Looking at XNA - Part Two

Posted By: Rory | Nov 27th, 2006 @ 12:39 PM

In Part One of this series, Boyd Multerer told us all about XNA.

Now, in Part Two, Frank Savage shows it all to us.

Frank will talk about XNA from his perspective, deploy an XNA project to an Xbox 360, modify the application, and also give a debugging demonstration.

All of this is done at 1080p, showing off both the 360's recently acquired ability to support this resolution, as well as the power of XNA. It's really quite amazing: High frame rates at 1080p under managed code using only a single core of the three available.

I think it's reasonable to say that XNA is going to change the way people do homebrew games.

It's going to be interesting to see what kind of crazy stuff people dream up with these tools.

In addition to the nifty XNA bits, Frank and I also chitted and chatted about the good old days of gaming - he worked on Wing Commander III (one of my favorites in the series), as well as other games that I loved in my childhood.

Never thought I'd get to meet one of the people who worked on Wing Commander, so, for me, it was a thoroughly enjoyable geeky event Smiley

Tags: CSharp, Xbox, XNA

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Machaira
Jim Perry - Jedi coder

This was mentioned in the XNA webcast this morning. I didn't expect it to be up today. Sweet! Smiley

odujosh
Need Microsoft SUX now!

So what is the URL to your site Rory.

Josh

Rory
Free Tibet While Supplies Last

odujosh wrote:

So what is the URL to your site Rory.

Josh

www.neopoleon.com

But it's down right now because my hosting provider really, really, really, really sucks.

Hoping to have it back up today, but I don't know. The guys I'm working with are doing a terrible job.

djcarter

Sounds fantastic and I can't wait to start writing games for my 360, but I'm curious what the $99 subscription is for? I could understand charging $$ for the dev kit, but without any XBox Live support I doesn't seem to deserve a subscription req.

DJ

BrianPeiris

Great video. Definitely exciting times ahead for game development.

I just have a few lingering questions regarding XNA.

Is it going to (eventually) replace for MDX2.0 ? (which apparently was discontinued in October).

It seems XNA is strongly gaming oriented, is it pointless to try and create a regular Desktop app that incorporates 3D elements, or do we really have to stick to MDX1.1 as mentioned in this FAQ ?
The XNA Framework looks much more refined compared to MDX1.1, I'd rather not wade through that again unless I have to.

Should I even bother with MDX and XNA when it comes to 3D desktop apps, or should I be looking at .NET 3.0 and WPF??

Maybe it's just me, but when Microsoft throws 3 different frameworks (MDX, WPF, XNA) at you that seem to serve the same purpose, things can get very confusing Perplexed

odujosh
Need Microsoft SUX now!

I think it is to help recoup the the cost of continued development. If you were to release liscensed game for the XBOX I am sure this is less than a tenth of a percent of what you pay in TOC. For many it is already a sunk cost of being an XBOX user. If all you want to do is try it out you dont need a subscription for that. Code afterall runs in Windows. Its like Express and for money versions of Visual Studio.

Just conjectoring here on reasoning on the why. But you don't need it all if all you want to do is play around.

WPF is great for 3d rendering for Windows APP. It will be even better once Orcas and Expressions make it out the door. If you have MSDN access I would play with the bits for Orcas. Linq is a dream come true. I been reading the documentation and running the demos. Anyone know when Entity Mapping (part of ADO.NET 3.0) will CTP.

Expression you can find with <cough> Google.[A]

Rory
Free Tibet While Supplies Last

BrianPeiris wrote:

It seems XNA is strongly gaming oriented, is it pointless to try and create a regular Desktop app that incorporates 3D elements, or do we really have to stick to MDX1.1 as mentioned in this FAQ ?
The XNA Framework looks much more refined compared to MDX1.1, I'd rather not wade through that again unless I have to.

Should I even bother with MDX and XNA when it comes to 3D desktop apps, or should I be looking at .NET 3.0 and WPF??

Maybe it's just me, but when Microsoft throws 3 different frameworks (MDX, WPF, XNA) at you that seem to serve the same purpose, things can get very confusing

XNA is for games - it is in no way a competitor to WPF.

WPF is all about creating rich user interfaces, both on the web (WPF/e) and on the desktop. You could certainly use it to write a game, just as you could use GDI, but that's not really what it's for.

The frameworks are very different, and, as far as I know, there won't be any WPF (or WPF/e) support for the 360. I could be wrong, so maybe someone who knows more can chime in, but that's what I've gathered.

The tools shown in this video are all about creating games for Windows and the Xbox 360 using managed code (C# compiled to run against a modifed version of the .NET Compact Framework).

So, no confusion necessary Smiley

WPF: For the web/desktop.

XNA: For games on Windows/360.

BrianPeiris

looks like it was just me.
Thanks for the clarification guys.
I'm still excited about XNA though. Like you Rory, I might not be a game dev, but I'll definitley get my hands dirty when it's released
cheers.
*runs off to play with .net 3.0*

dannyres

Wow that really is amazing!