Revisiting WiMo - The Windows Mobile Robot

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
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.
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.
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).
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
Rory wrote:How is the xbox link "crippled"?
why do I always expect you to open with "It's-a-me Pao-lo"?PaoloM wrote:
Well, you try under the drnka influence
Minh wrote:why do I always expect you to open with "It's-a-me Pao-lo"?
PaoloM wrote:
Well, you try under the drnka influence
I tried to install the xna studio thing but unfortunately I can not install it on Visual Studio 2005 Professional. How can I start making xna games (for Windows, not xbox)?
You need to install Visual C# express before installing XNA Game studio. You can install this next to Visual Studio 2005 Professional.
From the XNA Game Studio Express download page:
This release requires Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition to be installed before proceeding. You can install Visual C# Express from the
Visual C# Express Download Page. However, other members of the Visual Studio 2005 line of products, for example Visual Studio 2005 Professional, can co-exist with XNA Game Studio Express
on the same computer.
Apparently there are those who got it running in Visual Studio 2005 Professional, but I have no experience with that.
Rory wrote:
What else out there is this cheap, official, and not going to break after system updates?
PaoloM wrote:
Minh wrote: why do I always expect you to open with "It's-a-me Pao-lo"?
PaoloM wrote:
Well, you try under the drnka influence
ROFL.
Interestingly enough, there was font support in MDX 1 (MDX 2.0 evolved into XNA). Also missing from XNA is a mesh animation system. I see the plumbing is there, you just have to do things manually.littleguru wrote:
I didn't know about the font support. Great video!
Minh wrote:Interestingly enough, there was font support in MDX 1 (MDX 2.0 evolved into XNA). Also missing from XNA is a mesh animation system. I see the plumbing is there, you just have to do things manually.
littleguru wrote:
I didn't know about the font support. Great video!
Hopefully, we'll see these for XNA 2.0:
* Built-in mesh animation
* Collision detection
* Simple physics
* More special effects shaders
* Some AI helpers?
johnny.NET wrote:Can someone make a "great" game like Age of Empires using XNA? I know that's an old game now, but as a hobbyist, I've always wanted to create a game, but didn't have the time to learn all the ins and outs of the system programming, never getting to the actual game part of it. I've always been a fan of the isometric gaming look. Thanks.
DanielMD wrote: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
Great video!
One question: I didn't quite understand the bit about font support. So is that in the final release right now, or still upcoming? I couldn't find out about it in the documentation.
Lon^ wrote:
Rory wrote:
What else out there is this cheap, official, and not going to break after system updates?
Allegro
Yeah ok its not as simple as XNA and I am not sure about it working on consoles (maybe PSP?) but you askedinfact you had the guy right there who started it or at least contributed a major part to it, the one and only Shawn Hargreaves!
Regarding the video, up until now I also laughed at XNA for game development but after seeing that video of the first person shooter and how smoothly it ran I will definately have a play at some point!
Loved the video btw, informative and funny. I would have to agree with DanielMD though that the idea of this never being done before etc is over the top but otherwise good stuff.
Escamillo wrote:
*sigh*
Some just can't stand to admit that Microsoft does anything innovative.
Here's a link to the DEMMX awards that took place a couple weeks ago:
http://www.demmx.com/demmx/awards/2006.jsp
XNA Game Studio Express won a couple DEMMX Awards:
Game Innovation of the Year
and
Best of Show: Innovator of the Year
So it's official - XNA is innovative.
Rory wrote:
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?
How is the xbox link "crippled"?
And, again, this is *for* the hobbyists.
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.
DanielMD wrote:I and my small team will definitely invest on XNA wend we have the ability to share our content with the world.
Bas wrote:
DanielMD wrote: I and my small team will definitely invest on XNA wend we have the ability to share our content with the world.
But... you have that ability right now, don't you? You can build games for Windows and distribute them with the XNA framework easily.
Anyway, it sounds like you want everything done for you. 3D modelling, 2D GUI's... I don't know. That doesn't sound quite as fun nor as big a challenge for me.
DanielMD. I think you're seriously missing the point about XNA. It's NOT supposed to be an "easy to use game making kit for hobbyist and indie developers", it's more along the lines of "A managed API for cross platform game development". Lots of people make
this misstake. That's why you have people who haven't written a line of code in their life downloading XNA thinking it's a consumer level tool for making games. It's not. It's a developer tool. XNA competes with C++/DirectX, not with click-and-play consumer/hobbyist
tools like Gamemaker.
Frankly, I think MS has to share part of the blame for this misconception. XNA has been labeled as "game development for the masses" so much that people actually started believing it. What they mean by "masses", though, are the people already doing games in
C++ on their spare time. XNA is meant to help developers by making programming games easier, it's not supposed to enable non-programmers to make games. So it's still a hobbyist tool, it's just a very serious and non-crippled hobbyist tool for people who are
way beyond the level of playing with things like Gamemaker, DarkBASIC etc.
There's a fundamental difference, the fact that you bring up programs like Gamemaker shows that you've probably misunderstood what XNA is. Yes, it will be harder to get a simple game up and runnin in XNA than in Gamemaker, and if Gamemaker is enough for your
needs then you should definately use that. XNA is not about catering to a small niche of simplistic games with a drag-n-drop interface, it's about providing a
general interface for making games on Windows and the XBox 360.
You couldn't create a next gen FPS in Gamemaker, but you could in XNA. The goal of XNA as I understand it, long term of course, is to be The primary way of writing games for windows and the future MS consoles (this shift may only happen for the smaller titles
on the 360 but may very well happen for all games by the next console generation).
XNA makes things easier, but it's not magic. Gamemaker makes things easier by
removing options. It's easy to use because it's highly limited in what you can do (I know, I tried to use it for prototyping a while ago, and ended up having to abandon it because it simply isn't general enough to work for any type of game).
So again, if your particular needs are met by Gamemaker et al, fine, but it's not comparable to XNA. Compare XNA to C++ and DirectX/OpenGL, not to Gamemaker.
Massif wrote:What's all this "sixs months development time" I keep hearing? Does that just apply to XNA Game Studio?
I only ask because I have a copy of Edge dated May 2004 which has on the front: "XNA Microsoft ends the console war"
sylvan wrote:
DanielMD. I think you're seriously missing the point about XNA. It's NOT supposed to be an "easy to use game making kit for hobbyist and indie developers"...
Frankly, I think MS has to share part of the blame for this misconception. XNA has been labeled as "game development for the masses" so much that people actually started believing it...
You couldn't create a next gen FPS in Gamemaker, but you could in XNA.
XNA makes things easier, but it's not magic. So again, if your particular needs are met by Gamemaker et al, fine, but it's not comparable to XNA. Compare XNA to C++ and DirectX/OpenGL, not to Gamemaker.
No i don't think i misunderstood at all, i think MS is confusing people, i have been around the indie game development scene for the past 12 years, and from time to time, we have company X or company Y telling this is the ultimate game development kit, the
magic bullet, i think MS is hyping this too much in that direction, if you read the documentation and see the videos i think you will get the same perception.
XNA does not really make anything easier as far as i can tell, if you take a look at so many other game platforms that i also mentioned you will see that there are already much easier solutions to use than xna studio express. Also i did not compare XNA to any
other toolkit, or studio, i compared XNA Studio Express to other studios that also work with C# and or with C++, these other solutions like dxstudio, unity, virtools, etc...
The only thing XNA brings to the table is the XBox link factor, that is what really is interesting about the platform.
So, from my point of view if you are a windows developer and are doing your code using visual studio in C++ or C# using managed directx, it looks like XNA is going to be the path chosen by MS, if you want to develop for the pc and xbox360 platform.
If you are using other development kits, studios or toolkits, XNA really brings nothing to the table,
Also, i recommend gamemaker because it is very very easy to use, of course it is somewhat limited, but most of the time those limits are an issue for most hobbyist game developers. If you want something better than gamemaker, in case you want to do 3D games
then there are loads of options fpscreator, dxstudio, etc... i think most people will get the point, if not too bad, i tried to explain myself far too much, if you get it you get it, good, if not, then i really don't know how to explain any better.
All I can say is that I am looking forward to seeing what kind of products are going to leverage the XNA platform stuff like visual3d.net, and I am expectant about the professional XNA studio. The XNA platform all in all is nothing more than that, it does not make things any easier, you still have to learn a programming language syntax, you still have to learn oop, ood, etc…
sylvan wrote:DanielMD. I think you're seriously missing the point about XNA. It's NOT supposed to be an "easy to use game making kit for hobbyist and indie developers", it's more along the lines of "A managed API for cross platform game development". Lots of people make this misstake. That's why you have people who haven't written a line of code in their life downloading XNA thinking it's a consumer level tool for making games. It's not. It's a developer tool. XNA competes with C++/DirectX, not with click-and-play consumer/hobbyist tools like Gamemaker.
Hamled wrote:
Massif wrote: What's all this "sixs months development time" I keep hearing? Does that just apply to XNA Game Studio?
I only ask because I have a copy of Edge dated May 2004 which has on the front: "XNA Microsoft ends the console war"
What probably happened was that they announced it at GDC 2004, and then spent the next year and a half figuring out what XNA actually was.
Once they came upon that insight, it only took 6 months to... "enact their vision."
mycroft wrote:
Are we watching the same videos?
Bas wrote:
mycroft wrote:
Are we watching the same videos?
I was wondering the same thing, since I didn't see anybody trying to avoid talking about his work.
why do you guys always choose jerks to work as interviewers at channel9?
that's the first thing that I've noticed when I started watching videos on channel9 a year ago.
There was an interviewer who used to ask "wait a second, who are you?" (as if it was funny) in a demeaning voice at the beginning of each of his interviews.
And now this obnoxious blonde guy that thinks he's funny by not letting people talk comfortably.
People that don't know this blonde guy's face would definitly get confused on whether or not this is a prank video.
Just like what happened in this video, people weren't able to talk about their work comfortably cause they thought this guy is not even remotely interested in what they're saying, and he's just there to poke fun at them.
O Wilmot wrote:
Hello everyone. Is this thread going off topic? Anyway. XNA Game Studio Express looks very interesting to me. I am also a novice when it comes to programming. sylvans messege, in total, cleared up a lot of questions for me. I also thank DanielMD for questioning XNA, even if he is a little stressed.
.
O Wilmot wrote:
Note the first thing said, its something like "Many gamers have dreamed of making a game, but up until now, the resources havent been in place". This video shows drag and drop made games, and like other "game making" software, I figured that after you got your head around that, you could then gradually advance into things like C++ or whatever language the software uses.
But then I go out on the net to look for more XNA stuff. I personally do not like the official XNA Game Studio Express site. I only found technical and confusing tutorials on verious sites. I will look more though. I see video tutorials appearing very often, which is more than what can be said for many other programs. Video tutorials are very good.
...
But then again, all these videos cant be completely wrong. They show the drag and drop interface for example, can somesome explain it to me?
...
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.
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?
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