XNA Game Studio

[XoR]

Has anyone looked into this? I have been playing around with it for a couple weeks now, and I find it fascinating.

Basically the plumbing for game platforms is provided for you, you just plug in your concept ideas via code, and develop various assets.

I'm curious what others have to say about this technology, if it's even worth really learning, or if it's the "real deal". I am going to try and make a basic trial balloon game, and see what happens. (hopefully XNA is easier to wrestle with than Torque)

Warning : Pie in the sky activated. My first concept game will be a 3D version of crossbows and catapults. 2 fully destructible castles face each other on a rectangular battlefield partitioned by a stream in the middle. Each player will receive a fully functional catapult and crossbow. Global wind speeds and random terrain will affect carom trajectories and physics similar to pool. The interface for firing will be similar to Madden kicking/Golf swing meters. Low frequency powerups will be randomly placed on the field to spice things up. Expect a particle bonanza.

The goal is to trash the other players castle, and slide a carom on the other players treasure chest before they plunder yours.

ETA : Summer 2017

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You can download everything you need for XNA free over at Microsoft's XNA website.

[DenKirson]

Two guys make this in four days...


Perhaps I should try my hand at my currently boiling concept.
Foot, low altitude, high altitude, zero gravity, all transitions inbetween.
A futuristic free-roamer with omni-purpose personal spacecrafts as the primary mode of transport.
Taking place during the last great world-limited war before the path to space travel is truly a possibility.

Foot would be a third person shooter/brawler, one gun (modifiable), shopping, missions, shoot punks or the enemy military, and have to walk back to the hangar if you bail out of a flaming wreck.

Low altitude would be dogfighting and tight maneuvering though cities and open landscapes. The majority of missions would take place at low altitude, against the opposing military or just neutral tasks like delivery/space trucking.

High altitude will have low friction, high speed travel across the planet and through the space entry gates. Combat at high altitude will be difficult with poor turning at high speeds. Passing over hostile territory would have a load of surface-to-air missiles coming at you.

Zero Gravity using neutonian physics, transit between a few habitable rocks and space stations. The bulk of combat will be at a front line in which battleships and a few dozen fighters keep pushing back and forth.

Three planets: planet of origin, fully-terraformed planet, planet with homeostasis pods. Then about six space stations, two or so in orbit around each planet. The origin planet is in turmoil, while the pod one is neutral and the terraformed one, also neutral, wants to make a profit by selling supplies to the highest bidder in the war. The stations are sided with their respective planets, one for side A and the other for side B on the origin planet.

[midnightservice]

I would love to see a FPS that takes place on the moon with low gravity. I think that would be fun

[roo]

xor sounds like u need to just play shadow bane , there are towns u distroy with cataputs and crossbows

[Undead_Mercenary]

I need to give this thing a try, once I download the stuff it needs to run.

[Undead_Mercenary]

Well I can't get this thing to run. I keep getting the same C# error over and over. Something about 'Class not being registered, looking for object CLSID'.

[XoR]

You seem to always have issues with your computer Merc.

Format and Restore!

[Archangelus]

Merc - do you have .NET Framework 3.0 installed? It sounds like it's looking for a core component and can't locate it.

[Undead_Mercenary]

There's 3.0 now? I'm pretty sure I have 2.0, but if there's a newer version, I guess I'll have to grab it too.

How about I format and restore you Xor?!

[Imperil]

XNA is a great way for learning core concepts and getting budget ideas prototyped quickly. There are actually a lot of plans for it that I can't share, but it is only going to get better over time. It is primaryily a 360 API that also runs on the PC due to development, there are many areas where there are massive performance tradeoffs due to security measures on the 360.. which affects the PC build since it is cross platform.

Overall I think it is the hands down best API for learning how to code games at the time, and there are also a lot of starter examples. Check out this example that is for creators club members:

http://www.xnaracinggame.com/

[Undead_Mercenary]

Well, I have the 3.0 framework and the C# 2005 SP1 installed, and yet I still get the same error. What the hell could I be missing?

[Dr.Death]

How about I format and restore you Xor?!

My $$$$ is on Xor!

[XoR]

Heh. I google'd "Class not being registered, looking for object CLSID" and the 8th result was Undead's post here on the forums. Now that's service.

What is the full error Merc?

[Undead_Mercenary]

Class not registered.
Looking for object with CLSID: {00BB2763 6A77 11D0 A535 00C04FD7D062}

It's funny because I get the error twice as the program loads, then I'll only get it again if I move my mouse.

I found a post on the Microsoft forums that might fix my problem, but I don't quite understand what I need to do. It says:

Well, I have Windows x64 and had the same "Class not registered..." problem. Then I tried what you suggest and it worked. Looking around in RegMon I saw that, actually, what VS is really trying to find is the key [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{00BB2763-6A77-11D0-A535-00C04FD7D062}], not [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{00BB2763-6A77-11D0-A535-00C04FD7D062}]. So the problem can be solved with this .reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{00BB2763-6A77-11D0-A535-00C04FD7D062}]
@="Microsoft AutoComplete"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{00BB2763-6A77-11D0-A535-00C04FD7D062}\InProcServer32]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,62,00,72,00,\
6f,00,77,00,73,00,65,00,75,00,69,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00
"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

That is, the same entries than in [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{00BB2763-6A77-11D0-A535-00C04FD7D062}]

In Windows Proffesional VS 2005 doesn't cause troubles, so I think in that case it does look for the [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{00BB2763-6A77-11D0-A535-00C04FD7D062}] key (I say "I think" cause I haven' tried regmon there), since in that version of Windows [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{00BB2763-6A77-11D0-A535-00C04FD7D062}] doesn't exist.

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[Undead_Mercenary]

Ahh finally got it working, I had to add to those two keys to my registry.