\Managed DirectX and XNA Framework news

Chris Williams may love the sound of his own tweets a little too much and he may have more tattoos than your grandma but apparently he did enough bad things in his previous life that he feels the need to give back...

So on September 24th in Bloomington Minnesota you can help him and the rest of the Twin Cities XNA user group raise some money for a good cause.

  

Yes even shorter notice than Tuesdays talk announcement... so I'll just give the link and you can work it out yourself.

Turns out The ZMan needs to be able to read dates properly (it doesn't help that after 12 years I'm still not quite cool with having the month go first!). The talk is actually AUGUST 21st. So in fact you have over a months notice! New XNA MVP Joel Martinez will be giving the lowdown on XNA Game Studio

XNA at ONETUG. Orlando City Hall, Orlando, Florida

Whiplash from PHStudios has a 10 part video and 55 page document walking you from start to finish of a pong clone called Paddles.

Paddles video tutorials

DVD quality is available for everyone and the quality seems just about good enough to read the code window. HD versions are available for paying subscribers

They also have some c# and Photoshop tutorials

Digital Tutors has a new training video out for XSI and XNA Game Studio. I've not actually seen any of these videos so I'm not sure of the quality but the preview seems quite watchable.

If you have used any of the digital tutors stuff let me know what you think of it

Shader Pipeline with XSI and XNA

Looks like they have some other XNA related videos too

Can't find a copy of the conference just yet but it seems like GameSpot will have a copy to watch soon

So yesterday was the big Microsoft press conference and there were a few things that caught my eye from a game development point of view. (though I only caught the last hour so I may have missed something)

1. XNA Community games got a very short mention. They showed a video that had some of the current community games as well as few that I seem to remember from last years Dream Build Play. The 'date' mentioned was Fall which might sound different to the Holiday 2008 we have been hearing but since Winter starts December 21st I guess they technically overlap. No new news announced here.
2. New dashboard - I missed this bit so I don't know if this will affect the Community games part of the dashboard.
3. Avatars - similar to the avatars on other consoles you can customize a look alike (or not look a like) and have it appear in games. Lets hope the XNA Framework allows us access to these models as some point.
4. Some new fun stuff to do with the Xbox camera. The new Viva Pinata game uses the camera to read trading cards and You're in the movies records your actions while you play fun games and then edits the footage into short little movie clips. Seems like some fun things to do with the camera... maybe one day we will get some access to that.
5. Finally a couple of new controllers - an improved Guitar Hero controller which should hopefully just map to an standard XInput device and a new Microphone for the Lips karaoke game which, like the Rock Band microphone will need special drivers and a new API.

So looking forward to some announcements at GameFest where maybe we will learn if any of this new stuff will be available to us

Sorry for the short notice - I only just found out about this myself.

If you are close to Dallas then head along to the SMU Guildhall tonight at 7pm. Check out the details on Chris Koenig's blog

There's plenty of threads in the forums with people who get the 'The project type is not supported by this installation' error. In fact due to a brain fart I even got it myself last week. Generally this error happens when you try to open a project written in a version of Game Studio (Express) in a version of Visual Studio that doesn't have that GS(E) installed. Most commonly because you don't have that GS(E) installed at all but one case I have seen is when you try to open a v1 file by clicking the .sln and it opens the non express version of VS. Since GS1 didn't work with VS Pro or above you can NEVER open that project unless you have express installed.

So here's how to tell which version a project is:

1. Open the project file (NOT the solution file) in notepad
2. Find the lines with <XnaFrameworkVersion> and <XnaPlatform>. This will contain v1.0, v2.0 or v3.0 and Windows, Zune or Xbox 360

In addition you can check the Project type Guid as this is what VS is checking when you get that error message

1. Find the line with <ProjectTypeGuids> ignore the 2nd GUID (FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC) as its always the same and represents that these project types are for C#
2. Look in the table below to find the one that matches

Project type Guid	Project type	GS version
D399B71A-8929-442a-A9AC-8BEC78BB2433	Zune Game or Game Library	3.0 CTP
6D335F3A-9D43-41b4-9D22-F6F17C4BE596	Windows Game or Game Library	2.0 (VS2005) 3.0 CTP (VS2008)
2DF5C3F4-5A5F-47a9-8E94-23B4456F55E2	360 Game or Game Library	2.0
9F340DF3-2AED-4330-AC16-78AC2D9B4738	Windows/360 Game or Game Library	1.0 & 1.0 Refresh*

* These projects MUST be opened in VC# Express 2005. Sometimes even though you have 1.0 refresh installed the .sln files will open the non express version and give you the error

There are some Vista registry issues which can be fixed by reading this blog http://brianpeek.com/blog/archive/2007/11/29/weird-vista-registry-issue.aspx which on occasion also seem to cause this error message.

Thanks to Aaron for checking and adding some detail and Stephen for pointing out the very obvous verison and platform tags that I had missed!

If you are not a forum regular you probably missed the following job announcements. Microsoft is a great place to work and the XNA team seem like a great bunch of folk (well the ones I have met - the team is getting too big for me to know everyone these days)

Web Developer

Technical Program Manager

UZ Designer

User groups are starting up everywhere. Even the Canadians want to get in on the game now.

So if you live near Calgary, Canada and you have any kind of interested in XNA Game Studio then you need to visit their website and find out when and where.

XNA Calgary User Group
When: June 11th 2008, 7-9pm
Where: SAIT Main Campus in the Heart Building, Wing 'D', Room 201 (MD-201).

Micheal Klucher will be speaking tonight at the Puget Sound hand held user group about games on the Zune. Sadly I have other commitments so I can't go along.

7:00pm May 27th, Microsoft Campus building 113/1021

More details on their website http://pshandheld.com/default.aspx

IT'S HERE!!!!

Phase 2 of the 2008 XNA Game studio beta roll out is complete. Recently we saw the 3.0 CTP for Zune and today we have the beta for the Xbox Community games distribution. The new site is also updated with new sections for education and the new improved (we hope) forums.

Check it out at http://creators.xna.com

There are some restrictions which I'm sure will annoy a few people but remember it's just a beta. Only PAID (sorry no dreamspark) creators club members can submit and review games and only people in the US can download and play them.

Its here... get it while its hot

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DF4AF56A-58A7-474C-BFD0-7CF8ED3036A3

Read the official announcement

Watch Michael Klucher do a demo

Read the GamaSutra article about Zune Development

Read the zune developer FAQ

But most importantly BUY A ZUNE!!! (and help ZMan pay the mortgage!)

 

8:00am competition closed.... well actually I closed entries at 7:30am when Klucher twittered a hint and several people sent me entries for the 7th Hmmmmm

The winner of the pen is JudahH

With much speculation of the date of the CTP its time to have some fun....

Send me the date (and time [PST] for tie breakers) you think the download will appear on Microsoft.com and the winner (closest) will get my very sexy XNA pen that I got from GDC. If I determine that you had inside information and used it to win a pen I reserve the right to disqualify you and report you for NDA violation

6
7
8
9
10	JudahH(9:00am)
11
12
13	boki(2:00am), GriffinE(9:30am)
14
15	ultrahead(7:00pm)
16
17	JoelM(7:00pm)
18
19
20	ajmiles(2:00pm)
21	JoshU(12:00noon)
22	GregD(8:00am), StephanT(10:00am)
23	MichaelQ(9:00am)
24
25
26
27
28
29
30	BrianK(1:00pm)
31

 

While "The George" may sound like a kind of a sandwich with too much mustard on it to some folk we all know its really none other than our very own George Clingerman, MVP, OBE, VIP.

So if you are in or around Portland tonight - April 23rd 2008 - at 6:30pm then head along and see George do what he does best and make a 2d game right before your very eyes

Details at the PAXNAUG blog

Ok so maybe Pieter is not as famous as some of the US speakers but I hear that in South Africa he is "The Man" when it comes to XNA.

So if you live in South Africa you can see him speaking at NMMU on 29th of April and Rhodes University on the 30th April. The talk will be 'Developing a game in an hour or less'. If you can attend both Pieter promises to do a different game at each one

Sorry there are no details on time - you will have to contact Pieter through his blog