General

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Shulin — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:38:03 GMT

Definitely interesting information. A friend and I are just getting into the XNA stuff. He's already joined the creators club and right now I'm waiting until 2.0 comes out ( I really don't wanna install Express alongside my current VS 2005 copy). Until then I'm browsing the forums, soaking up as much info as I can. =)

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Barkers Crest — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:07:20 GMT

Thanks Z.

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

The ZMan — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:31:35 GMT

http://creators.xna.com/Headlines/presentations/default.aspx

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Barkers Crest — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:31:26 GMT

Does anyone have a link for watching the network webcast?

The one given in the headline does not work.

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Catalin Zima — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:01:42 GMT

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. :)

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

The ZMan — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:51:27 GMT

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?

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

George Clingerman — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:54:28 GMT

The ZMan:

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

Are you sure that information wasn't protected by your NDA?

Sad to hear that you guys couldn't get one of my games networked. That would have been pretty cool to see! Can't wait to see what all the new changes look like.

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Jim Perry — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 08:21:31 GMT

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!

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Catalin Zima — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:21:54 GMT

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)

:-)

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

The ZMan — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:05:29 GMT

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 ;-)

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Catalin Zima — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:45:24 GMT

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

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

ajmiles — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:19:27 GMT

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

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Jam — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:17:02 GMT

I wish I could come down there, but I'm decently far away, up in RI, so I don't really have the time or money to do so.
Thanks to the entire XNA staff for working to make XNA even better than it already is though. Can't wait for 2.0! :)

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Shawn Hargreaves — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:41:16 GMT

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?

:)

I could tell you...

But then I'd have to kill you :-)

Re: XNA Game Studio 2.0 Developer Lab!

Catalin Zima — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:31:40 GMT

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?