This release represents the beta of Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0, which enables hobbyists, academics, and independent game developers to easily create video games for Windows and the Microsoft Zune digital media player using optimized cross-platform gaming libraries based on the .NET Framework.
The XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta is a chance to get an early look at XNA Game Studio 3.0, and provide feedback on the product that is currently in development.
Now it supports Zune with the 3.0 software version. The CTP version didn’t have support for XBOX 360 development, now it is fully supported Finally we can use Visual Studio 2008 for XBOX 360 development! Other features that please me are the Rich Presence support (that message in XBox Live that tells you what are your friends playing in the context of a game. eg: level, dificulty,etc.), and Invites for joining you in a multiplayer game.
You probably already know that developing a game that runs both in XBox 360 and Windows is possible and pretty manageable using XNA Game Studio. If you start developing your game for Windows (which is great to compile/debug your code more quickly), you can then duplicate that project as an XBox 360 game. The same files will be used, but during compilation, the assemblies of XNA Framework that are used are chosen based on the target platform.
Developing a game for both platforms isn’t that trivial. There are a lot of functionalities that are exclusive to each platform. For instance, the Gamercard integration that I talked about in an earlier post, only works in XBox 360. In the other hand, since XNA games targeting Windows are pure .NET managed code, you can use whatever .NET libraries you want (such as WiimoteLib )
If you have a game that you want to compile to both platforms, but which has slight differences, you can use the C# Preprocessor Directives. When you create an XBox 360 project, the XBOX and XBOX360 conditional compilation symbols are used by the preprocessor.
Those symbols can be used to create conditions that make the preprocessor able to choose which lines of code of a file to compile. The example bellow is pretty self-explanatory.
If you compile this game targeting the XBox 360 you’ll get a blue background, otherwise you’ll get a red background.
One nice XNA feature is the ability to manage Xbox 360 users gamer data. This way you can access your gamercard information which include your name, avatar, achievements, played games and list of friend among other things. How can you do that?
In the Initialize method of your game you must add a specific component into the game, in order to prepare the game to access the data.
Since while the Initialize and LoadContent methods are executed, the gamer data is not available yet, you must access it in the Update method. There you can check if a variable is set, and if it is not, you load the gamercard information. Be careful, you must not load the gamer data in every iterations of the game loop. Your Xbox will hang if you do that… It is an expensive operation. Try to load this data only one time or so during the game lifetime.
This example show your gamer picture in the screen, followed by some of your informations such as your gamer tag.
A equipa PizzaShoot continua o intrincado processo de desenvolvimento de um jogo de elevado nível!
Temos disponível mais um vídeo. Desta vez demonstramos com é possível ligar acessórios wireless da Xbox 360 ao PC através do Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows. Demonstramos também como utilizar o Input Reporter (disponível no XNA Creators Club) para testar o input não só do gamepad wireless, como também da guitarra que acompanha o Guitar Hero 3! Isto porque a guitarra não passa de um comando com uma disposição diferente dos botões (e com um acelerómetro mapeado nos triggers do comando normal).
Os developers de jogos em XNA ficam então com um leque de possibilidades ainda mais abrangente.
Although the video is in Portuguese, I want to leave the main message to all the potential worldwide readers of this blog. If you connect your Xbox 360 guitar to your PC (a wireless or wired guitar) you can use it as a X-Box 360 gamepad. Use Input Reporter to find out the correspondence between each device buttons. Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows it the accessory that you need to connect Xbox 360 wireless accessories to your PC.
Finally we can use Visual Studio 2008 for XBOX 360 development! Other features that please me are the Rich Presence support (that message in XBox Live that tells you what are your friends playing in the context of a game. eg: level, dificulty,etc.), and Invites for joining you in a multiplayer game.
