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XNA Framework
We’re not the only ones busy around here :). My friend
Julien
as well as other very smart people are building the next
generation development system for Xbox and PC games,
XNA. Part of this work is to build an implementation of the .NET
framework for the Xbox 360. This means considerably reduced
development costs for casual games and... who knows what's
next? This is just going to be great as it's going to lower
the entry bar for game development. I hope this is the return
of the time when people like me, with the help of a few
friends, could develop a reasonably successful game. This
brings back 20-years old memories of the time when I was
building video games with my friend
Fabien
for the TI99 and Atari 800...
6 Comments
Cool stuff, but .NET is still to slow for games :( but I
wouldn't mind writing games for XBox 360 as .NET
develper. What about Commodore 64 ? :)
TI-99/4A? Wow, that brings back some memories. I
remember hacking apart some of the default words the
speech synthesis module could "say"
into phomens so the computer could say anything. Of
course the next step was teaching it to curse... :)
Nothing like hearing a computer say byte me...
Max: the truth is that not many people have tried it but
those few tries I know of showed performance between 50%
and 80% and I'm suspecting that we still have to learn
how to optimize managed code for games. Now consider
this: how many times faster is the 360 when compared to
the old Xbox? Would you say the Xbox is "too
slow for games"?
I don't think so.
(to answer your other question, I have a Commodore 128
in my basement but I never developped any games for it)
Hi Bertrand,
The only technique to "optimize managed code
for games" I could come up with is to use
wrappers for Win32 functions for all graphical
operations. What you would suggest?
I cannot agree to using XBox resources by managed code
would make XBox users happier, but effectiveness of
writing code is .NET is unquestionable.
There are many things that can be done to improve or
just get good performance for games with .Net and the
XNA Framework, both on the PC and on the Xbox 360.
Performance is a very important part of what we do and
as the platform evolves we are very confident that .Net
can become a very good platform for many kinds of games
both on PC and on Xbox 360. Not to sound closed to
discussion or anything, but, as with any technology, the
proof will be in what people actually do with it ;)
Where's the evidence for 50-80%... sources please....
the cloest to official from MS is >95% and tha
matches my experience too.
Plus take a look at any casual game - even it it was 50%
who would notice. Nobody is suggesting writing half life
3 in managed code here.