unixd0od:

If this is true then that is completely disappointing. I was all excited at the possibility of being able to write an app that would let me listen to streaming radio on my Zune over my WLAN. Personally the idea of playing a game on the tiny Zune 8 seems incredibly pointless due to the incredibly small screen and controls. Maybe the Zune 80 will be a better experience, either way, I couldn't care less about games on a Zune.

This is true for right now, it doesn't mean we don't ever want to support this. I would also say if you have a Zune or have a friend with a Zune give it a try when it comes out. A lot of people think that it may not work well but pretty much everyone who tried it at GDC thought it was really cool. The reason that this is for the community is so that they can make the best games with what the Zune does have available, and not be boxed in by it's physicial constraints.

XNA Game Studio is designed to make creating games using C# extremely easy.  Therefore XNA Game Studio support for Zune is targeted towards creating games on Zune, not general applications.

The Zune 80 and 30 displays are nice and big.  The flash Zunes are the same resolution, so while they physical size is smaller, the DPI increases, and provides a very crisp, detailed image.

 

MechaDragon:

This is true for right now, it doesn't mean we don't ever want to support this.

That's good to know.

The reason that this is for the community is so that they can make the best games with what the Zune does have available, and not be boxed in by it's physicial constraints.

I think it's a great idea releasing development tools for the Zune and I certainly can't wait to get my hands on them to see what's possible when they come out (even if the main feature I want isn't available yet).

I'm sorry to bother again with another stupid question, but I like to learn anyways.

 

 

I never used nor got my hands on a Zune and none of my friends have one. I looked at pictures of one and I spotted not very many controls. Could someone explain to me how the controls work and how a game could ever be designed and succesfully played on these electronics? I do see how the picture can be very nice to play a game on, I just worry about the controls.

 

 

~ Tyler ~

 

Again, Sorry.

Tyler Moyer:

I'm sorry to bother again with another stupid question, but I like to learn anyways.

 

 

I never used nor got my hands on a Zune and none of my friends have one. I looked at pictures of one and I spotted not very many controls. Could someone explain to me how the controls work and how a game could ever be designed and succesfully played on these electronics? I do see how the picture can be very nice to play a game on, I just worry about the controls.

 

 

~ Tyler ~

 

Again, Sorry.

The Zune 80's touch pad will be used like a touch analog joystick.  I'm also positive that since the 80 has d-pad click like abilities games will use that feature as well. As for the Zune 30 it will only have the d-pad style click. Selecting things in games, just like when selecting music, clicking down on the middle of the touch pad will probably be the button for that. I'm sure the back button and play/pause button will be used in games that might require more inputs.

Now I have a question about games for the Zune. Could game be bought in the 360 marketplace then downloaded to the Zune and will the games for Zune also be sold in the Zune marketplace?

I was at the GDC XNA Session, I missed the first session due to the fact that according to the schedule it looked like the same session was repeating twice in a row, so instead I went to Water Physics through Heightmaps, which I don't regret too much. I missed the first session which was on community games. However I caught the second session which was about the Zune development.

I thought it was great, I have a ton of ideas swarming around in my head with regards to one of the coolest features in my opinion, which was the ability to gain access to the Visulization data of the song the player is currently playing. Which would allow a developer to see, for example, the intensity of the song.

THE QUESTION: I was wondering if XNA 3.0 would be able to include this feature for Xbox 360. Considering that players can already replace the music in any 360 game with their custom soundtrack and if you play music through the dashboard the 360 has some nice visualizers. I think it would be great to develop a game on all three platforms where you could allow players to pick their own music which would cause an effect on the game.

Oh yeah and by the way, even though the XNA 3.0 Beta (Alpha?) isn't coming out till sometime in April, I decided to buy a Zune just before I left for my flight back to Canada. The Zune isn't out here till Summer so I am probably one of the few people in Canada right now with a Zune, I just can't wait to get to work on it. Getting around the One-Handed playing will be intreasting though. Look forward to it.

Hi all. I was wondering if anyone can make a guess as to whether the Zune will be released in the UK in time for the XNA 3.0 release?

If the Zune does not make it to the UK can anyone foresee any problems with a UK user making games for an imported Zune?

The Zune is not out in Aussie land either, I've wanted one for like a year or more. Anyway I'm buying one for this reason to but without cross platform support the ideas are limited.

XML Saves are support, could there be a way of transferring XML data from the 360 to the Zune without the need of a PC?

They really need cross platform wlan for this to be any good.

Windows Mobile or CE or whatever its called for a PDA that would be cool if it would work on that... touch screen, a touch based RTS, oe Dune2 on my PDA (dont have a PDA)

zune game? unnecessary this, according to me

wanting features:
- dynamic content unload  ( Unloading a single asset from a content manager)
- vs 2008 support
- wpf in xna (easy gui creating with the expression blend 2 - this is my pipedream)

Cow:

zune game? unnecessary this, according to me

wanting features:
- dynamic content unload  ( Unloading a single asset from a content manager)
- vs 2008 support
- wpf in xna (easy gui creating with the expression blend 2 - this is my pipedream)

Everybody is entitled their own opinions, but since this thread is about Zune game development, those "wanted features" would probably go better on Connect

Anyway... XNA GS 3.0 will only support VS 2008 (any editions).
WPF and XNA have completely different purposes, so making them work together would probably not bring enough benefits to compensate for the time lost instead of working on something else. Indeed, a GUI system for XNA would be nice, and has been requested before. But I think it shouldn't be done through WPF.

Dark Wolf:

Tyler Moyer:

I'm sorry to bother again with another stupid question, but I like to learn anyways.

 

 

I never used nor got my hands on a Zune and none of my friends have one. I looked at pictures of one and I spotted not very many controls. Could someone explain to me how the controls work and how a game could ever be designed and succesfully played on these electronics? I do see how the picture can be very nice to play a game on, I just worry about the controls.

 

 

~ Tyler ~

 

Again, Sorry.

The Zune 80's touch pad will be used like a touch analog joystick.  I'm also positive that since the 80 has d-pad click like abilities games will use that feature as well. As for the Zune 30 it will only have the d-pad style click. Selecting things in games, just like when selecting music, clicking down on the middle of the touch pad will probably be the button for that. I'm sure the back button and play/pause button will be used in games that might require more inputs.

Now I have a question about games for the Zune. Could game be bought in the 360 marketplace then downloaded to the Zune and will the games for Zune also be sold in the Zune marketplace?

 

 

Thank you so much. Could anyone find me a layout of the Zune 80's and maybe even 30's blueprints so I can understand fully on how to design a game for this platform?

Can you flip whether its drawn landscape/portrait, or will I have to do matrix math to fip my code? I think it would be great to just switch one line in the code to change where the axis'es are.

Embassy Alpha:

I thought it was great, I have a ton of ideas swarming around in my head with regards to one of the coolest features in my opinion, which was the ability to gain access to the Visulization data of the song the player is currently playing. Which would allow a developer to see, for example, the intensity of the song.

THE QUESTION: I was wondering if XNA 3.0 would be able to include this feature for Xbox 360.

We have a goal to implement as much as possible of the new Zune APIs on Xbox and Windows as well. The new simple sound API is certainly coming to all three platforms, along with as much of the media stuff as possible. We haven't yet finished the investigation to figure out exactly how much will be possible, though. Obviously Zune has much richer media support than the other platforms, so there will certainly be some stuff we can't fill in perfectly (Xbox doesn't have such powerful playlist features, for instance) but we aim to get as close as we can.

Cow:

zune game? unnecessary this, according to me

wanting features:
- dynamic content unload  ( Unloading a single asset from a content manager)
- vs 2008 support
- wpf in xna (easy gui creating with the expression blend 2 - this is my pipedream)

At least one of the things (VS 2008 Support) we've announced for the preview release of XNA Game Studio 3.0. Keep in mind that this is the first big feature of XNA GS 3.0 not the only one. That doesn't imply we'll do everything on your list. But that's not all we have.

 

Tyler Moyer:

Thank you so much. Could anyone find me a layout of the Zune 80's and maybe even 30's blueprints so I can understand fully on how to design a game for this platform?

Take a look at the picture here http://www.zune.net/en-US/products/default.htm

The ZunePad has two modes, touch and click. The clicks map to a DPad on an Xbox 360 controller, the touch maps to the thumbstick on an Xbox 360 controller. The Play/Pause button on the right maps to the B button, and the back button maps to the back button on the controller. You can also click the center of the ZunePad which is like pressing A on the Xbox 360 controller.

I'll have a webcast of my session available soon, this should help answer some of your questions as well. I'll need to find a video camera though for the Zune :-)

Thanks!

 

MechaDragon:

Cow:

zune game? unnecessary this, according to me

wanting features:
- dynamic content unload  ( Unloading a single asset from a content manager)
- vs 2008 support
- wpf in xna (easy gui creating with the expression blend 2 - this is my pipedream)

At least one of the things (VS 2008 Support) we've announced for the preview release of XNA Game Studio 3.0. Keep in mind that this is the first big feature of XNA GS 3.0 not the only one. That doesn't imply we'll do everything on your list. But that's not all we have.

 

 

I would love to be able to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition along with XNA GS 3.0. I don't like the express editions and I can't fit upgrading my IDE in my budget anytime soon.

Can you flip whether its drawn landscape/portrait, or will I have to do matrix math to fip my code? I think it would be great to just switch one line in the code to change where the axis'es are.

Alright I understand the spritebatch support, but since there is no GPU on the zune (even though the image processing unit can handle some post processing), then shaders (such as the particle sample)are pretty much not usable right?

Tiptup300:

Can you flip whether its drawn landscape/portrait, or will I have to do matrix math to fip my code? I think it would be great to just switch one line in the code to change where the axis'es are.

The same question I was going to ask!  For the demo, they showed the top view shooter, which would work great for the vertical screen, but the horizontal would be amazing for a side scroller.  That could also lead to making a horizontal screen in which you could select if you are right handed or left handed, to flip the screen/button mapping accordingly.

PezMan726:

Tiptup300:

Can you flip whether its drawn landscape/portrait, or will I have to do matrix math to fip my code? I think it would be great to just switch one line in the code to change where the axis'es are.

The same question I was going to ask!  For the demo, they showed the top view shooter, which would work great for the vertical screen, but the horizontal would be amazing for a side scroller.  That could also lead to making a horizontal screen in which you could select if you are right handed or left handed, to flip the screen/button mapping accordingly.

Currenly we don't have any API's to do any sort of rotation for you. It shouldn't be that difficult. (It's not a matrix because it's only 2D). Left handed/Right handed would be tricky cause if the user holds down the back button the game will force exit. Those buttons cannot be flipped.

If we get a lot of feedback to help with this we may look at providing something, but generally we want to keep compatible with Xbox 360 and Windows where it doesn't make a lot of sense to do this.

 

Rushd Adalsteinn:

Alright I understand the spritebatch support, but since there is no GPU on the zune (even though the image processing unit can handle some post processing), then shaders (such as the particle sample)are pretty much not usable right?

You can set data directly to the screen, so you can do screen processing or rasterization but it's all software. The explosions in Zauri were all sprites.

 

Rushd Adalsteinn:

Alright I understand the spritebatch support, but since there is no GPU on the zune (even though the image processing unit can handle some post processing), then shaders (such as the particle sample)are pretty much not usable right?

There are no shaders on Zune, just the basic SpriteBatch drawing functionality.

I think you'd be surprised just how much you can do with that, though. For instance the particle sample on this site is implemented entirely with SpriteBatch, so it will work just fine on Zune.

PezMan726:

Tiptup300:

Can you flip whether its drawn landscape/portrait, or will I have to do matrix math to fip my code? I think it would be great to just switch one line in the code to change where the axis'es are.

The same question I was going to ask!  For the demo, they showed the top view shooter, which would work great for the vertical screen, but the horizontal would be amazing for a side scroller.  That could also lead to making a horizontal screen in which you could select if you are right handed or left handed, to flip the screen/button mapping accordingly.

We don't currently have any built-in way to flip everything (that's what the beta is for: please give it a whirl when it comes out and send us feedback!) but I'm not actually sure how necessary that would be:

• You can use the SpriteBatch.Begin overload that takes a transform matrix to globally rotate everything
• Or you could just program your game with the X and Y coordinates flipped!
  

Will XNA Game Studio 3.0 work with VS C# 2008 Express Edition?

Oops, looks like it will. Tried deleting the post but couldn't.

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 ;)