February 2008 - Posts

• Fitba Game and Updated FBX Exporter for Blender

  Triple B Games have announced a demo of their distinctly Scottish take on football, Fitba "Nae arms, nae legs, nae problem". It looks great but in all their nifty marketing, I notice they don't mention the XBLA version of Sensible Soccer...

  Also on their site is a version of the Blender FBX exporter script that has been tweaked for compatibility with XNA. They don't say what the changes are and I'm not familiar with the script but I know that some people have been having trouble with Blender animations.

  Posted Feb 29 2008, 04:27 PM by leaf with 3 comment(s)

  Filed under: blender

• Gamsutra Article on the Community Games Process

  Gamasutra have an article, from Microsoft I guess, about what the process of creating and reviewing XNA community games will be. It's an interesting read, if only because it makes it clear that the peer review process is only about content, not quality. It will be up to the general mass of Xbox LIVE users to judge quality, which is probably a good thing.

  One other point that might be more important to readers of this site in particular, is that it looks like the beta test starting this spring will only be available to people in the US region. I'm waiting on confirmation but it looks like we'll have to wait till the end of the year for the final product.

   

  Posted Feb 22 2008, 11:17 AM by leaf with 1 comment(s)

  Filed under: CommunityGames

• XNA 3.0 To Support Zune Devices

  Just in case there is anyone who reads this who hasn't already read all about this over at the Creators Club site. The next version of XNA Game Studio will include support for Zune devices, including creating multi-player games that work over wireless.

  There is a preview release planned for release in spring 2008 and the final version 3.0 release should happen sometime around the end of the year (just the same as versions 1.0 and 2.0 then).

  I've never really considered a Zune player, I was given an IPod a couple of years ago and have stuck with it, despite my loathing for being forced to use ITunes. I just want my MP3 player to appear as a removable device that I can copy MP3 files to - simple, easy and works from any computer. It looks like the Zune also requires Zune software to manage media files but at least it supports syncing from multiple computers, something ITunes handles terribly.

  Posted Feb 21 2008, 09:49 AM by leaf with 4 comment(s)

• Xbox LIVE Community Games

  One of the announcements from the GDC today is news of Xbox LIVE Community Games. Creators Club subscribers will be able to submit their games to be published on Xbox LIVE for anyone with an Xbox to play, after a period of peer review. I imagine this will attract a lot of people (back) to XNA Game Studio.

  Posted Feb 20 2008, 09:20 PM by leaf with 1 comment(s)

  Filed under: gdc, CommunityGames, Xbox

• EA Uses XNA For Rapid Prototyping

  Just noticed this mention of EA using XNA (amongst other things) to quickly test out game ideas. 

  Posted Feb 19 2008, 03:28 PM by leaf with no comments

  Filed under: EA, prototype

• Dreamspark

  News is coming from GDC'08 of Microsoft Dreamspark, a selection of software that will be made free for students. Could be very useful for our student members. 

  Posted Feb 19 2008, 03:04 PM by leaf with no comments

  Filed under: gdc, dreamspark

• How Rare Recruits Graduates, or Insider Tips on Blagging a Job at Rare

  Our chum, Nick Burton has an interesting article up at Gamasutra talking about why and how Rare goes about recruiting graduates. Nick was one of the people at Rare who worked on the early Rare XNA examples and also helped us judge last year's user group competition. He's a lovely fellow and does lots to promote XNA in universities, if you see him, give him a hug, you might get a job out of it...

  Posted Feb 06 2008, 06:09 PM by leaf with 1 comment(s)

  Filed under: rare, gamasutra, edu