XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Hey all, we're wrapping up work on XNA Game Studio 2.0 and we'd love to give you a chance to preview it and provide feedback to us.  We’re having a developer lab next Tuesday and Wednesday (10/16-10/17) where we'll have our latest XNA Game Studio 2.0 build available and would like you to come in, give it a try, and let us know what you think.
 
Features
Here are the features that will be available to use:
 
•         Networking and Gamer Services
•         Visual Studio 2005 Support
•         Improved Content Development Experience
•         Improved Device Management
•         Numerous XNA Framework Improvements
•         Cross-Platform project creation
•         Project Migration Wizard
 
Logistics
Here are the details:
•         Date:  October 16-17th
•         Time:  8:00am-3:00pm
•         Where: Redmond, WA (Directions to follow)
•         Food:  Breakfast and lunch will be provided
•         Who:    Anyone 18 and over

You’ll need to sign an NDA to participate.
 
What to Bring
We’ll have some scenarios we’d like you to try out.  Please bring any content and code you would like to use, including your 1.0 projects.  We’ll provide some as well.
 
RSVP
If you’re able to get to Redmond, WA next Tuesday or Wednesday and want to attend, please send an email to mitchw AT microsoft.com.   Please provide which days you’d like to attend.  We have limited room each day, so sign up fast!  I’ll send an email to confirm your slot.

If I wasn't on a deadline I'd be there, assuming I could talk the wife into spending the $700-800 (according to Expedia) for the trip. :(

That would be absolutely awesome. I'd love to put my hands on GS 2.0 and give you my feedback ;)

Unfortunately, I'm about 9025.2 km (5608.0 miles) away. Maybe some other time :)

Unfortunately I have work, and no money to get there. But I'd be more than willing to give you feedback, feel free to send me a URL and I'll just download it. :op

Seriously though, its awesome the 2.0 is getting closer, hopefully you guys are able to get a beta out for testing soon.

Stanlo:

Has anyone received a confirmation that they're in yet?

I haven't received an email from you, Stanlo...did you send one?

I am really looking forward to using Visual Studio Pro again. I miss my plugins and SVN too much to like the Express version.

I have some personal issues that make it impossible for me to attend this week even if I was invited.

Good luck though.

Game Producer:

sounds good - any news from the meeting? Why NDA? Why not share those secrets? ;)

Don't worry, they'll tell us everything when they're ready.

I guess the NDA is needed because it is not the final build of GS 2.0, and they would want to keep things like unfinished bugs or other yet-to-be-fully-implemented-and-optimized-stuff to themselves.

But when it's done we will have everything at our disposal. I can hardly wait for that.

While I know this question is totally pointless, and probably no answer will be received, I can't help it: Will there be a public beta of GS 2.0 before the release?

:)

Catalin Zima:

While I know this question is totally pointless, and probably no answer will be received, I can't help it: Will there be a public beta of GS 2.0 before the release?

:)

Mitch Walker did say at GameFest there would be one, and that they were looking to garner as much feedback as possible before the release. The ZMan's latest post on thezbuffer mentions one on two occasions, as being a "when" rather than "if" scenario. But unless minds have been changed, I would bet my money on there being one.

Please don't kill me.

Adam

I remembered something like that from the Gamefest video streams, but wasn't sure of it.

My 'when' is based on the gamefest feedback that there would be a public beta...

As for feedback from the lab.... as you know its NDA so I can't really tell you about the product itself but I will tell you some non NDA things.

1. I made network pong in about 90 minutes today from scratch.

2. Writing network or multiplayer games is much much more work than just using the API. I tried to convert one of George Clingerman's simple games to be network and gave up after an hour. If the code isn't structured to enable multi players and take its 'input' from places other than gamepads it needs major refactoring. So start thinking about that now rather than worrying about the API or Live or any of that stuff.

3. Jason Olson STILL hasn't finished a game ;-)

1. ooohh.... sounds very very nice :)

2. this is good to know. Too bad you can't give any more guidelines on what we need to be carefull with. I'm just starting a new project and I intend to use LIVE in it when GS 2.0 appears, but have to start working on it now. This got me worried a little, and I'm trying to think about how to handle input. Can you suggest what approach for input would be better?

• have a structure that describes game actions (MoveUp, Fire, Use) that is passed to an entity (and through the network)
• make an Interface that handles input for entities, and this can have two implementations, a local one, that gets data from the gamepad and a remote one, that gets data from the network
• have a structure that describes the state of an entity, and pass this through the network, using local input for each player.

If you can't, I'll just have to take a choice and live with it (please, don't be that cruel)

:-)

Catalin Zima:

2. this is good to know. Too bad you can't give any more guidelines on what we need to be carefull with. I'm just starting a new project and I intend to use LIVE in it when GS 2.0 appears, but have to start working on it now. This got me worried a little, and I'm trying to think about how to handle input. Can you suggest what approach for input would be better?

• have a structure that describes game actions (MoveUp, Fire, Use) that is passed to an entity (and through the network)
• make an Interface that handles input for entities, and this can have two implementations, a local one, that gets data from the gamepad and a remote one, that gets data from the network
• have a structure that describes the state of an entity, and pass this through the network, using local input for each player.

I went with the first one for the input system I'm working on. The nice thing about that is that it makes remapping controls easier. With a little reworking it would do for multiplayer as well. I'm not sure how my co-author is handling the multiplayer for his part as he hasn't sent me anything. You could always buy the book when it comes out to see. ;) :D

Yes, I'm pathetic!

The ZMan:

3. Jason Olson STILL hasn't finished a game ;-)
 

Catalin Zima:

1. ooohh.... sounds very very nice :)

If you watch Shawn and Mitch on the gamefest video with their tank game you will see pretty much the same thing as I did... nothing new about what I did. (though theirs was actually more advanced than mine since I was learning the API from scratch)

2. this is good to know. Too bad you can't give any more guidelines on what we need to be careful with. I'm just starting a new project and I intend to use LIVE in it when GS 2.0 appears, but have to start working on it now. This got me worried a little, and I'm trying to think about how to handle input. Can you suggest what approach for input would be better?

I don't know which approach is better - I'm not a network game programmer.... my point was really that these sort of problems are almost all independent of how the API works and even if I told you all the NDA stuff it wouldn't really help with solving the problem. Watch the gamefest video and you will see that connecting and sending information around are pretty straightforward. Its what you do with it and how you architect the game. Assume that connection is a standard one off process and then each player can send any information they like and all the other players will get to see that identical information. Now what do you do with it? Do you send positions of objects or the input from each player? Do you send information every frame or just when it changes? Remember that you could have multi players on the same box (split screen) as well as multi player over the net. How much information can you afford to send? What will you do if the network goes slow or misses some packets? You might want to start another thread about general networking issues - there's probably some experts lurking.

I've flicked through my extensive bookshelf of partly unread game books and Programming a miltiplayer fps in directx is the only one I can find with a networking chapter but most of it appears to be about the mechanics of DirectPlay (RIP). Gamedev's network programming book list is also not very up to date or specific to games... anyone know of a good book on the subject?

Thanks for the reply Z-Man. I remember I was very tired when I watched the presentation regarding networking. I'll go over it again, so I have an image of how things will work with networking.

re-watching the presentations is always fun and everytime I watch one I have a "oooh... cool" or "aha... that's good to know" moment. :)

Does anyone have a link for watching the network webcast?

The one given in the headline does not work.