The Best XNA Movie in the UNIVERSE

Posted By: Rory | Dec 18th, 2006 @ 3:06 PM | 66,742 Views | 49 Comments
On behalf of all of us at Channel 9, sorry about not having any content on Friday, but 2/3 of our city shut down because of a little bit of wind. Most of us woke up Friday morning to discover that, without heat, it's very easy for your house/apartment/condo to turn into a freezer over night in the Pacific Northwest during winter. Even worse, you can't play your Xbox. Seriously. It sucked.

But, on the bright side of things, power's back, and I can finally post the video I was going to post on Friday before nature had its way with Seattle.

In this video, I head off to the official XNA launch event and talk to quite a few very interesting people, all of whom had something valuable/interesting to say about XNA.

In this video, you'll see:

- George Clingerman

George runs an XNA site called XNA Development. He was my main guest in this video, and he stuck around to patiently answer question after question on XNA. If I had been in his position, I would have hit me to make me shut up. I couldn't stop asking questions, but I just find this stuff so interesting - game development is a whooooole different kind of coding, you know?

While he doesn't work for Microsoft, he knows his stuff, and it was a great pleasure getting to talk to him.

He also has a personal blog that you can find here.

- Major Nelson

Major Nelson (real name: Larry Hyrb) is something of a phenomenon in the Xbox community. George and I got a chance to talk with the legend as well as get some hugs. We weren't going to let him get away without hugging us. It was just too cool.

- Andy Dunn

Andy is the guy who, after having been a web developer at Microsoft, quit, took a year off, and then came back as a contractor to write the SpaceWar game that's shipping as one of the examples for XNA Game Developer Studio Express.

His story is an interesting one, and it's crazy to think that, someone who previously had no gaming experience whatsoever, was able to put together a game that is one of the main examples of good XNA development.

It was actually pretty much the first game he had ever written.

If you, in your little office/basement/wherever you're reading this, just heard a distant explosion, it was the sound of my head blowing up in response to the thought that someone so inexperienced with game development could do something so cool.

Check out Andy's blog here.

- Other Assorted Characters

There are cameos from many different people in the industry.

Paolo, who hangs out in the Channel 9 CoffeeHouse, makes an appearance with a buddy of his.

David Weller assaults me near the end of the video for reasons which will become apparent as the scene unfolds.

And, I got to talk to many others, all of whom had something to say that was, or wasn't, particularly interesting.

Either way, this is currently the world's best XNA documentary.

Given that it's probably also the world's only XNA documentary should not, I feel, in any way detract from this self-appointed title of greatness.

Anyway, enjoy, my friends.

Enjoy...

- Links to Things Referenced in the Video

XNA Game Studio Express - The tool itself - The reason for the hooplah - The thing behind the excitement - Yours to download Smiley

TorqueX - A simple game development tool being built on top of XNA (yes - it's a tool that takes XNA and makes it, somehow, even easier)

Phrogram - A programming language with a very simple syntax, currently being ported (by Andy Dunn, as a matter of fact) to work with XNA - A DirectX version is already available
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#Dec 18th, 2006 @ 3:40 PM
DanielMD
DanielMD
Indie Game Developer

OK a couple of things:

1) The videos are really cool, and i really like the fact that Microsoft is "getting it" wend it comes to creating a game community.

2) You guys don't know the indie market that well, what XNA studio is doing has been done dozens of times (gamemaker, unity, etc... http://www.dpfiles.com/dpfileswiki/index.php?title=PAID_3D_GAME_ENGINES ). The main problem is not the pipeline, or getting assets into the game, the problem comes down to stuff like doing UI programming for the game, adding scripting ability, getting all the parts working together, the physics, the network code, etc... that is the hard part where I and all Indies need help.

XNA "as is" is just Microsoft twist to the game development problem unfortunately no magic solutions for the indies, and actually not an evolution for people that are already using better tools (except for the xbox link, but that is so crippled right now, that it makes no sense for the indie developer just the hobbyst).

Bottom line, very interesting stuff, promising stuff to look forward too, but as always Microsoft fails to deliver the gold, they deliver silver that is nice, but it's not going to solve the problems of the indie developers. Still i am definetly keeping an eye on it Cool

#Dec 18th, 2006 @ 4:20 PM
BHpaddock
BHpaddock
<---------  "Paolo's Friend"  Smiley
#Dec 18th, 2006 @ 4:38 PM
mycroft
mycroft
Very nice. The furthest I've ever got with graphics programming is painstakingly drawing out a field and flowing river with basic shapes in OpenGL, with some terrible collision detection and movement. A weekend of coffee-sustained mania.

2 days for Shawn's Shooter is impressive. High quality model with animation, nice shaders, 2 players. If you can create something like this so fast it's going to convert alot of people, most of the initial hassle is gone = instant fun. Anyone know if the demo code is available?
#Dec 18th, 2006 @ 4:41 PM
dentaku
dentaku
Quality, imformative video. I loved it.

It's weird how the non-MS employees are better at talking on camera than the ones that actually work there.
#Dec 18th, 2006 @ 5:03 PM
eagle
eagle
HO HO HO, Santa's and Secular developers ship software!!

That compact framework can turn-up anywhere......
#Dec 18th, 2006 @ 5:46 PM
LaBomba
LaBomba
Summer
Ha, he doesn't even own a 360 - that was funny Smiley
#Dec 18th, 2006 @ 5:57 PM
PaoloM
PaoloM
Hypermediocrity
dentaku wrote:
Quality, imformative video. I loved it.

It's weird how the non-MS employees are better at talking on camera than the ones that actually work there.

Well, you try under the drnka influence Smiley
#Dec 18th, 2006 @ 6:41 PM
Rory
Rory
Free Tibet While Supplies Last
DanielMD wrote:

2) You guys don't know the indie market that well, what XNA studio is doing has been done dozens of times (gamemaker, unity, etc... http://www.dpfiles.com/dpfileswiki/index.php?title=PAID_3D_GAME_ENGINES . The main problem is not the pipeline, or getting assets into the game, the problem comes down to stuff like doing UI programming for the game, adding scripting ability, getting all the parts working together, the physics, the network code, etc... that is the hard part where I and all Indies need help.


You're making a lot of assumptions here about the purpose of XNA.

Right now, at least the way it's been explained to me, it's for hobbyists. It's for people who want to get into game development but don't know where to start. It's for people who want an easy way to get their games running on a console while having access to what the console has to provide.

It's also about having an officially sanctioned homebrew scene. Devs aren't going to have to fight with MS to get their games on the console (think about the PSP). They're just going to be able to do it. And that's that.

That's ignoring that XNA is also for Windows, where the benefits are clear, but, to me, the real excitement is having a simple, managed framework for game development on a console.

Plus, it's only six months old. This is just the beginning.

And, as far as the *ease* of creating games (the content pipeline is a big deal, or at least it was for a group of game developers I used to hang out with) for a console, I wonder what else there is to challenge XNA.

What else out there is this cheap, official, and not going to break after system updates?

DanielMD wrote:


XNA "as is" is just Microsoft twist to the game development problem unfortunately no magic solutions for the indies, and actually not an evolution for people that are already using better tools (except for the xbox link, but that is so crippled right now, that it makes no sense for the indie developer just the hobbyst).


How is the xbox link "crippled"?

And, again, this is *for* the hobbyists.

DanielMD wrote:

Bottom line, very interesting stuff, promising stuff to look forward too, but as always Microsoft fails to deliver the gold, they deliver silver that is nice, but it's not going to solve the problems of the indie developers. Still i am definetly keeping an eye on it


You're looking at XNA to solve your very own specific problems, rather than the problems it was meant to solve. As I already said, XNA provides a cheap, easy way for hobbyists and students to design games for consoles. It's that simple.
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