XNA: Make your own Xbox360 games in 10 steps Posted by XanTium | December 14 00:30 EST

Fiercedeveloper.com posted the 10 steps to start developing homebrew games for the Xbox360 with Microsoft's ('free') XNA Game Studio Express released earlier this week: [QUOTE] 1. GET C# Express! 2. GET XNA Game Studio Express! 3. Download the XNA Framework 4. Learn C#! (here or here) 5. Check out the sample programs! 6. Learn XNA! 7. Learn more XNA! 8. Make Pong! 9. Look at sample code! (from xnaspot.com, xbox360homebrew.com or xnaresources.com) 10. Join the Creator Club to get your game onto the xBOX! [/QUOTE] Full Story: fiercedeveloper.com

This is very cool.


Can't wait to see some games by people on these boards out there!!

Ahhh... C#.... MS's own homebrew object oriented language...

I always like to understand the corporate reasoning behind such things. Was C# the result of MS getting their asses handed to the by Sun? I can just imagine BG ranting and throwing chairs when informed MS couldn't "improve" Java....


Grin,
VAX

so does this mean home brew is coming to the 360?

They DID "improve" Java..That's what C# is.

Homebrew games? yes, if you pay MS's 99$/y Creator Club subscription. However it will still require your PC connected to your 360 ... as code will stream from PC and not run directly form 360 DVD/HD. Maybe at a later date, MS will put the best/coolest homebrew games available on LIVE for everybody (without need for Creator Club subscription or PC).

Homebrew applications? no, XNA Game Studio Express is made to dev games ... it's not possible to make an XBMC with it or so.

WOW!!! They make it sound like a complete idiot can make games. PPFFFTTT, NOT!!!

LOL!!! I seen it and was like "well, I think I'll try this out" then gave it a look see and quickly changed my attitude. I'm sure if I dug in and put some effort towards it I might be able to make some pos game but screw that, I gots some Gears to play.

They make it sound WAY!!!! to easy. I ONLY wish it were that easy, but its not. I've spent the last 2 years trying to learn this stuff and its next to impossible to get anywhere. I've had zero luck.

You want to type 150 lines of code for a tree dialog structure. Yeah, me either. Alas Oh how I wish I could code and code well. (Emulators anyone?)

I've read 3 C++ books, One C book, and a half of a C# book and I have nothing (read zip) to show for it. No Surreal 2 or any other awesome homebrew. All I've got is a dos box streaming my name by me at 1,000 lines per second. Now that's coding.

If it's only 10 steps it must be easy!

you dont have to have it connected to ur pc at all times its only whe youre playing a new build or playing it for the first time after that you can just access it from the hd

pretty cool either way.. cant wait to see some skills.

now from what Xant said, does that mean only the people who pay can play them, or create them, both?

because id be a little less than excited if people made some really cool homebrew i cant play.

Regarding distribution for XNA homebrew...
Distributing XNA title binaries appears to have been made deliberately challenging , but nothing prevents you simply zipping, uploading, and hosting your XNA title sources on a web site (X-S could start an area Strike that - SourceForge would be a more appropriate host) for other XNA users to download, compile, and execute, and enjoy . No IP protection, but your work can be enjoyed by others without M$'s involvement (i.e. The OpenSource distribution model ).

NB: No doubt C# source code obfuscation tools appear to temporarily address the IP issue.

If they really wanted to give people an easy chance of coding their own games, MS could've just put in a flash player. It's much easier to get anything up and running with it and x360 would've easily have the power to run even graphically intensive flash games.

This way they kind of give you a chance, but make it too cumbersome and expensive to anyone to try out.

Althrough I understand your view, I believe one of M$ goals is to encourage the next breed of programmers to use it's toolset. These are already more job openings for C# .NET skills than for Flash skills.

Hmm i wonder id anyone will be able to code up apps to read the hdd & dvd key & possibly get some system info about the 360?

If that's the case shouldn't this be free I still don't understand why we have to pay for this, it should be free IMO but whatever.

I guess you have never heard of the 'art of reading'...

Programming in C# is 'free', compiling it with their compiler is 'free', even using it on your own PC is 'free'. The only thing that is not 'free' is running it on your Xbox 360, which is just a nice gimmick and more of an accessories for the Xbox 360 instead of an essential part of the programming suite. That's why it costs money.

I guess I'm already up to step #6

A co-worker and I downloaded the beta a while back when that came out... it's really quite simple to work with (well as simple as programming can be without severely limiting you).

We might actually make a game if we could actually find the time.

Sure, you need some basic programming skills before you can start making your first game. That is, you need to know what a for-loop does and what an if-structure is used for.

But the days that you had to write 300+ lines of code to display a triangle have long since gone. That's the whole idea behind XNA: it's in fact a wrapper around DirectX, that allows you to program games with ease. You no longer need to write code for setting up your screen (or a window, on the pc), you can start coding on your game from the first minute.

I've written my series of XNA tutorials so anyone with basic programming skills (no pointers or other advanced stuff) can finish them. It's number 7 in the list at the top of this page, so you first need to download the free Game Express Studio. Why don't you give them a try, and if you got some ideas for improvements/additional explanation, let me know!

http://www.riemers.net/eng/Tutorials/XNA/C...g_a_project.php

Sounds like riemerg is a fan boy or works for M$. Maybe even Bill himself...hi Bill!!! Everyone make sure you let Bill know your ideas for improvemnts because M$ always listens to us. Maybe you can send you comments with the error logs XP (and Vista btw) generates and asks to be sent to M$ on a daily basis. (Sorry if I sound bitter. Just my two cents)

Did you really just sign up on the forum to post this crap?

Thanks for the tutorial riemerg! A step in the right direction.

11. ???
12. Profit!

So easy, even a caveman can do it!

if we could do this to 360 everone will want one remember back in the day when sony lied and said thet that extra port on the back of the ps (very first one) was for an extension to make your own games well 360 could knock sony off the block with this

c'mon microsoft let this happen and change gaming forever then people will be making games as demos and trying to get signed to game studios like a record label

Sweet....

I've been reading a C# book for quite some time now.
I haven't gotten a chance to fire up XNA Studio yet but I will as soon as I have the time.

I got a few ideas up my sleeve....

Most xna games you will find on internet will crash, show a black screen, have a too small window or not respond to your favorite joypad. It's quite depressing at first...

I've explained how to fix these problems (but you need game source for that, not many give it away) in this same forum (to see the posts, just click on "XNA Game Studio Express Forum" link at top of this page, then see the post "Spacewar starter kit (patches)").

Have fun...

No, I've been planing on signing up for a while his post just gave me an excuse. If I seemed to harsh or full of $hit than I do appoligize. I have a great respect for the opinion of bonevichio you are one of my favorite posters (my migrane meds were wearing off so I get pissy). I'm just sick of chasing the bones microsoft is throwing AT us. If they are going to let us create our own games but limit the functionality of the hardware whats the point. They are just inviting us to modify their code illegaly (I don't condone this btw) to gain the functionality we want. At least they didn't go as far as Sony's limits to the hardware. Not allowing access to the RSX is BS.

ive been waiting for this.

i dont really see why they would limit what we can do with the games. but it is M$

yea, im pumped to make some sick games. anyone know if u can make networked games? including xbox and pc can playing together?

lol, i cant wait for xbox 360 homebrew viruses

It is said you can add something like "using System.Net" and have access to network functions.

But this library "System.Net" seems to be available only on Windows side.
No network functions on xbox360 side, for now (I bet they take the time to check if there is any way to mess with live services when allowing xna network access on xbox360. They refer to "security issues" in order to explain some auxiliary delayed features in channel 9 podcasts).

Imagine the trick : all encryption supported by xna launcher sublayers, allowing a 1st xbox360 console to act as a fake live server, allowing a 2nd xbox360 console to connect to this fake live server and get a hacked system update... (well, pure dream, but you see the kind of tricks they have to expect and verify)

i wish i actually had time for this....
i've done some little pieces of game "code" in flash...but i barley had time to do that....

I think a good first XNA app would be a flash player... though I'm fairly certain MS has already made one... isn't that what Hexic runs on?

yeah i think so...but in order to make one yourself you would either need a licsence from adobe/macromedia or the open source files that are floating around...ope source wouldn't cut it i don't think.
what would be cool is if micro soft offered the plug-in as part of the package...
either way id love to get into c#
all i need is time lol

Someone should port XBMC

I'm running through Riemer's tutorials now. I'm finding them fun. I can get the syntax, but beyond that its pretty much read and then type. I don't really know what is going on. Matrices are somewhat beyond me.

Yeah, I can change the color of the bitmap height map level, but I don't "really" understand it all. I guess everyone's gotta start somewhere.

Knowing entirely nothing about XNA programming i ask this question.

Can someone make a Xvid / Divx player ??

What sort of Appz can be made using this system, are there any restrictions?

It would be sweet if we could play all media types.

This question is a very fair one and one that is going to keep coming up in one form or another for a good while.

Microsoft .NET languages (which include C#) compile down to a byte code rather than true CPU machine language. This byte code is then interpreted by an engine when executed.

Due to the overhead of interpretation, this form of code can not execute as fast as native machine code.

Further more, the runtime engine – that performs the byte code interpretation – also limits what actions are permissible. These restrictions include direct/uncontrolled access to memory – such as video memory, sound chip access, etc.

These characteristics of the runtime environment restrict possible applications. The processing of DivX codecs, etc. typically need to run at full speed (to maintain the video frame rate), and achieve this by unencumbered direct access to video and sound chips.

So an XBMC clone implemented using XNA/C# is very unlikely. That said, if the hardware is up to it, and interpretation fast enough, surprises can happen. Emulators of old consoles work along similar lines to that described above (as does the X360’s XBOX1 backwards compatibility to an extent) and they achieve in software what the original consoles used to rely on custom chips to perform.

I agree with you on that bytecode languages runs slower than machine code, but do we know how the 360 runs the code? Since the XNA developers are probably quite familiar with the x360's cpu (is it Xerxes or something?) and should be able to optimize it as good as possible.
Another thing, isn't XNA based on DirectX instructions and SDK? In that case there shouldn't be that big difference in performance beetween XNA games/"apps" and retail games.
But I guess we'll have to wait until they implement video playback in the framework, which seems likely, at least if you check their database for feature suggestions: https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/Sear...aspx?SiteID=226 (Registration required, search for Xna or something like that)

Agreed - but is "as good as possible" good enough for XBMC? I suspect that XBMC is one of the (if not the) most demanding applications on the XBOX1 (in terms of constant data throughput) (more so than most games).

If/when M$ add video playback to the framework, it'll be limited to a WMV codec, that has the video/audio stream already prepared in the most appropriate/efficient manner for playback – not the wide variety of formats/codecs that make XBMC such a jewel.

(Of course, following the recent Dashboard update, the X360 can already playback back *.WMV video files from CD/DVD, negating the need for an XBMC with that restriction).

Let's be fair here. Ballmer is a dick, and he's the one who throws chairs. Gates is a good man.

if i could make my own game with xna ,burn to a disc and run directly in my 360, that would be great...

Heh, South Park.

For those that are having a hard time learning C#, try learning Visual Basic first. It is much more user friendly and teaches rookies complicated structures but in an almost english language. It is the first computer language I learned.

Hi guys.

Would it be possible for a complete programming noob to learn this, and actually make a semi decent game?

I am very interested in the possibility.

My brother when he was eight mastered programming a spectrum Z80 or whatever it was, now he is a very respected programmer.

God damn it should be in my blood.

haha, Its a great way to start

OMG!! I feel the same way! It's like you sit there for hours coding, you compile it and run it, and you got a nice little interactive TEXT game with virtually no graphics (maybe a frame or window, etc...)..

Eck! I'd love to be able to do it seriously though!

i cant wait to try this... i hope it wont be too hard, ive been learning C++ for a bit and it seems quite similar. Do you need to buy anything to get it to work (except PC/X360/controller)?