Microsoft XNA

[sid]

has anybody looked into using this for writing games? someone at work has said you can download it, i thought it would have cost a lot of money being microsoft. i might be talking rubbish here..!

[John]

We looked into this (me n Jeff) we even brought and xbox 360 to develop on it. I think it might be C#. They have a wonderful website though.

http://creators.xna.com/en-US/

The thing that annoyed me with it was that when I was looking into it even though games made with it were testable on PC and XBOX you can only publish to XBOX. I completely understand why they make it that way but still annoying...That being said I've read in other posts that you can publish your game for the PC so clearly something that needs researching some more.

The fact you can only release things on XBOX wasn't the worse thing in the world but when I checked out how popular games were and how much you can charge for them we gave up. The paten was if you didn't charge 20p or some silly amount of money like that, regardless of how sexy the game looked it got no downloads.

There's a massive post here about people whining about sales figures

http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/28043.aspx?PageIndex=1

however anything on XBOX would just be a bonus anyway I guess. Whatever we do next Steam is where we want it to be, It's "THE PLATFORM" to be on. I don't see why they wouldn't accept XNA made games but if we do use that we must make sure they do accept them.

Depending on what the next game is i'm going to make a suggestion, that I'll wait till psync meet to do as I'll no doubt have to explain for about 5 hours why I'd say such an outrageous thing

The beauty with doing something in C though I think anyway would be it could be ported to most things (though I may be talking tripe there) if we made the robot detective, iPads and iPhones would be a very nice place to take it for example, pretty sure that couldn't be done if it was made with XNA but how likely would it be we would get as far as to publish on iphones?

I'm not opposed to XNA if you think it looks decent and we can publish on steam, couldn't hurt to look into it anyway

[sid]

aye ok, good plan.

yes C is probably the most portable atm, some languages have compilers that compile the code into C (as opposed to assembly or machine code) and get a C compiler to do all the optimisations. i bet there are C# (.NET) platforms for the IPhone/IPad, though whether it would work for XNA i don't know. if the sales figures suck though - what's the bloody point?

look forward to hearing your suggestion then one thing i want to spend some time doing is getting maya installed and exporting some simple game objects - lights e.t.c. i've had a look at an example and the classes maya exposes seems quite easy to use. will write the exporter in C# so it's quickest to develop. then see if i can pull these in to a direct X app. though i have no knowledge of how DX 10 works. just need to get blitz out the way lol!!

[John]

Well I suppose its a bonus to be able to put something out that can go on the XBOX as well but you make a good point, need to get that Blitz nailed! we can't let it get to 3 years of development (and thats with a working maya exporter ).

[sid]

i know i'm itching to start something new. as soon as i'm sorted, i will spend a couple of days on it and bash out the remaining bits. it will get done! i want a poster of it on me wall!!

[Jim]

i want a poster of it on me wall!!

Awesome thought. The way it's going I think I'll take a day or two off work and get the menu done. It's dragging on and on...

[John]

If I do manage to move back down there I'd like to put forward the idea of weekly psync-meets again, because even when everyone isn't needed it would at least pretty much grantee a days development a week which would be wonderful! Even if I don't get back this might be something worth considering.

poster-wise will have a chat with holmes, I've got an idea for one but I'm guessing he's got a few ideas as well. Maybe we'll end up with 2!

[SP!KE™]

Aye I have had a coupla ideas for the poster/package design for a fair while to be honest (isn't that always the way with you and I Mr Thompson, always planning ahead... surprised I didn't get the action figures on the go before we finished the game!)

[sid]

why don't we instead guaruntee a day where we'll all be online and working on blitz? it's probably less productive for me to work around jims, and i'll be back on it regular in a couple of weeks

[Jim]

The reason we stopped having regular meetings was because it was essentially just me and sid who were there regularly and it just wasn't productive. We don't really need to meet once we've started development. It's nice when we do, but I work better when it's quiet :-/

[John]

That's probably better (sid) if we all get skype, does that do more than 2 way calling? or conversations? If we do need to be in the same room we could do it on whatever day is arranged for work anyway.

What do you mean you've not done the action figures yet Holme-boi? I've finished the cardboard arenas!

[John]

I am loving this forum party by the way

[sid]

yes, skype does multi-way conversations, i've been in ones with 4 people in before

[John]

sweet, well I'm good with that!

[SP!KE™]

It's pronounced forum par-tay i'll have you know!   It does make a change, glad I am finally getting the chance to get back on here again!

Mate I am working on the action figures as we speak, that's where our money will be made... of course I AM going by George Lucas' marketing ideas...