The point of most loading screens is to show that progress is being made.  If all you have is a black screen, you're never sure if it's loading or just locked up.

ShawMishrak:

The point of most loading screens is to show that progress is being made.  If all you have is a black screen, you're never sure if it's loading or just locked up.

I think the "locked up" part is key here. There needs to be some sort of animation and that animation needs to actively poll to make sure the loading is "alive" and progressing. You WANT the animation to lock up if the loading actually stops. This way people get the hint and reboot :-)

So here I am late April 2008 without my game creators subscription yet, can I still subscribe and be able to access the ability to submit to community games online when available in fall on Xbox Live??

-Justin Wright
Gamer - Modeling and Simulation Software Developer

Of course! Anyone with a valid Creator's Club subscription will be able to participate (assuming you meet other requirements like geographical locations and whatnot) even if you wait until the release to sign up.

What is the status of the beta for LIVE Community Games?  The FAQ and Gamasutra article mention Spring 2008.

CaptainHangDawg:

What is the status of the beta for LIVE Community Games?  The FAQ and Gamasutra article mention Spring 2008.

Still spring 2008. Nothing new has been announced.

Spring 2008 ends June 30, 2008, and I think they're targeting a date well before that.

jwatte:

Spring 2008 ends June 30, 2008, and I think they're targeting a date well before that.

Might be worth to call The Zman for yet another bet thingy :]

Hello there

First thanks for opening the Xbox360 to hobbyists, even if I don't like the "Youtube for games" stuff, I'd rather say it's an adaptation of the freeware/shareware system from the PC world. Concerning the business model, if the creators will be able to set a price for their games, I suppose a preview/demo of the game would be a good start, following then the same process than the XBLA games. What about internet payment methods like Paypal to transfer money to the creators ?

The possibility for a XBC game to be promoted to a XBLA game is a good stuff too, maybe based on a couple rating/downloads, I'm sure that Xbox live guys like you will keep an eye on every game release.

You seem to expect quality games, that's fair to keep a high value on the Xboxlive, but I'm not sure it's compatible with "hobbyists". In that case, the set up of T"R"C ( technical "recommandation" checks ) and some basis for the gamedesign would be useful ( title screen, menu, playable game, to win, to lose, to restart, to quit, and of course no bug :).

After reading many posts here, I realised I was wrong on my first idea of the XNA for xbox, but now the Communauty games match my expectations. I look forward to the set up of this stuff soon ( especially in France :) ).

I read somewhere that Microsoft was trying to refrain the retrogaming on the XBLA, but with the Communauty Games it's a chance for small groups to make fine simple games. As for me, I'm still in love with old games from the 8/16 bits generations ( Thunderforce,Street of rage, Valis, Phantasy star... ), I'd really like to make something with XNA for the xbox,  even if I work as graphist in a french studio on nintendo DS, I have some skills in programming ( at least a tetris like game released on GP2X handheld this year, which is a good start lol ) and some ideas.

Let's see what the future brings !

Cheers.

Olivier Lunot / Phaxan

I don't get why there should be a limit on game sizes. Sure, bandwidth isn't free, but I see no reason why Microsoft couldn't implement a torrent-kind of download system for everything on Live. Would make it radically cheaper for them and give us, the users a higher download speed. It would also open up for games both on arcade and community games to be bigger.

I would be satisfied with a size limit at 1 GB. No less. 150 MB is a joke.

I don't see how it's a joke when it's the same limit they apply to full XBLA games. I believe the chief reason is that some users simply don't have hard drives so the games must be small enough to fit onto memory cards.

I for one would not want an arcade game or cc game that took up a gig of space...i only have a 20 gig drive and I have about 15 gigs used with games, music, videos, and so on :P

Hello,

The FAQ says that the community games beta is not available in some countries. Is there a list somewhere to see if or when it is/will be available in mine (Netherlands)?

Nope, just the US for now. Other countries "in the coming months", and most (if not all?) live regions when 3.0 is finished at the end of the year.

Syndicate Technologies:

I would be satisfied with a size limit at 1 GB. No less. 150 MB is a joke.

 The whole idea of homebrew and hobbyist game development is to create a game with good gameplay. Most of us do not have the equipment, skill, or time to create some sort of hyper-realistic environment where every blade of grass casts its own shadow or whatnot, and it's visuals that take up the majority of space in a game. Plenty of really awesome games have been created within the 150MB limit already that I would gladly pay 800MS points (or more) for: perfect examples being Dishwasher and Little Gamers, JellyCar etc. What would you do with 1GB of space anyway? If you really find that you can't constrain a game to 150MB then I'd say you should probably be considering some alternate distribution method.

 I seem to recall someone suggesting that the filesize limit be raised in accordance with the price of the game in order to cover the bandwidth costs. I think that's probably the safest middle ground for MS to take, so while I don't think "FREE INTARNETS FOR EVERYONE", that's likely to be the best approach.

 

On a completely unrelated sidenote, it would be nice to see the XBLCG beta cross the pond sometime before it ends since I'm sitting here with a beta code but no beta, though for now I'm content with just downloading the ccgame packages from the Catalog.

I do have some more hypothetical questions (at least for me at this time;)):

What control do you have over your game once released to the community?

1) Assuming there will never be a way to "make money" on XNA Community games, e.g. like Nick suggested, and your game is so awesome, that you find a publisher or a publisher finds you, is it possible to withdraw a game from the community again to have it commercialized?

2) Another scenario: Assuming you released the game and a week after it was released you find a serious bug - even the best games are being patched all the time - are you able to rerelease or withdraw the game and release it again to have a fully functional version out there?

3) Well, I guess once out in the market place there might be a lot more feedback, so you might want to improve the game, can you upgrade the release or has release 1.0 to be out there forever and you have to continue with 2.0 and so forth.

All of these questions point more into the direction: what happens after I released it and what control will I have over the game once it is released?

I know, that the community games are now in Beta and as far as I understand it, everything that is submitted during the beta phase has to be resubmitted when the final version is released, correct? But nevertheless in the final version - end of the year as far as I have read - these might be questions that will come up, I guess...

To the best of my knowledge:

1) I wouldn't assume for a minute there will "never" be a way to make money, never is a very long time. They've said they'd talk about the monetisation/financial side of XCG nearer launch, whether that it is just to say "nope, no money making yet." or "cashmonies for everyone!" remains to be seen, we'll just have to patient. As for withdrawing your game, that is already possible, just go into your profile and delete the release / project (not sure which), but it's definitely already possible.

2) In the beta it isn't possible to "update" a title in the same way you might be used to with auto-updates, even when 3.0 goes final, I suspect it'll be more a case of the player getting a notification and being forced to redownload the entire title again... then again, they may be clever and find a way to only download the changes files, we'll have to see. But as has been said, putting your game up for approval should be the absolute last stage of development, so serious bugs should already have been found by your own testing, let alone by the Peer Reviewers, they aren't QA. That said, serious bugs can slip through, I remember I lost my single player Crackdown progress after the first patch because of a bug, so it can happen to the best of us. What you'll need to bear in mind is that you'll need to fix the bug, resubmit it, and have the peer reviewers test the game all over again just incase you've slipped in something other than a bug fix. How many times are the Peer Reviewers going to want to keep testing, approving, testing, approving (etc etc) your game? Not many I suspect. You'll eventually reach the stage where everyone has tried your game once or twice and can't be bothered to test it again and the only person to blame will be the person that didn't test their game properly before submission.

3) Answered this really in the last one, but you have to bear in mind that if a full title redownload and resubmission/retest is required, both the end user and the peer reviewers are going to get annoyed (to put it politely) pretty quickly. I think there is definitely scope for new major release/revisions, but their frequency should be very low. Any more often than every 3 months I would say is too frequent if you're going to ask peer reviewers to retest a game, and users to download it again, but that's the sort of thing that'll be figured out during the beta I suspect.

Don't take what I've said as gospel of course, it's still beta, policies may change, but I feel this is representative of where we stand right now.

Also remember one of the reasons for a 6 month beta is to iron out exactly these sorts of issues so make sure your feedback on things like updates and versions, and pulling when you go commercial get put into connect.

Thanks for the comments on this, Adam.

The ZMan:

Also remember one of the reasons for a 6 month beta is to iron out exactly these sorts of issues so make sure your feedback on things like updates and versions, and pulling when you go commercial get put into connect.

Sure, I know that is still beta - that's why I just thought, the earlier something is being brought up, the more time there is to think about how to tackle it.

150 MB means that someone who doesn't have a hard disk, but only the flash save card (which is 256 MB) can fit one or two games on each save card.

I don't think that limit is going to change. If you target for higher, you're better off targeting DVD and getting a publisher for the real XDK kit.

jwatte:

150 MB means that someone who doesn't have a hard disk, but only the flash save card (which is 256 MB) can fit one or two games on each save card.

I don't think that limit is going to change. If you target for higher, you're better off targeting DVD and getting a publisher for the real XDK kit.

They make a 512mb memory card. Plenty of room for a max 350mb game. Microsoft wouldn't have upped the limit if they didn't have a bigger memory card.

Tommy McClain

Adam Miles:

Nope, just the US for now. Other countries "in the coming months", and most (if not all?) live regions when 3.0 is finished at the end of the year.

I'm in New Zealand and although the XNA menu on the Marketplace just had the two utilities and no membership option that was alluded to somewhere, this website seems more that happy to take my money. I can get all the way to "Confirm Purchase" with a note that my CC will be charged in the next step. It even picked up my CC details from my XBLA account.

I didn't click it, just in case, so it's possible it would tell me to go away if I did and I don't really want to spend US$80 or more to find out.

Bit scary if it would charge me then deny me access due to my location =/

So I'm not sure what the deal is here.

Kiwillian:

Bit scary if it would charge me then deny me access due to my location =/

So I'm not sure what the deal is here.

The deal is you didn't do your research:

 

 

 

 Notice item 3 at the bottom.

Jim, I think he was referring more to the fact that he didn't think CC was available in New Zealand, not the Community Games Beta specifically. He's saying that CC isn't available on the dash, but it is if he tries to buy it online. I was going to reply but wasn't sure if CC is yet available in New Zealand...

If it is, perhaps your parental settings are set such that the CC memberships aren't displayed in the dash, but can be circumvented by buying your CC online? If CC isn't available in New Zealand, then I'm not sure what will happen if you manage to buy it online and whether you'd be able to use it...

We have always told people that CC was availalbe if XBL is availalbe... hoever we recently found out tht that is NOT the case for India.

Nobody from Microsoft has clarified this so right now we can't help people since there is no list of countries that the CC is officially available in. You just have to hope someone from NZ pops in here and confirms it.