Group Program Manager on the XNA Community team. He talks about the new Xbox LIVE Community Games offering and answers questions about price points, regions, and the next Community Games Beta.

A profile of Mother Gaia Studio from Brazil, winners of the 2008 Imagine Cup Game Development competition. This team of four discusses coding their eco-puzzle game, City Rain, from scratch, and the challenges they faced that took them from a university in Brazil, all the way to Paris and the Imagine Cup finals.

Got an idea for a Community Spotlight? Email creators@microsoft.com!

Introducing Xbox LIVE Community Games

You’ve played Xbox 360 games with the millions of gamers on Xbox LIVE. You’ve chatted, shared, and dominated in games of all kinds. But what if those millions could be playing your game?

Better still – what if you were getting paid for it?

Starting holiday 08, Xbox LIVE Community Games is your ticket to fame – and possibly fortune as millions of Xbox LIVE users now have the opportunity to view, buy, and play games that you create.

How it Works

The setup? Simple. The payments? Cash.

As a Premium member in the XNA Creators Club, you’ll be able to submit any complete Xbox 360 game you’ve created in XNA Game Studio to the Creators Club community at http://creators.xna.com, for peer review. Other Premium Creators will check to make sure your game is safe to play. If it is, you’ll set a price point – between 200 and 800 Points – that people will pay to download your game.

Once the game is reviewed and the price point set, you’re done. The game is listed on Xbox LIVE Marketplace, and you’ll get a check every quarter, for up to 70% of the game’s total revenue in your own currency. Depending on your game’s success, you may even have your game advertised on Xbox 360 and other Microsoft online properties.

Just imagine - your game in the hands of millions of Xbox 360 gamers around the world: that’s the power of Community Games.

How to Get Started

While the official launch of Xbox LIVE Community Games won’t be until later this year, you can start working on that great game right now with XNA Game Studio and the XNA Creators Club Online community!

First, download XNA Game Studio, the free game development tool from Microsoft. It’s free and works with Visual Studio or Visual C# Express Edition. If you’ve never made a game before, the XNA Creators Club website has tons of samples, tutorials, even whole video guides to game creation. Jump right in and start coding your dream game!

Next, join the XNA Creator’s Club at http://creators.xna.com. It’s a community of game creators just like you. If you’re going to develop games for Xbox 360 and want to sell your game on Xbox LIVE Community Games, you’ll need a Premium membership. It’s just $99 per year or $49 for four months.

Finally, submit your finished game to the XNA Creators Club and watch the money roll in!

Questions?

If you’ve got a question about Community Games, XNA Game Studio, and all of the details in between, please read the handy FAQ to get your answers.

Congratulations Torpex Games!

Michael Klucher
Program Manager - XNA Game Studio

On behalf of all the XNA team, we'd like to extend our congratulations to our friends at Torpex Games for shipping Schizoid today on Xbox LIVE Arcade! Here is some information about Schizoid.

Cooperative gameplay is redefined in the fast-paced and unique Schizoid! Control red and blue ships, ramming them into enemies of the same color to destroy them. But be careful, because if you hit the opposite color, you will be destroyed. Quick thinking and quicker reflexes help you seize victory, but sharp teamwork provides the best chance of earning gold medals along the way. Schizoid offers more than 120 levels of challenge, playable in either single-player or co-op mode, plus the brain-melting Uberschizoid hardcore mode, in which one player controls both ships!

Schizoid also is the first game to be released commercially on the Xbox 360 that was built completely using XNA Game Studio! It looks like their creativity hasn't gone unnoticed, as Penny Arcade has bestowed Schizoid as one of the PAX 10 winners for gameplay and "fun factor"!

Again, our congratulations to the Torpex Games team on their launch. Give it a try today on Xbox LIVE Arcade!

2D Game Tutorial Now Available!

The XNA team is pleased to announce the release of the 2D Game Creation video tutorial. Over 2 hours of in-depth video tutorials are now available for all creators to view. Each video is available at a resolution of 800x600 ensuring you can actually read the code ;-)

• In this 2D tutorial you will learn about:
• XNA Game Studio project creation
• Adding art assets to a project
• Displaying background art
• Sprites
• Simple collision techniques
• Scoring
• Font usage
• Keyboard and Gamepad input
• Basic C# programming within the XNA Framework

Get going at the Getting Started page!

Robot Game Available For Download!

The XNA Team is excited to announce the release of the mini game, Robot Game.

Robot Game was developed by Zepetto, a South Korean game development company. Previously released titles include Vulcanus and several games for mobile platforms.

Robot Game is a three-dimensional robot combat game that demonstrates the following components:

• Advanced graphics using shaders and post-processing effects
• Advanced particle system
• Collision detection, 3D positional sound, input, and screens management
• Single-player mode and split-screen two-player versus mode
• Customizable game elements, such as robots, weapons, and items

Further details, including screenshots and a video are available on the Robot Game details page.