Microsoft XNA

[Flash Man]

I am currently enrolled in a course at my university that teaches about Game Design, and the use of Microsoft's XNA. We use version 2.0 along with Microsoft Visual C# 2005. My university just got a grant that allowed us a creator's club license and just about ten Xbox 360s in our classroom. This means we can develop for both Windows and Xbox 360s. I was curious to see if anyone had dug into this product at all; it is free to develop for Windows.

http://creators.xna.com/

[Cloral]

What sort of 360s do they have? Are they dev kits with access to PartnerNet? If so, you need to download some good arcade games to the kits. You can download anything off of PartnerNet for free.

So in this course, do you have to create a single large project, or do you make a bunch of smaller projects throughout the semester?

[Kairyu]

I've been meaning to investigate this, but I haven't gotten around to it yet due to chronic not-motivated-ness-ness-being.

[Flash Man]

We just have the standard Xbox premiums. I really have not even gotten to test them out. Every time we meet in class we generally are developing in the Windows environment. The teachers have not once offered use a controller, nor have I tried connecting to an Xbox. From what I know you have to have the source code in order to play it on the Xbox, and from there you use their Game Creator manager to connect and play.

Personally from what I have done in the course the content seems somewhat mediocre, which is unfortunate because it is a 400 level course: CST407. So far our assignments were to download the provided source code to Pong, Breakout and Tetris, and then make some sort of modification to the game. I dabbled with Pong and Breakout, but I decided to recreate Tetris from ground up; I put up a youtube video of it here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjFYq56_pH8). I believe at the end of the class we will have created a full two dimensional game. Here is some context from the syllabus:

Course Description
This course will provide basic coverage and solid instruction on how to leverage the XNA 2.0 Framework to create high quality games for Windows and the Xbox 360. The course will show you how to take full advantage of the many features the XNA Framework as well as creating, loading, and texturing 3D objects. In addition to providing coverage of 2D programming, this course shows how to create sophisticated 3D games.

Course Objectives
* Learn how to install and use XNA Game Studio Express
* Discover how to build, deploy, and debug games for the Xbox 360 and Windows
* Examine the XNA Framework in depth: 2D, 3D and High Level Shader Language ( HLSL)
* Learn how to create game components and game services
* Discover how to extend the Content Pipeline
* Create a full 2D game
* Discover how to use sprite batches
* Learn to make the most of sprite fonts
* Create 2D components such as splash screens and progress bars