Ok, thats what I meant by "Matrix math" :D, I'm actually already started on creating a library for a "ZuneBlade" for everyone's games to use to show button layouts/game info/menu system. And it will be easily flipable for landscape OR portrait use.

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/50/zuneuitl0.png

Also, this reminds me, will we have the ability to retreive the users set wallpaper?

briguy992:

Hey guys,

I'm a DigiPen student and have a few questions.

1) I was interested in doing a Multiplayer game of the Music Trivia based on the iPod, but with more interactivity. It will be a two player game. One player will pick a song on his Zune, and then the music will be streamed to the other person's Zune along with four artist / song titles and they have to pick the right song to get points. My main question is, is the streaming of music a possibility? I'm sure there will be limitations with not allowing ZunePass music to play (HUGE bummer, but I see why :( )

2) Small suggestion, but let's say I was designing a text-based game (boring compared to 2D shooters, but stay with me). For added polish, I would like to implement the same "momentum" into the lists that you get on the Zune 80 with scrolling down and up. Is this something I would have to code myself, or is there some sort of List Object I can add that has the momentum built into its scrolling functionality?

3) Is VS 2005 still supported? Or are you cutting support and only supporting 2008?

4) Is there going to be a firmware update to support all of this? Or does it support it now?

These were just initial questions I had. I'm sure I'll have more later on. :)

Thanks guys! This sounds very exciting for my Zune80 ;)

1) Right now we don't have this functionality and we probably won't for the preview, we are thinking about making this available for the final release. We'll keep you up to date.

2) That's great feedback! Again we don't have this functionality today, but I like the idea!

3) VS 2005 will not be supported in XNA Game Studio 3.0. You can still download the free C# Express 2008 if you dont want to upgrade your copy of VS 2005.

4) XNA Game Studio will take care of doing what you need to set up the Zune for games.

Thanks!

 

Tiptup300:

Ok, thats what I meant by "Matrix math" :D, I'm actually already started on creating a library for a "ZuneBlade" for everyone's games to use to show button layouts/game info/menu system. And it will be easily flipable for landscape OR portrait use.

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/50/zuneuitl0.png

Also, this reminds me, will we have the ability to retreive the users set wallpaper?

Wow! This sounds cool! Please keep us up to date with this. Users can get picture information, but currently not the wallpaper. This may be something we can still do for the preview release.

Thanks

 

Ok, now I got a question, too:

By "Access to music", will we get access to ID3 tags and filesizes.too?

thankalot

zziemke:

Ok, now I got a question, too:

By "Access to music", will we get access to ID3 tags and filesizes.too?

thankalot

You get basic information about the song, Title, Artist, Album Artist, Genre, Track #. We dont give any information about the filesizes. Just out of curiousity what would you use that for?

Thanks!

 

Hey Michael,

On the question of putting games on the Zune, I take it the only way currently is to deploy via XNA Game Studio? So let's say I want to send one of my buddies across the country my game, he will need to download the software and do it himself? Or is there going to be some sort of package that the Zune Software will recognize?

 

Are you guys going to talk about how you are going to distribute these games to the Zune in the future? I'm assuming we are going to have something similar to the XBL model where we submit games and they can then get approved and put on the Zune Marketplace. Is this correct in thinking? Looking at your current roadmap, it seems like this is something which is probably going to be a 4.0 or 5.0 release to get to the final Zune distribution model.

 

*Edit* I have some more quesitons:

1) Are we allowed to have any sort of access to the radio?

2) You say we are able to have some saved data in the form of XML or something. However, would it be possible to implement a "Screenshot" feature in a game that saves the current frame to a JPG, which would show up under the Pictures section in the normal Zune interface? Or are we not allowed to write to those "core" areas?

So, if GS3.0 will only be targeting VS2008, does that mean that we will also have the full language features provided by .net 3.5 in 2008?   Or will we still be forced to target .net 2.0?  I remain interested in the Parallel Extensions library, as it has obvious uses in game programming against multiple cores.

When the preview build is released,
Will there also be an update to the zune device firmware at the same time? Possible optional?
Or will we have to wait to actually play games on the zune till holiday?

Thank you for the information.

Mhm, actually I did not intend to use it ^^

I just asked out of curiousity.

But what about "graphical usage of your zune" which artists takes how much space etc.

First let me say its great to see XNA spreading to more new platforms but i have to ask (since no one else seems to have), why zune?

my quick <insert search of choice> comes up with total zune sales 1 million (i've not even seen a zune in the europe) whilst windows mobile sold 14.5 million in just one six month period.  So why target such a small audience when the device appears to have the same underlying hardware/software as the much more popular device?

Okay. So Zune Games won't work with Xbox LIVE. But would a person with an Xbox 360 Creator's Club Subscription AND a Zune be able to, in theory, make a game on the Zune that functions as an additional I/O device, for example, to write an Xbox 360 game and add extra features unlockable only by connecting a Zune with a certain Zune game, or by using the Zune to display hidden information about the game being played on the Xbox 360?

If so, then it would be possible, in theory, to make... "Zune LIVE" games using a program on the Xbox to connect to Xbox LIVE, which would transmit data between another Xbox with a connected Zune, possibly across the Internet?

And what about Wireless Online for the Zune? If the Zune can do wireless Ad-Hoc, then isn't it also possible, in theory, to connect to a wireless network and play a 2-D Zune MMO, similar to MapleStory? The Zune already connects to Wi-Fi to sync with a computer... Wireless Online, in theory, shouldn't be too difficult. But for that matter, what about Zune Game-PC Game integration, similar to my proposed (theoretical) Xbox 360 setup?

I'm just brainstorming here, by the way, but you know everything about Zune development, so maybe you can tell me which of these will be supported, which ones we'll never see, and which ones might be added later.

JuxtaDeus:

First let me say its great to see XNA spreading to more new platforms but i have to ask (since no one else seems to have), why zune?

my quick <insert search of choice> comes up with total zune sales 1 million (i've not even seen a zune in the europe) whilst windows mobile sold 14.5 million in just one six month period.  So why target such a small audience when the device appears to have the same underlying hardware/software as the much more popular device?

If I had to guess it's because there is such a wide range of Windows Mobile devices. Lots of Windows Mobile devices use lots of different CPU components and graphics units. Some have powerful 3D GPUs in them and some don't. Some manufacturers have powerful 3D GPUs and don't enable them. There are lots of configurations. Then there's Windows Mobile 5.0 vs Windows Mobile 6.0, any updates, any user-installed changes to the system. Lots of things to worry about there. There might also be other reasons as well, but I have to imagine the large variation in hardware/software is why Windows Mobile isn't a chief priority. With Zune, it's a set piece of hardware. There are only a few out there so designing the framework to work on all of them is an easier task than with Windows Mobile.

Another reason I can think of is that not all Windows Mobile users would care about games. In fact I'd venture the guess that a very large majority of Windows Mobile users couldn't care less about games. They bought a phone with Windows to check their email and that's it. Heck I have Windows Mobile and I don't even do that. Zunes on the other hand are solely media devices. All they do is play music and videos. Therefore the percentage of Zune users that would be interested in more entertainment options is probably larger (percent wise) than with Windows Mobile users.

And as a last idea, it could just be a useful way for Microsoft to sell more Zunes ;).

Nick Gravelyn:

JuxtaDeus:

First let me say its great to see XNA spreading to more new platforms but i have to ask (since no one else seems to have), why zune?

my quick <insert search of choice> comes up with total zune sales 1 million (i've not even seen a zune in the europe) whilst windows mobile sold 14.5 million in just one six month period.  So why target such a small audience when the device appears to have the same underlying hardware/software as the much more popular device?

If I had to guess it's because there is such a wide range of Windows Mobile devices. Lots of Windows Mobile devices use lots of different CPU components and graphics units. Some have powerful 3D GPUs in them and some don't. Some manufacturers have powerful 3D GPUs and don't enable them. There are lots of configurations. Then there's Windows Mobile 5.0 vs Windows Mobile 6.0, any updates, any user-installed changes to the system. Lots of things to worry about there. There might also be other reasons as well, but I have to imagine the large variation in hardware/software is why Windows Mobile isn't a chief priority. With Zune, it's a set piece of hardware. There are only a few out there so designing the framework to work on all of them is an easier task than with Windows Mobile.

Another reason I can think of is that not all Windows Mobile users would care about games. In fact I'd venture the guess that a very large majority of Windows Mobile users couldn't care less about games. They bought a phone with Windows to check their email and that's it. Heck I have Windows Mobile and I don't even do that. Zunes on the other hand are solely media devices. All they do is play music and videos. Therefore the percentage of Zune users that would be interested in more entertainment options is probably larger (percent wise) than with Windows Mobile users.

And as a last idea, it could just be a useful way for Microsoft to sell more Zunes ;).

Also, wouldn't another plausable reason be that the Zune is more affordable than devices running Windows Mobile? I've seen Windows Mobile smartphones run at about $400, compared to the $150-$250 Zune models of varying capacities.

briguy992:

Hey Michael,

On the question of putting games on the Zune, I take it the only way currently is to deploy via XNA Game Studio? So let's say I want to send one of my buddies across the country my game, he will need to download the software and do it himself? Or is there going to be some sort of package that the Zune Software will recognize? <snip>

*Edit* I have some more quesitons:

1) Are we allowed to have any sort of access to the radio?

2) You say we are able to have some saved data in the form of XML or something. However, would it be possible to implement a "Screenshot" feature in a game that saves the current frame to a JPG, which would show up under the Pictures section in the normal Zune interface? Or are we not allowed to write to those "core" areas?

 

Right now we're very focused on the development experience and talking about that. As that starts to solidify more, we'll look at other opportunities. In the preview you’ll only be able to share code with other XNA Game Studio users to deploy games.
 
We don’t currently allow access to the radio, with the exception of turning it off if you need to playback music. The ability to turn this off may not be in the preview but in the final release.

All the game data is currently stored only with the game, and not in the main interface. There are interesting scenarios here, but we have to balance how much of the device a users game can affect.

Sorry that a bit of that is vague, but some of it is that we need to get feedback once people have a chance to try it and then go from there.

Thanks!

steveorsomethin:

So, if GS3.0 will only be targeting VS2008, does that mean that we will also have the full language features provided by .net 3.5 in 2008?   Or will we still be forced to target .net 2.0?  I remain interested in the Parallel Extensions library, as it has obvious uses in game programming against multiple cores.

To be honest, we're not sure yet :-) We would like to but haven't commited to supporting this yet.

 

Andrew Whiplash:

When the preview build is released,
Will there also be an update to the zune device firmware at the same time? Possible optional?
Or will we have to wait to actually play games on the zune till holiday?

XNA Game Studio will add the bits necessary to develop the game. The only way that you will be able to play the games on the Zune is by deploying them through XNA Game Studio.

Joey Buzzsaw:

Okay. So Zune Games won't work with Xbox LIVE. But would a person with an Xbox 360 Creator's Club Subscription AND a Zune be able to, in theory, make a game on the Zune that functions as an additional I/O device, for example, to write an Xbox 360 game and add extra features unlockable only by connecting a Zune with a certain Zune game, or by using the Zune to display hidden information about the game being played on the Xbox 360?

If so, then it would be possible, in theory, to make... "Zune LIVE" games using a program on the Xbox to connect to Xbox LIVE, which would transmit data between another Xbox with a connected Zune, possibly across the Internet?

And what about Wireless Online for the Zune? If the Zune can do wireless Ad-Hoc, then isn't it also possible, in theory, to connect to a wireless network and play a 2-D Zune MMO, similar to MapleStory? The Zune already connects to Wi-Fi to sync with a computer... Wireless Online, in theory, shouldn't be too difficult. But for that matter, what about Zune Game-PC Game integration, similar to my proposed (theoretical) Xbox 360 setup?

I'm just brainstorming here, by the way, but you know everything about Zune development, so maybe you can tell me which of these will be supported, which ones we'll never see, and which ones might be added later.

The Zune only has the ability to talk with other Zune's. So any connectivity that isn't to another Zune isn't supported. Games cannot run at the same time as Wireless sync so it wouln't be something that you could chain too. We realize that it would be a cool feature, but it's just somthing that we're not able to offer today.

Any chance of organizing the forums and having like a "Windows", "Xbox 360", and "Zune" sections separated? So people can get help/post their project info that way?

BTW, I got the bar coding done except for the menu code. Here's two mockups which look pretty much exactly like the real thing. Except the real thing doesnt have the menu text, yet.

Flipped In: http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/6717/demovp3.png
Flipped Out: http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/1408/demo2eg0.png

Notice I may allow for the coders to switch colors. The bottom gameinfo bar is entirely settable. You can change the icon, author, and game name. Also the labels for the controls are also customizable. Including which directions are highlighted.

MechaDragon:

Joey Buzzsaw:

Okay. So Zune Games won't work with Xbox LIVE. But would a person with an Xbox 360 Creator's Club Subscription AND a Zune be able to, in theory, make a game on the Zune that functions as an additional I/O device, for example, to write an Xbox 360 game and add extra features unlockable only by connecting a Zune with a certain Zune game, or by using the Zune to display hidden information about the game being played on the Xbox 360?

If so, then it would be possible, in theory, to make... "Zune LIVE" games using a program on the Xbox to connect to Xbox LIVE, which would transmit data between another Xbox with a connected Zune, possibly across the Internet?

And what about Wireless Online for the Zune? If the Zune can do wireless Ad-Hoc, then isn't it also possible, in theory, to connect to a wireless network and play a 2-D Zune MMO, similar to MapleStory? The Zune already connects to Wi-Fi to sync with a computer... Wireless Online, in theory, shouldn't be too difficult. But for that matter, what about Zune Game-PC Game integration, similar to my proposed (theoretical) Xbox 360 setup?

I'm just brainstorming here, by the way, but you know everything about Zune development, so maybe you can tell me which of these will be supported, which ones we'll never see, and which ones might be added later.

The Zune only has the ability to talk with other Zune's. So any connectivity that isn't to another Zune isn't supported. Games cannot run at the same time as Wireless sync so it wouln't be something that you could chain too. We realize that it would be a cool feature, but it's just somthing that we're not able to offer today.

But is it likely we'll see it later? The Zune can already stream to the Xbox 360 so it doesn't seem like it'd be difficult to get it to work.

And while wireless sync can't run at the same time as a game, that wasn't my question. My question would be if developers could get a copy of the stack which allows for wireless sync to modify and implement to allow a wireless access point to act as a "middleman" to two Zune users in very different locations, for example, while I'm in Connecticut, I could send a copy of my program to a friend living in New York, and both of us could play the same game as if we were in the same room (sans real-time communication, of course).

The framework will work in the same way in both zune generations? Is the same performance?

Q: Would we be able to take advantage of the increased TV out resolution? Or would we still be limited to 320 x 240 ?(Assuming TV-Out for games is an option)

jalfbr:

The framework will work in the same way in both zune generations? Is the same performance?

Yes, Generally you will see the same performance between devices.

How large is the range for wireless on the Zune?  (e.g. Play games under desks in class)

John Westlake:

Q: Would we be able to take advantage of the increase TV out resolution? Or would we still be limited to 320 x 240 ?(Assuming TV-Out for games is a option)

Currently we do not support TV-Out for games.

drew65949:

How large is the range for wireless on the Zune?  (e.g. Play games under desks in class)

This site http://www.zune.net/en-us/products/compare.htm lists the range up to 30 feet. I'm sure there are a lot of conditions that can affect that though.

Thanks
Michael