I didn’t know this existed until yesterday, but it seems pretty awesome… the ability to create XBox 360 games with fairly user-friendly language. I want to give it a try when I get my good computer up and running again. Thoughts on it?
Yep, it’s up to version 3.1. It’s a cross platform series of API’s meant to get you started on games for xbox, PC and zune.
C# is the language preferred I believe, but I think you can use any of the managed .net languages.
I am doing some development work on it; and yes, it is a lower-tier middle-ware. It’s not exactly a 3D engine, but more of a managed wrapper around D3D and having libraries dealing with input, rendering and linear algebra.
The language of choice is C#, but you can use other managed languages, but this only works for the PC. To deploy to XNA, AFAIK, you would need to use C#. You can use your own custom shaders and there are some pretty cool stuff done for its Dream, Build Play competition.
The best site for stuff is http:://www.ziggyware.com
Fixed link
I’ve used it; even published a small Community Game(now Indie Game) on XBox Live Marketplace. Made a whole $153. Now I can die a professional (bad) game developer.
The XNA framework is pretty great; dealing with Microsoft and the whole process of submitting games was not. It’s also a pretty small niche; even many of the best games weren’t recovering anywhere near their development cost. That may have changed somewhat since they reworked the price structure, but the consensus seemed to be that developing for iPhone would be more lucrative, if not as satisfying.
If you go so far as plopping money down to join the Creator’s Club, be sure to check out the Torque X engine from Garage Games. Would have saved me a lot of time.
Yeah, I saw that C# is the preferred language. I actually came across XNA while Googling what the XBox 360 resident programming language was ('cause I’m a geek :D). It was my first exposure to C# but it feels so much like Java that I think I could get the hang of it quickly.
I don’t anticipate writing the next Halo or Gears of War by myself, but I do have a few simple ideas that I think I could create with this.