Nick Gravelyn:

Addressing #1, I've modified the about page on XNA Wiki to indicate that all code found on the site is public domain since it's a wiki, editable by all. So regardless of what anything on my site might indicate, you can use any code from XNA Wiki for any project; that was why I created the site in the first place.

Thanks for clarifying public domain license. Still there are enough legal loopholes here. What if someone uploads code that belongs to some company and declares it public domain? There are no ways for me to verify this, and no one wants to find himself in SCO vs IBM situation. Having sample approved by Microsoft clears a lots of these issues. (I know I'm bit paranoid about licenses, but on my last job I learned to be extra careful when using source not produced internally).

Nick Gravelyn:

As for the other two, it'd be great for this site to have a proper storage sample, and my code could even be that base, but not having the visibility really shouldn't stop anyone who knows of the code to not use it; it'll just stop others from finding it. I'm just lucky enough people have found it and used it and are now telling others about it.

Well my english skills are not that good....
What I meant is making easier for others to find the sample...

Not only you were lucky, but those who found and used your code  - they were really lucky.
But you will probably agree with me that basing development process on luck is not the best idea. I'm talking about helping "unlucky" creators, or even better eliminating luck factor. If your sample is on creators.xna.com and I as creator could not find it - its me being lazy, but not lucky\unlucky.

Is there any process\procedure for you as MVP for offer\request some specific sample\tutorial from Microsoft?

DecapodStudios:

Well my english skills are not that good....
What I meant is making easier for others to find the sample...

I know. What I meant is that people have found it and now are pointing others to it. It's become very much a community resource because those who did find it are now posting links around helping others find it. So while it's not front and center, as more people find it and use it, it will become very much easier to find people recommending and linking to it.

Is there any process\procedure for you as MVP for offer\request some specific sample\tutorial from Microsoft?

Nothing more than the facilities everyone else has. I'd say probably filing a Connect issue for the request is best.

I would also say, though, that the mindset that a sample must be from Microsoft to be good is one to avoid. I've based plenty of my code (both personally and professionally) on samples and code snippets I've found randomly searching the internet. For most things, just run a bit of unit testing on it if you're worried, but I find that the results high up on Google are there for a reason; people have found and linked to a particular page because it helped them out. The inherent nature of Google's sorting does a pretty good job of making sure the good stuff rises up.

Nick Gravelyn:

I would also say, though, that the mindset that a sample must be from Microsoft to be good is one to avoid.

I just edited my previous post after you replied to it :)

It does not have to be from Microsoft to be good, but being from Microsoft it is much easier to use it from legal standpoint.

It's not that I consider anything from Microsoft as holy grail, but personally I downloaded and viewed code from almost every sample, even those not directly relevant for my development. It makes sense to browse first through existing samples and then to look somewhere else. Having your sample right in education catalog may help a lots of people here: if your sample was there, there is no need to me to write several forum posts and spend some MVP's time.

Thanks for your answers anyway.

Hi Guys,

I've tried implementing this piece of code Nick graciously provided us at his Wiki site but it just seems not to work.
Obviously am not ddoing something right yet. Now this is the last part of my first game am personally developing.
Everything about the game is ready but this surprisingly- NO STORAGE of data yet!

Actually I played down on this cos d game is pretty simple and needing very little storage for highscores etc.
Now, on to the technicalities- I've added that code sample of Nick's to my project, added it as a component
to my Game class and commanded the storage querry dialogue to show up but...nothing!

I wonder where am missing it. I have a gamerservices component attached to the Game also, which gives me access
to the gamer signed-in stuffs. So all am lacking now is burning dat data along with the game data into a memory of
any choosing.

So guyz help me outter here pls :) Why is the component not working 4 me??

Do you have only a single storage device? If so, the XNA Framework opts out of showing the UI and simply chooses the one storage device. That's the most common reason for it appearing to not work.

I find it frustrating that ALL of us developers use theis wonderful engine called XNA, and then find it doesn't cover the storage issue very well.

so we ALL end up writing our own code or variations of others code to handle it. I think we need better support in the XNA suite for this.

I would recommend starting with allowing the Guide cal to popup a storage device selector to be forcable (therefore if i have a hard drive and nothing else plugged in) i can still ask the user if to choose the storage device or select Cancel to not save. Now of course i can do this myself with more menus, by asking if they want to save anything first, but now it's getting annoying. And again, all devs roll their own code.. Yikes!

VoodooChief:

I would recommend starting with allowing the Guide cal to popup a storage device selector to be forcable (therefore if i have a hard drive and nothing else plugged in) i can still ask the user if to choose the storage device or select Cancel to not save.

Yeah I made that suggestion a while back and still hope it makes it in someday. It's really great that the XNA Framework decided to set a default and make some devs' lives easier, but there is a good reason why we might also want to force the selector to show.

Well thanks to this community and to you especially Nick i was able to resolve my issues with the saving. It was quite frustrating at the time.

So /Thumbsup for MVPs  :)

OMG! That sounds very logical and correct! Infact ur right, I only hv my HDD on my XBox.
I must go n get me some other memory cards to play d prank wif:):)

Thanks Nick. I owe u one :)

Don't send your wife as they buy the 50 dollar ones :S  (well mine did!)

VoodooChief:

Don't send your wife as they buy the 50 dollar ones :S  (well mine did!)

Well, ladies here dont even know wat an XBox looks like :)

Everyone here is a playstation freak!

I've bn showing off my 360 for only a few months now...guess it wud tk awhile b4
they'd get used to it :)