Microsoft XNA
by Brian Smith · in General Discussion · 03/25/2004 (3:15 am) · 6 replies
Anyone had a chance to check this new Microsoft doodad out at GDC? I've seen a little info, but nothing that tells me that it's any more than just D3DX++.
What is it? Why is it important? Is it free?
What is it? Why is it important? Is it free?
About the author
#2
03/25/2004 (4:03 am)
Heh, probably another thing they're going to shove into the supposed "longhorn" OS...
#3
Oh well. All this hype over a couple dinky audio tools?
03/25/2004 (4:17 am)
Yeah, thats some info, but not much more than marketing mumbo jumbo. Oh well. All this hype over a couple dinky audio tools?
#4
One of the many things I like about Torque - it doesn't support electronic biggotry. It's truly multi-platform.
03/25/2004 (6:28 am)
With the current move toward platform independant technologies it looks like MonopolySoft is taking some cunning new marketing tactics. Supporting more than one Microsoft platform allows them to coin the term "multi-platform" so as to conform to the buzzword of the day while actually re-enforcing the monopoly.One of the many things I like about Torque - it doesn't support electronic biggotry. It's truly multi-platform.
#5
03/27/2004 (4:39 pm)
From what I can tell, XNA also involves some of the xbox SDK stuff being backported to the more mainstream microsoft platforms.
#6
Same code working on a desktop pc and a videogame console sure sounds pretty cross-platform to me, especially if you do a smaller game and also release it on the newer PDA's next year. I don't see where there's any con going on - this is a pretty damn decent development imo
Torque is plenty bigotted if you apply your same stance. All it runs on are desktop computers with OpenGL. Granted there are bigger differences between pc and mac than there are between pc and xbox, but if we want to start getting pedantic, neither are doing anything awesome - in fact by using OpenGL for rendering I doubt theres much truly different platform dependent code in TGE at all. (which is good - no axe to grind on this one). You expecting to see TGE running on a mobile phone anytime soon ?
If you want to take some moral highground about cross-platformness, find an engine that runs the same game code on PC, Mac, PS2, DreamCast and GameCube or something. It was once my job to write one of these and finding a way to get good performance out of all of those from the same game code was more of a challenge than doing the actual coding itself on any one platform by an order of magnitude.
Please don't slate Microsoft either guys. They may have a monopoly on pc, but who do you think gave it em ? If you're writing this on a pc, I dare you to remove all of Microsofts products in protest!
03/27/2004 (6:06 pm)
Yes. Essentially it makes XBox and PC cross-platform development a breeze, not that in my experience it ever wasn't. Along with 'about to be release en masse' hardware acceleration for PocketPC, that makes a total of 3 radically different platforms.Same code working on a desktop pc and a videogame console sure sounds pretty cross-platform to me, especially if you do a smaller game and also release it on the newer PDA's next year. I don't see where there's any con going on - this is a pretty damn decent development imo
Torque is plenty bigotted if you apply your same stance. All it runs on are desktop computers with OpenGL. Granted there are bigger differences between pc and mac than there are between pc and xbox, but if we want to start getting pedantic, neither are doing anything awesome - in fact by using OpenGL for rendering I doubt theres much truly different platform dependent code in TGE at all. (which is good - no axe to grind on this one). You expecting to see TGE running on a mobile phone anytime soon ?
If you want to take some moral highground about cross-platformness, find an engine that runs the same game code on PC, Mac, PS2, DreamCast and GameCube or something. It was once my job to write one of these and finding a way to get good performance out of all of those from the same game code was more of a challenge than doing the actual coding itself on any one platform by an order of magnitude.
Please don't slate Microsoft either guys. They may have a monopoly on pc, but who do you think gave it em ? If you're writing this on a pc, I dare you to remove all of Microsofts products in protest!
Torque Owner Peter Andersson
"XNA empowers developers to deliver breakthrough games while combating rising production costs and ever-increasing hardware complexity. Games for future iterations of all Microsoft® game platforms including Windows®, Xbox® and Windows Mobile-based devices will be unleashed by tools and technologies from the XNA development platform."
Sounds like it's a cross platform game library which merges tools from the xbox with tools from the PC. It's only "cross platform" over MS platforms though.
Anyways, here's a good URL:
www.microsoft.com/xna/faq.aspx
*edit*
Their press-release states:
"The DirectX® API and the Visual Studio® development system will continue to be the baseline environment for both platforms"
So doesn't seem to change much.