The Best XNA Movie in the UNIVERSE

Posted By: Rory | Dec 18th, 2006 @ 3:06 PM | 66,754 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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#Jan 3rd, 2007 @ 12:42 PM
George W. Clingerman
George W. Clingerman
Oxygen wrote:

actually he was obnoxious, and people were uncomfortable talking to him, and they kept trying to recap everytime he starts rolling his eyes or winking to the camera.

He even jumped around commenting on some guy's shoes.

If you haven't seen all that, then watch the video again.



ummm...I was in the interview and I wasn't uncomfortable at all. It was actually a ton of fun and as I walked around with Rory watching him interview others, they were all having a great time too.

Maybe you're just reading a bit much into it, but speaking as somone both interviewed and as a spectator, I think Rory did a great job and that he does a great job at getting tech guys to just talk to the camera in a relaxed way.
#Mar 30th, 2007 @ 12:16 AM
MartinHN
MartinHN
MartinHN

Maybe off topic.

I think XNA will be a great advantage for XBOX 360 in the console war.

What are Sony going to do? Sit back and watch? Team up with Google or Sun? Big Smile Big Smile Big Smile

#May 4th, 2007 @ 7:28 AM
arilou_campter
arilou_campter
DanielMD wrote:

What we will start to see is those products come up with versions that allow you to deploy to the X360 Console. Torque X is the first i know and is already released, there's also a 3D visual editor in beta called http://www.visual3d.net/ others might follow


To those who are interested -- Visual3D.NET Beta1 is out, so you can check what's this all about
#Oct 29th @ 9:36 AM
tomthebuilder
tomthebuilder

I got one =D I bet the new Movies maker will work so well with my old black and white movies

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