Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games
It will be possible to develop games for xbox360, perhaps Mark should take a look at this and plan for future XNABLitz products:
Talking on the eve of its Gamefest event in Seattle, Microsoft has revealed XNA Game Studio Express, a new product which will allow indie developers and students to develop simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC, and share their games to others in a new Xbox 360 'Creators Club'.
The details of the new tech are as follows: XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows XP-based PC, and will provide them with what's described as "Microsoft's next-generation platform for game development." In addition, by joining a "creators club" for an annual subscription fee of $99, users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360, as well as access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress.
Microsoft has enlisted the help of several partners for this major announcement - indie publisher/developer GarageGames, technology provider and creator of Marble Blast Ultra, has migrated both its Torque Shader Engine and new Torque Game Builder 2-D visual game designer over to the XNA Game Studio Express platform, and Autodesk announced that game developers and enthusiasts can now more easily incorporate content into XNA Game Studio Express via Autodesk's FBX file exchange format.
In addition, more than 10 universities and their game development schools — including University of Southern California, Georgia Tech College of Computing and Southern Methodist University Guildhall — have already pledged to integrate console game development and XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula for the first time, and Xbox 360 will be the only console at the center of all coursework.
The XNA Game Studio Express beta will be available Aug. 30, 2006, as a free download on Windows XP, for development on the Windows XP platform. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season.
Microsoft's general manager of the Game Developer Group, Chris Satchell, commented on this major announcement: "By unlocking retail Xbox 360 consoles for community-created games, we are ushering in a new era of cross-platform games based on the XNA platform. We are looking forward to the day when all the resulting talent-sharing and creativity transforms into a thriving community of user-created games on Xbox 360."
copied from:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=10458 >on Xbox 360 "and" PC
Now that will be COOL......
*pokes Mark with a stick*
He's not budging. :)
MS is just toooooo smart... opening up the consoles to indie development = gauranteed sales of XBoxes...
pure marketing genius... whoever came up with that one outta get the Bill Gates Honorarium and a big year end bonus...
i wonder if Sony and Nintendo will follow suit... well, Sony anyway...
--Mike
For some reason I doubt this will up 360 sales by much if any.
well... i was never planning on buying one... now that developing is a real option, i'm seriously considering getting one...
that's one more prospective customer than they had last night...
--Mike
now that developing is a real option, i'm seriously considering getting one...
I had one, but sold it due to the cost of games. Now I'm half-wishing I kept it!
Avon,
Hmmm.....? ;)
"Microsoft has enlisted the help of several partners for this major announcement - indie publisher/developer GarageGames, technology provider and creator of Marble Blast Ultra, has migrated both its Torque Shader Engine and new Torque Game Builder 2-D visual game designer over to the XNA Game Studio Express platform, and Autodesk announced that game developers and enthusiasts can now more easily incorporate content into XNA Game Studio Express via Autodesk's FBX file exchange format."
Maybe not...
IPete2.
GarageGames, technology provider and creator of Marble Blast Ultra, has migrated both its Torque...
I never read past that word. I wish BRL would do some of these things :D
This is a great move by microsoft towards a much needed change in the industry.
Yes I whole heartedly agree, and they will definately sell more XBOX 360s this way too!
IPete2.
this MS move looking like Ants Aurora move...I mean, whats with folks whos payed 50K USD for such a development platform like they offering now for 99 USD? Or XNA can be used only for non commercial community projects as they talking about..
I bet BlitzResearch will jump on this when they are ready, they would be stupid not to ;)
Isn't this a bit like the Playstation Yaroze thing from a few years ago. That one didn't support all the same things as the real development kit and had some limitations on distribution.
I'm guessing this one too will have some kind of catch.
Ragnar
I think The Game Creators will jump into this boat....
Really hate to say but it seems M$ know how to make things popular....
this looks really cool, too bad i can't afford a 360
so i will go with the Wii, it will have a devkit for at least virtual consoles. i don't know about using the full power of the Wii with he motion detection stuff
but still pretty cool which ever console you choose to go with
Its a great opportunity if you can get your game onto live where the lowest conversion rate is around 4x higher than the magic 2% with PC games.
I'd like to see Blitz3D run on the 360 even. That alone would open up a lot of doors and a small catalogue of pretty decent games. There's no way I'd develop anything with torque in its current state. I do hear that the 2D variant is really nice, but I'm not into doing 2D graphics. For me the enjoyment of game dev is interactive 3D.
I agree. "Blitz3D360" would be the *perfect* tool, this needs to be considered. Seriously. The ease of use of B3D with the popularity and high conversion rate of Live? Mark, your eyes should be full of "$$$" signs!
Heh if mark was interested in $ things would be done very differently methinks :). I doubt very much that Mark makes a living out of Blitz Products alone, which probably explains why some things take a long time, and not much effort goes into marketing and promoting B3D and Bmax.
I expect like Garage Games the Dark Basic people will be quick to introduce a XNA compatible variation of their products.
Really hopes that Blitz gets to go on 360, would be perfect for my future plans :)
I believe Microsoft recently aquired a %65 share in Garagegames, so I don't think it's going to be easy for Mark or TGC to jump on the XNA express.
>Heh if mark was interested in $
Mark is allways interested in helping others achive their game programing goals, I think they put us before $, you bet that they will be on this boat as soon as they get Max3D out ;)
SWEET, guess that I better consider a game project for them then. I only wish that Blitz would've been introduced as an alternative language for the Net Yaroze back in 1997 for the PS1. Well, X360, here I come to port a great game into you.
I believe Microsoft recently aquired a %65 share in Garagegames
yeah... and aliens landed and aquired a 65% share in Starbucks...
seriously though... could you point me to some info or facts about this...
thx
--Mike
Heh, Well Garage Games Directors and main marketing and PR guy all these years left a few weeks ago. And the Founder and CEO stepped down a few months back and handed the reins to someone else.
I keep hoping it will make a difference and their engine starts to get some real improvements.
Some details:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4789809.stmIt will be much more limited in what it can do, but it still sounds cool.
Sounds like the initial release will be limited but things will open up more at a later date. Plus you can buy the professional license (<$1000), if you wish to sell your games.
Evak... yeah, i read al that stuff, and also assumed something was happening behind the scenes...
but, i'd also like to see a ufo land in my backyard, so until i see some hard facts or something substantial (that's why i asked Kong for a link if he had it)... i'm gonna have to relegate that bit of rumor next to the ufo folder in my xfiles...
:)
it would be interesting though... both the ufo landing, and MS getting involved in GG...
**Edit**
funny... but this exact topic is featured on the community page today over at GG... Torque X it's gonna be market as... wonder how much more it's gonna cost existing licensees...
--Mike
Jesus.
perhaps Mark should take a look at this and plan for future XNABLitz products:
Or the license agreement. Particularly the bit where it says you're not allowed to write a commercial application with it, much less a product that competes directly with Microsoft and their partners.
I never read past that word. I wish BRL would do some of these things :D
They've tried. Several times. However as ir turns out, Microsoft couldn't care less for BRL or its customers.
Yes I whole heartedly agree, and they will definately sell more XBOX 360s this way too!
Really> Do you know any potential XBox 360 developers who don't already have an XBox 360?
Its a great opportunity if you can get your game onto live where the lowest conversion rate is around 4x higher than the magic 2% with PC games.
Except since you can't use it for a commercial product, or for that matter get onto Live without Microsofts written permission, any real or imagininary conversion rate is probably rather a moot point.
I agree. "Blitz3D360" would be the *perfect* tool, this needs to be considered. Seriously.
Except since Blitz3D is DirectX 7 and Intel based (and not a particularly good language to boot) there is no chance in hell it would compile, much less work on the XBox360's PowerPC powered XNA architechture without being written completely from scratch.
I doubt very much that Mark makes a living out of Blitz Products alone,
Well you're wrong, but entitled to your opinion.
which probably explains why some things take a long time,
No. Things take a long time because that is an inherit property with software development. As complexity increases linearly, time required increases exponentially.
I expect like Garage Games the Dark Basic people will be quick to introduce a XNA compatible variation of their products.
I'll take that bet. Microsoft already have a strategic partner for their product. Why would they want another?
Uhh, before Macs went to Intel, they used PowerPC, and BMax would be perfect for the X360, just as long as you use the Mac version of BMax, it may work natively with the X360, to a point.
>>BMax would be perfect for the X360
Oh please...
Just learn C# or C++... Don't be so bound to a tool.
Mark tried to get b3d on the old xbox when MS were not actively seeking indie games developers or tools for developers to port to their system.
MS are very keen to get indie developers to develop for Live arcade. They have been for over a year now. If blitzmax could be made to run on 360 then something like SOW could made to run on 360 with the next version of Ogre, which also has a new licencing optionthat allows you to port to other platforms.
Anyway, I think its really cool to see more doors opening to small independent developers. Just a shame that it seems to be only GG that make any real use of them at the moment.
Just learn C# or C++... Don't be so bound to a tool.
Can i ask you why you program? I do it because it's fun. If i earn then cool, but its fun.
Now, working on an X360 would be great, and using max would be fabulous.
learning C languages would make things a little more boring for me. I just dont find them as interesting as Basic.
Yeah, should be cool to design some games for XBLA. This may be just what I need to get out of inactive status, and actually develop a game that M$ may actually like out of me. I see myself designing a couple of arcade games with new ideas based off of the old fashioned Pong or Breakout engines. Dunno if Microsoft would sign deals with Atari for their XBLA or not, seems like that would be in the works.
I don't think BlitzMax could work with this system, simply because it uses .Net (and at the moment only C#) and Max isn't a .Net language. It needs something like C# so it can sandbox the environment and also optimise for the relevant system on the fly (the same code running perfeectly on both systems is imperative).
I guess you could write an interpreter to convert your BlitzMax script to C# and convert all your Max2D calls into managed DirectX, but it really would be more trouble than it's worth, I think. Also, there's the whole threading issue. A Max2D-style library might be possible though.
Commerical apps - they say not yet, but they definitely have plans. Also, it's a very small step from having a game actually physically running on your 360 to selling it on XBLA. A few quality checks, a contract and a flick of a switch. Microsoft want a wide variety of games on XBLA and they know the only way to do that is to bring in the indies (though I guess more the small studios than the bedroom coder). Like Evak says, they've been trying to provide an indie route for some time now.
Problem with XBL is that larger studios are already seeing it as a platform to launch new untried ideas and build new IP at a lower cost than a full blown commercial production. That plus older classics from Atari, Midway, Sega etc are supposed to be in the pipeline too.
the way things pan out, will in some ways depend on the quality of the games people produce for live arcade in the next couple of years.
It may just end up being a place for lower budget commercial games to wet their feet, see how gamers take to it before having a big wad of money thrown at developing it further.
The last year, there wasn't much competition, but I expect it will shoot up quick, and the cost of developing a 360 title is going to be at least 10k just through MS own fees for QA testing and what have you.
There are options to have that taken care of up front, through playing with your royalties, the terms they offer depend on how much they really want your game.
Just depends on how well you promote the game title, and if it has that selling point to win the big gaming audiences over.
LOL @ Physt...
--Mike
hmm, check out the FAQ, it really aint that good. The stuff they are talking about is more of a gamedev club where you pay $100 a year and have to be a member to download and then compile each others games online and play them. So these arent shareware titles in the same sense that Xbox live arcade is. It's more like a Blitz community thing where everyone shares their game with source and is charged a fee to be a member.
Your still going to have to do it the hard way to get on Xbox live arcade and port your game the usual way.
Q: Can I use the XNA Game Studio Express or XNA Framework to build a commercial Xbox 360 game?
A: XNA Game Studio Express will enable you to create Windows and now Xbox 360 console games much more easily. These games are limited to non-commercial scenarios for 360 titles created with XNA Game Studio Express. However, XNA Game Studio Express may be used to create commercial games which target Windows. We will be releasing XNA Game Studio Professional next spring which will allow developers to create commercial games for Xbox addition to Windows.
Q: Isn't managed code in the XNA Framework interpreted and therefore slow?
A: No, it is not interpreted. The IL is just-in-time (JIT) compiled into native code when it is initially loaded by a process, prior to execution. This allows hardware-specific optimizations unique to the PC and Xbox 360 architectures.
Q: Why isn't there any Xbox 360 support in the beta?
A: Microsoft does not release beta software on the Xbox 360 for security reasons. Thanks to the design and implementation of the XNA Framework on both Windows and Xbox 360 however, games developed using the XNA Game Studio Express beta starting August 30th will be easily adapted to run against the Xbox 360 retail console upon availability of the finished tools later this holiday.
Q: How exactly can I share my 360 game to other 360 users? Will my game only be available to people with the XNA "Creators Club" subscription? Will it be available to all 360 users that have an Xbox Live account?
A: There is currently no supported way to share binaries on the Xbox 360. Currently, there are four requirements that must be met in order to share a game targeting Xbox 360 which is developed with XNA Game Studio Express.
1. The individual you are planning to share the game with must be logged in to Xbox Live and have an active subscription to the XNA Creators Club
2. The receiving user must have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for the Xbox 360
3. The receiving user must have XNA Game Studio Express installed on their own development PC
4. The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.
Q: Can I store my XNA Game Studio Express game on my memory card and share it with a friend?
A: No. Games developed using XNA Game Studio Express cannot be shared through a memory card at this time.
Q: Do I need a hard drive to run XNA-based games on my Xbox 360 console?
A: Yes. The XNA Framework runtime environment for Xbox 360 requires that a physical hard drive be present on your Xbox 360 retail console.
Q: Can I create non-gaming applications (such as a Media Center/Player) with XNA Game Studio Express?
A: On Windows this is possible, but the initial release on Xbox 360 is tuned to writing games. This is an area we are actively looking to the community for feedback on the types of applications they want to write for their Xbox 360.
Q: Does the XNA Framework include the ability to use Xbox Live?
A: The initial release of the XNA Framework on the Xbox 360 will not have any support for networking. We realize this is a big area of interest for game developers and are actively working on a solution for the next release.
Q: How can you debug XNA-based games running on the Xbox 360?
A: Debugging on the console is supported through a remote debugging connection from a Windows desktop running XNA Game Studio Express.
Q: How will the XNA Framework be available to developers?
A: The XNA Framework will be made available to Windows game developers via a free download. In order to develop for the 360, developers will need to join the XNA "Creators Club" which includes everything a developer needs to build non-commercial games for an Xbox 360 retail console.
Q: How exactly will I be able to run a game built with XNA Game Studio Express on my Xbox 360?
A: On Windows, you'll be able to develop, test and distribute software created with XNA Game Studio Express for free. When you sign up for the nominally priced annual subscription to XNA Game Studio Express for Xbox 360, you'll be able to write a game on Windows, then send it to your Xbox 360 to test and enjoy. Eventually, you'll be able to distribute that code to other Xbox 360s, opening up a unique publishing avenue which will democratize game development on consoles.
The beta released at the end of the month will be just on the PC. The release version (at the end of the year) will let anyone with a "creator's club" membership ($99 per year) create builds on their PC to run on their Xbox 360. You'll basically take your Xbox 360 on the same local network as your PC, set it to listen for a code dump from your PC running the Game Studio Express, and then on your PC you hit the 'ol "compile and run on 360" thing. Very similar to the actual pro development environment, only it works on retail 360s (on the same local network, provided you have a creator's club membership activated on that console).
You can share your games to anyone else in the creator's club. Just send the XNA project to them in email, on a memory key, put it up on your site for download, whatever. They load it up on their PC in their copy of XNA Game Studio Express, and send it to their Xbox.
The goal is that, in the future, they'll have a channel for people who are not members of the creator's club to download and play the homebrew games. Like, there's Live Aracade, and there will be Creator's Arcade or some such. Anyone in the creator's club would theoretically be able to submit to Creator's Arcade and MS would examine it to make sure it's not really a pirate game or won't harm your Xbox, then they put it up for everyone to download and check out. That aspect of it is a little further out (think next year) and they're still working on details like ownership and copyright, how they'll examine submissions for safety, etc.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/ BASTAGES!!!!!
--Mike
Yeah, the more you read, the less good it sounds, though it should still give a few good bedroom coders the chance to break out, which is better than the options they had before...
I think it still sounds as good before. It's always a matter of what you're expecting. Were you seriously thinking Microsoft will give you the full package for $99 / year and let you post your games on XBL arcade regardless of what you're posting? Of course not! There are laws that Microsoft is bound to (software piracy, porn, etc.) and they will have to take care about that. However:
The goal is that, in the future, they'll have a channel for people who are not members of the creator's club to download and play the homebrew games. Like, there's Live Aracade, and there will be Creator's Arcade or some such. Anyone in the creator's club would theoretically be able to submit to Creator's Arcade and MS would examine it to make sure it's not really a pirate game or won't harm your Xbox, then they put it up for everyone to download and check out. That aspect of it is a little further out (think next year) and they're still working on details like ownership and copyright, how they'll examine submissions for safety, etc.
That sounds great!
Any game that gets onto Live Arcade will need extensive QA testing, fit their portfolio and be of sufficient quality that it can sell.
I think the club is a nice touch for hobbyists and people having fun. But probably not for developers who want to get a quality product out on XBL. I think it could be a fun thing to play with if your not looking to build a business and earn $.
They are opening it up for professional developers as well. The pro version of XNA ships in early 2007. Anyway, another really big thing about XNA now is TorqueX! Did you see that stuff over on GG? They've added polysoup collision to Torque as well. They've got both the 2D and 3D versions running on XNA.
i was looking at that J... raised more questions than anything... what good would it be for TGE... XBOX is shader rrific if anything... TSE maybe... or would TGE folks get shaders as a bargian... which means those who spent TSE EA money are in a sense, screwedeeeloooedoodled...
ahhhhh, i dunnooo... XNA, DNA, Erectile Disfuncfuntion... what's this world coming to anyway!!!
i'm tired... i'm going to bed...
:)
--Mike
I believe that TorqueX is actually a variant of the Shader Engine, or a completely different product. It employs shaders, that I know.
Additionally:
I think the club is a nice touch for hobbyists and people having fun. But probably not for developers who want to get a quality product out on XBL. I think it could be a fun thing to play with if your not looking to build a business and earn $.
Heck, this club is great because it puts our games right in front of the faces of the people who can make it an XBL reality. If a game comes out on the creator's club and is popular then it's going to get looked at for commercial potential. It's like a little MS minor league team ... kind of like how baseball teams have farm teams if you know what I mean. This is very cool!
Yeah only you have to supply your source so your fellow game creators can compile your game on their computer and run it. They won't let you create 360 binaries that can be run by the looks of things.
Given Garage Games poor track record with technology and pipeline integration plus lack of really basic fundamental features. I've pretty much decided to dismiss them till they produce the goods and can show competent tools that work in an intutitive but flexible way. I don't see anything that really suggests that they will actualy produce anything more than the usual hype and strong marketing.
..I think all this story from microsoft is some kind of dust without wind..
Pfft, Peter Moore will be Peter Moore, full of the hottest air outta all of them (although, he's not nearly as bad as Phil Harrison from Sony, tho). Major Nelson, you're a genius to pull off this homebrew development scheme.
its Antony's roll model Ken Kutagari that spouts all the real hot air at NOSY
Except since you can't use it for a commercial product, or for that matter get onto Live without Microsofts written permission, any real or imagininary conversion rate is probably rather a moot point.
You could make free demo-versions of your PC game for the XBOX, I guess, a lot of people who own an XBOX owns a PC too.
Personally.. I think this is a ploy to blurr the line between crap made with things like RPGmaker and real indie games..
MS knows that the closer those lines get, the less market there will be for 'real' indie games.. the name will die.
When you hear "Indie Game" you'll think piece of crap platformer made with stock graphics on some free application...
You'll think kids in their bedrooms..
You won't think professionals...
if the indie games market disapeared, microsoft woudl be very happy... cause they can't see the money potential in it... And there might not really be any money potential in it for them in reality... so the next best thing is to foster a new indie market that is 'dependant' on them. Dependant on their tools.
But I won't know until I see the software... until I feel it in my hands and see if it is truely powerful... or if it is powerful for what it 'does' like the Warcraft 3 editor.
Sure... for a real time strategy map editor, it is great.... but if that was called a 'game engine' it would be laughed at...
I'm fully expecting this to be great at creating some 'idea' but terrible at letting you polish it... and when you try, it only breaks.
er, last I looked most people think that of indie games anyway lol. The word indie goes hand in hand with amateurish and sloppy simple games with poor graphics and limited gameplay.
Most people don't associate bejeweled and Chuzzle with indie games, and your probably better off using words like 'Casual' or even better 'independent'instead if your making one of the many simple puzzle games and want to appear professional.
Actually, in case people around here haven't noticed (and I can see they have not) indie games have become very cool in the last year or so and have finally started gaining some respect. The stuff is all over Gamasutra now among other places (Wired for instance) and in no small part because of XBLA. Additionally, Microsoft wants indies to flourish because it'll end up being less overhead for them to just collect money based on developers making content in their freetime and then allowing those developers to sell the content on their dedicated gaming platform with a small surcharge taken out of course. This is just the first step in their effort to really commercialize indie games, to get real gamers, real indie games, on a real gaming platform.
Think about how many games get sold on the PC right now with all the different components etc... which block end users from getting the full experience. Let alone the fact that it's really hard to get your game in front of a lot of people online without a lot of money or time for advertising or word of mouth to work (but still with all the technical hiccups of a PC). Now think about our same indie game market but instead on a dedicated gaming platform made for people who do nothing but play games. This is a license to print money for them and indie developers. The players on Xbox Live that I know do almost nothing but play ... most of them seem to be on 24/7. I'm not even a gamer anymore in reality compared to this new generation of super gamers.
Anyway, the point is this could end up being quite radical. The future is in independently created content and the money is going to the new superstars of the indie created content world ... and whichever mega corp creates the best portal for consumers to access indie content ... of course ;)
Your right Jeremy, Microsoft are dragging indie games out of the quagmire and bringing the games to consumers presented in a fashion that makes fun cheap and professional, but I don't see much flaunting of the word indie outside of game development.
There is an opportunity for some rising stars to make it big in indie and for smaller developers to do very well out of it. The competition will be fierce and there will more and better tools 1 or 2 years from now. Especialy when the really talented technology makers start releasing their tools for us to use.
Evak:
Yeah only you have to supply your source
Bytecode, not source. In .Net you compile your source to a universal bytecode, the bytecode is compiled to native code on the target machine.
[EDIT]Hmmm. Looks like it
is the source and not just the bytecode after all. I guess we'll have to wait for the Pro version to distribute binaries.
... and you get to pay only $99 a year for the privilige of doing this.
BASTAGES!!!!!
:)
don't get me wrong... i love MS... i like Bill... but this is starting to look a lil bit more dodgy each time i look at it...
i guess we'll have to wait till the pro tools appear for the real meat and potatoes stuff...
it would be nice if i were wrong though...
--Mike
From the very interesting
XNA blog:
Because this is a blog and not the actual press announcement, I can talk about the big obvious hole in the plan. When we ship XNA Game Studio Express this fall, you will be able to share your final product with anyone on your windows machine that you want, but there is no support for sharing Xbox binaries other than sending your source around. We fully intend to fix this in the future, and if I have anything to do about it, it will be sooner than later. The more people that sign up for the subscription and start showing cool innovative content that everyone wants, the easier it will be to get this done.
IMHO, for the same price that it takes to develop X360 games with this junk, I'd much rather design games on the Dreamcast, at least there it's on a Pocket PC platform, you could probably port games through on Visual Studio, and it may almost go right into the console. Hopefully it's that easy, not too sure how much Sega modified the Dreamcast from being like a Pocket PC of sorts...
i don't doubt that there is a whopping big market opportunity for XBox games... and it would be great to have a chance at a piece of the market pie... even if we had to pay and go through the evaluation and q&a process...
... but right now, too many things seem verrrrry vague, and maybe best to let the dust settle down before making a final call on this stuff.
i do think though, that this is why so many 3D tools have been late to market (guessing)... including our own beloved max3d module...
this XNA stuff i'm talking about... not specifically the XBox 360 development, but the pc and DX10 framework...
--Mike
The Dreamcast has no relation to the Pocket PC whatsoever. Most games didn't even use the WinCE o\s.
Can i ask you why you program? I do it because it's fun. If i earn then cool, but its fun.
Now, working on an X360 would be great, and using max would be fabulous.
learning C languages would make things a little more boring for me. I just dont find them as interesting as Basic.
I program because I have to. I program because I can't sleep at night if I don't. I program because it pays the bills and puts food on the table. I program because it lets the wife buy both pairs of shoes she likes. I program to send my kids to private school. I program because it's the only thing I was ever any good at. I program because I love it. I program because it ain't got nowhere else to go. But most of all, I program because it's fun!
Most of the comments on this thread lean towards developing commerical apps for the 360. If one were really serious about it, I don't see why having to learn the available tool set should be the roadblock.
Waiting around hoping someone builds the handholding tool you want doesn't sound fun to me.
The Dreamcast has no relation to the Pocket PC whatsoever. Most games didn't even use the WinCE o\s.
Well, it said something about Designed for Windows CE on the console somewhere. Well, maybe if you modded it enough, it would probably run Win CE or Win Mobile...
Anyway, if I were you, I'd choose to mod the original Xbox, and turn it into a Linux PC, and run BlitzMax on it, designing a game on that before considering doing an X360 game, just to get the practice in console game design. Of course, if you choose to stick with the old fashioned keyboard and mouse PC, then it won't cost a dumb penny to design anything outside of paying for Blitz, or any other tools like graphics or sound tools, hardware tools, etc... Just another quick way for M$ to make another buck off of the homebrew community.
Your still going to have to do it the hard way to get on Xbox live arcade and port your game the usual way.
Imagine that.
Heck, this club is great because it puts our games right in front of the faces of the people who can make it an XBL reality.
Because having your ideas and source code stolen so other people can make it a reality on XBL is such a good deal for the indie developer looking for a break.
>Because having your ideas and source code stolen so other people can make it a reality on XBL is such a good deal for the indie developer looking for a break.
allways so cynical, I wonder if you ever are positive ;)
Well at first this sounded really cool, but oh well. No point in being disappointed that the status quo is maintained.
Well, if anyone tries to design another Geometry Wars, this warning has been brought to my attention, not too sure what to make of something like this:
http://www.clubskill.com/Game_News/4141/Geometry%20Wars%20developers%20warn I dont think the geometry wars people really have any right to request that other people not make clones or whatever. Obviously there's legal control but beyond that they have no right.
I dont think the geometry wars people really have any right to request that other people not make clones or whatever. Obviously there's legal control but beyond that they have no right.
I had no idea... how sad:
http://www.incitti.com/Blitz/Did these people never learn by writing clones of existing games?
I kind of think this is BS, but I agree with them more than not. At least if you're inspired by the game don't make something identical to it. For instance I was inspired by Geometry Wars and I created Nebula Wars ... which was a pretty broad mutation:
Nebula WarsWay back in the day I was doing Tetris as a programming exercise and instead I mutated it into Enigma-X. In both cases I used other games as inspiration but figured if I was going that far I might as well take it to the next level.
Well, if anyone tries to design another Geometry Wars, this warning has been brought to my attention, not too sure what to make of something like this:
Amazing...words fail me...
And what game do 'Bizarre Creations' do? Isn't it yet another ultra derivative 'Pole Position' clone? The really dull one with nothing in it?
Twats.
Ehm.. and exactly how different is Geometry Wars from Asteroids?
It's different, but it sure was done before. How would they like if Asteroids creator told them to stop selling their clone?
This issue really challenges the legal system and it's important for any developer.
Can Bizzare Creations own the rights to a certain look and style of a vector graphics game?
Can Bizzare Creations prohibit a distribution of a game that is given away for free and was developed entirely independant of any code/graphic/sound framework that they used?
The sad part is the Grid Wars developer more than likely couldn't financially withstand the legal army that would attack him should the issue go to court since they have made millions on this game and the Grid War developer has made....nothing.
Sure, just like with Hexic, I'm quite sure that can be an easy cloner in its own right. Anyone here working on doing a Hexic-type game in Blitz, BTW?