1 Wednesday, August 6, 2008 ASYNCHRONY SOLUTIONS Making cross-platform Windows/Xbox 360 games in XNA

2 Wednesday, August 6, 2008 What is XNA?  I'm not sure anyone knows! It extends far beyond a simple API or Visual Studio plugin. Sometimes it's referred to as a framework, sometimes a toolset. In Microsoft's own words: “Microsoft® XNA™ is composed of industry-leading software, services, resources, and communities focused on enabling game developers to be successful on Microsoft gaming platforms.”  Consists of an add-on for Visual C# 2005 Express  Lets you make games that can be run on an Xbox or a Windows PC  XNA is an acronym that stands for nothing at all

3 Wednesday, August 6, 2008 Advantages  (+) API that contains commonly used game functions  (+) Can do 2D and 3D games  (+) C# is really easy  (+) Takes care of content management for you  (+) Lots and lots of excellent sample code and support.  (+) Free (to make Windows games) ‏  (-) I hear C# can be kind of slow  (-) Sharing Windows games is not as easy as it should be  (-) You can't draw a square  (-) There are a few odd quirks (such as separate projects for Windows and Xbox games) ‏  (-) Costs $100 a year (to make Xbox 360 games) ‏

4 Wednesday, August 6, 2008 XNA Creator's Club  Creator's Club the site for XNA game developers  Free to use forums and download sample projects tutorials  Costs $100 a year to run code on a 360, download other people's games, and review other people's games  Running your games on an Xbox 360 and (presumably) putting them up on the site is free if you sign up for the Dream/Build/Play competition  If you enter a game in the contest you get the full Creator's Club membership for free for 4 months  So basically all I'm paying $100 a year for is the ability to download and review other people's games.  Very shortly anyone will be able to sell their games on the Xbox 360 Marketplace and make 70% of the profits (slightly less if they advertise your game for you) ‏

5 Wednesday, August 6, 2008 Let's make AsynchroPong

6 Wednesday, August 6, 2008 Closing Reminders  Talk a bit about XNA 3.0 (Zune, single project file, support for Visual Studio 2008) ‏  Show off some games! (Racing, Ship Game, Robot Game, The Office Party) ‏ Resources  Learn anything you'd ever want to know:  Download my AsynchroPong source at: