XNA Team Blog

Creators Club Communiqué 31

The XNA Creators CLub has had a number of big announcements and changes in the past few weeks! We understand you’ve endured a few bumps and problems while we get things back up and running. Your understanding and support has been incredible. Hopefully by tomorrow, this battlestation should be quite operational. If you’re still having problems feel free to contact us at creators@microsoft.com. We’ll do what we can to straighten it out!

Now, onward to learnings! With the release of XNA Game Studio 3.1 comes the ability to put Avatars into your Xbox LIVE Indie Games! This week’s CCC will touch on a few posts from around the internets that could provide helpful insights into using Avatars.

XNA MVP Pete offered a quick post he calls Avatars 101 on his blog. He not only explains what Avatars are, but also includes links to other helpful information. It’s worth checking out!

On the XNA Community Codeplex, several space geniuses offered an Avatar Animations sample using 3D Studio Max and Collada.

Team XNA’s own Dean “Avatar: The Last Airbender” Johnson has generated several posts on Avatars over the past few months on his blog.

• Avatar API Preview for XNA Game Studio 3.1
• What to do while an Avatar loads?
• Avatar Animation Update

Dean also contributed several Avatar samples to Creators Club Online:

• Avatar Animation Blending Sample
• Avatar Multiple Animations Sample
• Object Placement on Avatar Sample

Hopefully, these can help you get started using this exciting new feature with your own Xbox LIVE Indie Game. Remember, projects created or converted to XNA Game Studio 3.1 cannot be submitted to XNA Creators Club, yet. However, it is required for projects that want to enter this year’s Dream.Build.Play competition!

Finally, be sure to check out all the rules on the use of Avatars so you don’t get you or your Avatars into trouble!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Please Pardon our Dust!

We are aware of an issue affecting a small amount of content on Xbox LIVE Marketplace since the service came back online- including Xbox LIVE Community Games. We appreciate your patience and hope to resolve the issue soon. Until then, new Xbox LIVE Community Games will not be pushed to the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, but Playtest and Peer Review are still available to Premium Creators on Creators Club Online. Thanks so much for your understanding!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

CCO and Xbox LIVE are Down

Today, June 16 from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. PDT (2009-06-16 0701 to 2009-06-17 0659 GMT) Creators Club Online, Xbox LIVE, and parts of Xbox.com are offline for scheduled maintenance. 

As a result, Creators Club Online is down. Xbox 360 Consoles will not be able to connect to any Xbox LIVE Services so any Xbox LIVE Community Games you have downloaded will not be playable. Additionally, the “My Xbox” section of Xbox.com is not available, and the Xbox forums are in read-only mode and you will be unable to post.  The rest of Xbox.com is functional and available.

When services are restored, up to 24 hours later, there will be many new exciting changes to be found on Creators Club Online including:

• Cross-creator purchasing made easier with a “Buy Game on Marketplace” link on the Approved Game Details page!
• Gamercard linking returns – repaired!
• Additional localization of pages and help for our supported regions
• 30 new creator tiles now available!
• Time period in forums not read, active discussions and my discussions will be fixed!
• Download history updates! Will contain totals for purchases, trial, and purchase/trial ratio per time period selected. Also added "All data" in the period dropdown. CSV export now takes into consideration locale for determining separator. We fixed first day of the month issue, too!
• CMS RSS feeds will now show the images outside of a browser reader
• Layout of RSS feeds have changed slightly to be more consistent across different types of browsers
• Trial memberships now clearly displayed on the profile page
• IE8 Compatibility
• Single letter domain email addresses will be supported

We have many more changes coming soon, too. This is just a taste of a few of the smaller changes we’ve made in response to your feedback. We’re constantly listening to you and will have even more news soon!

XNA Game Studio 3.1 is GO!

That’s right! The latest, greatest version of our kick-butt free game creation tool XNA Game Studio 3.1 is available to download now! You can read all about awesome new features like Avatars, Xbox LIVE Party Systems, and Video over at Creators Club Online.

If you’re interested in submitting or upgrading your existing Xbox LIVE Community Game using XNA Game Studio 3.1, be sure to read up on the details surrounding converting and submitting 3.1 projects!

As ever, it is your feedback and support that make all of this possible so thank you so much! I can’t wait to play what you create!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 30

I’m often told that 30 is the new 20, but I assure you that when it comes to the CCC, 30 is actually 30. Tons has happened over the past few weeks – there were announcements a-go-go from E3! There wasn’t much specifically about Xbox LIVE Community Games, but plenty of things were mentioned that will have a direct impact on all of our amazing Creators – like User Ratings!

Meanwhile, the learning continues! One of the “Must Bookmark” websites for anyone who uses the XNA Framework is Ziggyware. Through his website, Michael “Ziggy” Morton offers epic amounts of help and a platform for others to share their knowledge. He recently announced the winners of his Spring 2009 Article contest! First place went to Patrick McCarthy’s article on Perlin Noise on the GPU. Martin Actor’s thoughts on Grid Based Isometric Rendering earned him second place and Sergey Akopkokhyants’ article regarding GPU Terrain Rendering with LOD came in third. Thanks to a sponsorship from Synapse Gaming all the winners got licenses to the Sunburn XNA Lighting and Rendering Engine and thanks to Ziggy they also got a few other goodies. You can read all about it here!

In our own forums on Creators Club Online ht shared an incredible tutorial on how to turn the XSI Mod Tool into a Level Editor for your XNA Games.

In other CCO news – we’re going to have some downtime on June 16, but when we come back online we’re going to have some new features for all of our wonderful creators!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 29

Team XNA isn’t just here in Redmond. It also includes many incredible Direct X/XNA MVPs from all around the world. We couldn’t do what we do without their input and assistance everyday!

Recently, inspired by Mr. Michael Klucher’s post about a PSD Plugin for Paint.NET, our own Shawn Hargreaves put out a call to action to turn that into an XNA Framework texture importer. This could let you add multi-layer .psd files directly to Visual Studio without having to flatten and export to other formats. MVP Matt Pettineo responded within three days with this Photoshop .psd importer for the XNA Framework Content Pipeline! But that’s not all! During that time Matt also shared a menu/UI system he wrote! How cool is that?

Finally, lots of questions surround Microsoft revealing the Zune HD and what it could mean for those who want to program applications and games for it using XNA Framework. All we can say is stay tuned next week during E3 for more news about Zune HD from Microsoft!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 28

Last week we had a minor malfunction in a lesser part of the server quadrant that is housed in the Omega Satari nebula on the edge of the Blogipeligo. We on Team XNA apologize for this unexpected outage, but assure you that we have resolved the issue and have returned to full functionality!

Now on to learnings!

One of the things I love most about being the XNA Community Manager, even more than  banning jerks and spammers, is that the vast majority of our community are mature, amazing space geniuses. This week there were a few forum posts from our incredible Creators that really impressed the team!

After downloading our 3D Particle Sample mtnPhil went ahead and improved on it by adding support for soft particles that work on the Xbox 360. This could help improve the look of a particle engine by smoothing the hard edges where particles intersect solid geometry in the scene.

While working on his own title creasso figured out how to attach a weapon to a skinned character hand. He lists some things you’ll need to have accomplished before his pro-tips will help, but if you’re working on a gunslinger or swordfighter (or other assorted hand and weapon combos) he might be able to save you some time!

Finally, THE LEXX combined our own Chase Camera Tutorial and a bit of code from a Riemer’s XNA tutorial on Quarternions with his own ideas to upgrade the chase camera with rotation!

As always many thanks to all the incredible Creators and MVPs that contribute to our ever growing community. You’re what we’re here for and why we’re doing it!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 27

This past week there has been much to do on the XNA Creators Club forums. I’m excited to see lots of new faces helping out with Playtest and Peer Review, but some people need some pointers on what is a failing issue and what isn’t. Remember, Peer Review only works if we all respect the rules and the #1 rule is that Peer Review is NOT a subjective process. This means your opinion of the game has no place there. Playtest is the forum where that sort of feedback goes a long way. If you are a Premium Creator submitting a game – be sure to take it through Playtest first. You can avoid a ton of headaches in Peer Review by being open and receptive to the feedback you get during Playtest. The MVPs have two threads that you should certainly bookmark if you’re going to Peer Review: The “Evil” Checklist and the Not so “Evil” Checklist. They answer a ton of questions and provide a great jumping off point for Creators new to Peer Review! As always – if you have questions search the forums for the answer if you cannot find the answer you are looking for then ask! We’re here to help!

Speaking of help – these posts from around the web should be helpful to anyone who uses the XNA Framework! Luminance offered a very helpful post about changing constants at runtime while making your game. Similarly, Shawn Hargraves shared insights into Tweakables in XNA Game Studio on his blog.

Petri Wilhelmsen has an extensive XNA Shader series that is worth checking out!

Bittermanandy shared his thoughts on the rather sticky problem of camera in 3D games. Perhaps you can learn something from what he picked up while working on Kameo.

Finally, we’re approaching the busy and exciting summer season and for us that means events like E3 and PAX! Happily, this year’s PAX 10 Competition is accepting CC.game files! Find out more info on this from this XNA Creators Club Forum thread.

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 26

This week we have some new things to share about the Xbox LIVE Community Games channel! We’re working with gaming enthusiast site IGN.com so that starting today they will offer their own picks as a channel within Xbox LIVE Community Games on the Xbox 360 console. The channel is available in the United States and Canada (don’t worry! We’re working hard to make this available in other regions, too!) and any Community Game is eligible! IGN editors will select games for their picks that they are loving – it is as simple as that!

This week they picked:

• Aria
• Battle Havoc
• BeatBlox
• Bullet Trap
• A Fading Melody
• Halfbrick Blast Off
• Hexement
• Pwned
• Rabid Gophers

We’re excited about this additional exposure that Creators of really great Xbox LIVE Community Games can look forward to!

Next week, we’ll return to our usual space brain learning links, of course.

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 25

Here we are at CCC number 25! Hopefully, you’ve gained a great deal of knowledge from these (mostly) weekly grabblings of learning from around the internets. I am constantly amazed at the stuff all of you space brains come up with using the XNA framework!

On XNA Creators Club we have so many dedicated Creators who are doing an incredible job helping games in Playtest and Peer Review. These are key steps in what makes Xbox LIVE Community Games work for everyone. Some people have had pretty passionate debates over what is and what is not a game. This is a great debate (although one I don’t see anyone ever “winning”) for Playtest, but it does not have a place in Peer Review. Peer Review is designed as a purely objective process. It is important to keep your own personal opinions about the game out of Peer Review. If you have questions the Creators Club Forums and the savvy superstar MVPs are there to help.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve offered links that will help Creators at different stages in their own personal journey to totally kick-butt Xbox LIVE Community Game Creator of Excellence. This week I offer links to a few things that will help you add a bit of spice, flavor, and panache to your game!

• Did you know that the Xbox 360 controller has TWO different motors to provide force feedback? Learn how to take advantage of this in your game with Kris Steele’s class on Force Feedback.
• Need to give your players a sense of progress? What could be more helpful than a Progress Bar? On his blog, Luke Rymarz shares a simple Progress Bar sample for you to drop into your own game.
• Does your game have a story to tell? Do you dream of making a deep dialogue system similar to Bioware’s Mass Effect? MVP Catalin Zima shares a sample on his blog where he implements: dialogue wheels with branched responses that have a class effect. It is pretty darn impressive and you should really check it out!

If you’ve already finished your Community Game you’re probably looking for good ways to get the word out about it. Our own Michael Klucher posted a fantastic guide on his blog on Leveraging the Power of the Xbox.com Marketplace for your game. In addition to his pro-tips MVP Nick Gravelyn with help from his comrade Scott Wendt created http://xblcg.info/. This site offers a sortable and searchable index of available Xbox LIVE Community Games as well as friendly URLs for each title! They offer all sorts of information and advice for developers on using their site. Be sure to take a look!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 24

So, last week we covered some great links from around the web for newly hatched and fledgling Creators to lay the groundwork to make some great games with XNA Game Studio. This week, we’ll offer some slightly more advanced stuff to keep the learning rolling!

At the XNA Creators Club Online Forums Petri Tapio started a great thread about his XNA Shader Programming tutorial. It is meant as an introduction to the unavoidably shady world of shaders.

Brian Phelps created a sample on Skinned Model Instancing using the XNA Framework. It shows how you can use instancing techniques in order to draw very large amounts of independently animated characters at once.

One of the bigger hurdles game developers hit as they are learning their craft is handling player input. Luckily, edg3 offers a tutorial on Player Handling on his blog! While you’re there also check out his series on Simple Minimaps on his blog. Soon your players will know exactly where they need to go and how. He also suggests taking a look at MVP megastar Catalin Zima’s blog post about creating Fog of War in your game.

Another MVP superstar Nick Gravelyn began a very ambitious project to build a 3D go-kart racing game for Xbox LIVE Community Games. Along the way, he’s sharing his how-I-do-it so you can learn along with him!

Brilliant and helpful space genuses from Team XNA have also offered a few helpful posts on their blogs. The ever-fertile grounds of Shawn Hargreaves’ blog yields a complex answer to the simple question, “How come my transparent objects are drawn in the wrong order, or parts of them are missing?” Meanwhile, the benevolent Stephen Styrchak was inspired to build a handy template for XNA Game Studio 3.0 that helps Creators eliminate garbage from your high scores.

Got your own pro-tips you want to share with us? Send them on over! I’m always happy to check them out.

Also – 1UP.com’s Game Night is playing a few Xbox LIVE Community Games tonight at 5:00 p.m. (PST)! Be sure to tune in and see what they say!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 23

Spring seems to have springed here in the verdant Seattle-area! We all know it is a trick, though, so we’re preparing by staying inside and playing games made with XNA Game Studio. What you might not know is that several Xbox LIVE Arcade titles were made with XNA Game Studio, too! Like James Silva’s dark, stylish, button-bashing brawler The Dishwasher which just hit Arcade this week! There are also two other Dream-Build-Play gems coming to Arcade later this year – 3D pirate adventure  Yo-Ho-Kablammo and Robo-Badminton game Blazing Birds! Keep an eye out for them!

If you’re looking for an easy way to keep track of all the latest and greatest Xbox LIVE Community Games hitting marketplace you need to get yourself this amazing Windows Vista Desktop Gadget! It shows games as they become available on the Xbox LIVE Community Games Channel on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. It can be configured to filter by region (All, United States, France, etc..) or filter to show games by a particular Creator.

All the sunshine is bad for your skin, so instead you should stay safely indoors making awesome Xbox LIVE Community Games. These various articles and tutorials should help with that!

These are all fantastic for those out there who are just getting started with XNA Game Studio – or maybe just need to brush up on the basics! Want to know why beginning coders should start with XNA Game Studio? A nice article on Nuclex.org answers that very question. MVP Nick Gravelyn offers a very straight-forward tutorial on basic handling of multiple controllers. MVP George Clingerman’s site XNADevelopment.com is a treasure-trove of wonderment for those starting out with XNA Game Studio – check out his recent Introduction to Game State! When you feel your masterpiece is ready for playtest – MVP Pete’s article on submitting your creation to Xbox LIVE Community Games is very helpful!

Next week, I’ll share some links for those Creators that are ready for a bit more of a challenge – if you’ve got something that helped you out making your game don’t hesitate to send it my way - XNAKat@microsoft.com!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Creators Club Communiqué 22

Game Developers Conference 2009 was a hotbed of awesome XNA-related adventures, learning, and activity! Team XNA kicked off GDC week with two days of talks, highlighting the full breadth and depth of tools and technologies available to game developers building games for Xbox 360, Windows, and other Microsoft platforms. To highlight key Microsoft products and technologies, we also sponsored nine sessions in the main conference, and had more than 15 additional talks throughout the GDC agenda.

To support our ongoing efforts for every level of developer, Team XNA previewed a new Xbox Development and test Kit with additional memory that some devs called “gorgeous” and “sexy”. And of course, we kicked off the 3rd annual year’s Dream-Build-Play Competition and some new features for the next version of XNA Game Studio. For more on this you should check out this earlier Team XNA Blog post!

This year, we set up our Lobby Bar with a small theatre style area where we addressed several developer focused topics as well as a separate set of workstations for an “Ask The Experts” hands-on demo area where people could test out what they heard in each talk. Hopefully soon we’ll have many of these presentations available for download through XNA Creators Club!

The Games for Windows LIVE team announced new anti-piracy solutions to protect games from being pirated before first day they are available. They also unveiled a new in-game Marketplace that lets developers create unique store fronts and experiences surrounding the sale of additional content, and premiered roaming functionality which would permit PC gamers to save their games and personal settings in the cloud providing access to their favorite games on any compatible Windows PC!

Every year, GDC hosts the Independent Games Festival and every year this event gets bigger and more incredible! This year we’re excited that Erik Svedang’s XNA Game Studio game, Blueberry Garden won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and $30,000! There were so many incredible games nominated (including Xbox LIVE Community Game and Dream-Build-Play 2008 winner CarneyVale: Showtime!) and you can read all about them at Gamasutra.

I also got a chance to meet many current and aspiring Community Games developers. I can’t say it enough that I’m so happy to be part of this amazing community of space brains. Every single person I meet impresses me with their sincerity and enthusiasm!

Next week, we’ll be sure to return you to our regular pro-tips and tricks content. If you’ve got a great link you’d like to share here, be sure to send it to me at XNAKat@microsoft.com!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager

Dream Build Play 2009 and XNA Game Studio 3.1 Announced at GDC!

You’ve been waiting for this news and now it is here!

Beginning Monday, April 6 developers from all over the world will have an opportunity to submit their unique game creations to the Dream-Build-Play 2009 competition for a chance to win a cash prize and an opportunity to sign an Xbox LIVE Arcade publishing contract. Winners will be announced this fall. Last year, more than 7,800 members of our amazing community enrolled in Dream-Build-Play, yielding more than 350 completed games from all over the world developed using Microsoft’s free XNA Game Studio tools.

Several of last year’s winners, including Team GAMBIT for “CarneyVale: Showtime” and Mommy’s Best Games for “Weapon of Choice”, collectively took home more than $70,000 in prizes and have since become top sellers on the Xbox LIVE Community Games Channel. Winners from 2007, “The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai,” “Blazing Birds” and “YoHo Kablammo!” from the United States, Canada and UK respectively, are all slated for release on Xbox LIVE Arcade in the coming months.

Additionally, Creators will be happy to hear about our improvements to the XNA Game Studio development tools, available to professional and hobbyist developers this spring, which will allow developers at any level to take advantage of new partner additions and Xbox LIVE features. Community Games developers will be able to include customized Avatars, which have quickly become one of the most popular features on Xbox LIVE. We'll have many more details about XNA Game Studio 3.1 soon

Stay tuned for more news from Team XNA and GDC 2009!

Team XNA, Double-Doubles, and GDC

Are you planning on being at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week? Just live in the area and want to meet us? Do you love delicious burgers and fries? If you can’t answer yes to at least one of those questions, well… that’s a darn shame, because many members of Team XNA are planning to do combine all of these things on Wednesday March 25 at 8:00 P.M. (PST)!

Where: In N Out Burger @ Fisherman’s Wharf (333 Jefferson St. San Francisco, California 94133)
When: Wednesday, March 25th @ 8:00PM

This is meant to be an informal get-together and isn’t being hosted by Microsoft. We hope to see you there!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager