Hi, I have a question for the upcoming contest about the libraries we can use to develop the game. I couldn't see anything in the rules about this so I thought I would post, just to clarify this. As XNA runs on essentially the .NET 2.0 runtime and standard library is there anything stopping us using .NET 3.0 or even 3.5 libraries in the game? Obviously this would stop it running on the 360 but as it says or, I am guessing that as long as we can get it either working on XP or Vista then it shouldn't matter?

Feel free to read through the actual rules of the contest, but at a quick glance I didn't see anything that says you couldn't. You'd simply want to include the .NET 3.0 or .NET 3.5 redist executable with your game which will hurt you since you have a size limit. But if you don't include the redist, you might be eliminated if the judge doesn't have .NET 3.0 or .NET 3.5 installed.

"Using the tools and information identified above, develop a playable video game application ("Game"), for operation on either the Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2 or Xbox 360 platform..."

Vista comes with .Net 3.0 preinstalled, so that's already there. So long as you make it clear that you've written a game for Vista and not XP SP2, I can't see an issue about leaving out the redist, but I'm just giving my interpretation. The MS Research guys have been good about getting back to us with answers, so I doubt you'll be left waiting for a definite answer for too much longer.

Andy:

As XNA runs on essentially the .NET 2.0 runtime and standard library is there anything stopping us using .NET 3.0 or even 3.5 libraries in the game? Obviously this would stop it running on the 360 but as it says or, I am guessing that as long as we can get it either working on XP or Vista then it shouldn't matter?

You can build against the .Net 3.0 framework as our evaluation machine(s) will have Windows Vista installed. Please note that our evaluation machine(s) won't have the .Net 3.5 framework installed so you have to include the .Net 3.5 redistributable with your game if you are using it. We have updated the FAQ accordingly.

 

Good luck with your game,

Ralf Herbrich, Microsoft Research Cambridge