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Torque X and Microsoft
Torque X and Microsoft
| Name: | Pat Wilson |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Aug 14, 2006 | |
| Rating: |  3.5 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Pat Wilson |
Blog post
I wanted to post a quick blog post to address some of the things I've seen come up in the forums. Besides, I haven't done a GG blog post in a while.
Our working closely with Microsoft on this project does not mean that we have any intention of dropping cross platform support, reducing cross platform support or anything like that. I know this has been said before. I wanted to say it again. XNA is another platform. It turns out that it's a very important platform. I've had some things to say about C# in the past, and I honestly still prefer C++. However, like I said in a thread recently, there comes a point when thebenefits of a technology outweigh it's costs, and it must be considered seriously otherwise it's just elitism. (I will be the first to admit I suffer from elitism.)
I said this to the associates a while back, and I wanted to say this to the community:
There will be things about this platform that you may not like. Such as: Why should I have to move my code to a new engine, why C#, why we gotta pay money etc, etc. The most important thing about XNA is the concept, and it's goal: Let indies make console games without dev kits. It is critical to this goal which we all share (making games, and further, making games on consoles) that this effort succeed, and I have no doubt in my mind that it will. The best way that we, as developers (and I speak for myself as well, because I fully intend to use XNA even though there is a dev kit sitting on my desk. We eat our own dog food.) can do to try to get our agenda pushed forward is to help this project succeed.
People have asked questions like: Well is this going to be like the PS2 Linux kit where the only people who can play it are other developers? Will we be able to make money off our games or will they only be free? and so on...
Well there's your answer! Help this project be a success. You can use TorqueX, you can write your engine from scratch, whatever. The important thing, again, is the concept. If you want to see more support for XNA on the 360, than help make it so. Make games. Make the game that Microsoft says, "Damn if people are going to keep doing that, we need to let them sell their games!" or, "We need to make it so people can share games ASAP!"
Microsoft is committed to making XNA a success. GarageGames is committed to making XNA a success. So I am asking the community to help out as well.
Our working closely with Microsoft on this project does not mean that we have any intention of dropping cross platform support, reducing cross platform support or anything like that. I know this has been said before. I wanted to say it again. XNA is another platform. It turns out that it's a very important platform. I've had some things to say about C# in the past, and I honestly still prefer C++. However, like I said in a thread recently, there comes a point when thebenefits of a technology outweigh it's costs, and it must be considered seriously otherwise it's just elitism. (I will be the first to admit I suffer from elitism.)
I said this to the associates a while back, and I wanted to say this to the community:
There will be things about this platform that you may not like. Such as: Why should I have to move my code to a new engine, why C#, why we gotta pay money etc, etc. The most important thing about XNA is the concept, and it's goal: Let indies make console games without dev kits. It is critical to this goal which we all share (making games, and further, making games on consoles) that this effort succeed, and I have no doubt in my mind that it will. The best way that we, as developers (and I speak for myself as well, because I fully intend to use XNA even though there is a dev kit sitting on my desk. We eat our own dog food.) can do to try to get our agenda pushed forward is to help this project succeed.
People have asked questions like: Well is this going to be like the PS2 Linux kit where the only people who can play it are other developers? Will we be able to make money off our games or will they only be free? and so on...
Well there's your answer! Help this project be a success. You can use TorqueX, you can write your engine from scratch, whatever. The important thing, again, is the concept. If you want to see more support for XNA on the 360, than help make it so. Make games. Make the game that Microsoft says, "Damn if people are going to keep doing that, we need to let them sell their games!" or, "We need to make it so people can share games ASAP!"
Microsoft is committed to making XNA a success. GarageGames is committed to making XNA a success. So I am asking the community to help out as well.
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 08/28/08 - G-Buffer Normals and Trig Lookup Textures 06/17/08 - Multi-Threaded Mesh Skinning Showing Promise 08/14/06 - Torque X and Microsoft 02/11/06 - 10th Most Popular Game on Live 07/13/05 - Development of TSE360 07/03/05 - Where's the beef 06/09/05 - Recovery Time 04/30/05 - FrameTemp template class and COM in Torque |
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Submit your own resources!| Adam deGrandis (Aug 14, 2006 at 17:35 GMT) |
| Aaron E (Aug 14, 2006 at 17:36 GMT) |
Thanks for the clarification. Very cool stuff.
| Martin Schultz (Aug 14, 2006 at 17:36 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Pauliver (Aug 14, 2006 at 17:45 GMT) |
/me opens up his wallet...
seriously though quite teasing us. i have been reading the random thread about torque.net or C# for torque script, seen all the posts about XNA (especially started today) read every news site make the same XNA report (again today) and now a fantastic blog that has me excited but says very little in terms of Tech Specs :(
Will it be coming august 30th? or later?
Is it tge 1.5 that we have heard about?
will this affect TSE? (one of the things i read said TSE and TGB/T2D had been ported but said nothing about TGE)
who do i have to sleep with to get in on it early?
**EDIT** the DevSnapshot just went up so i get it now (well half get it)
Edited on Aug 14, 2006 17:47 GMT
| Charlie Malbaurn (Aug 14, 2006 at 17:51 GMT) |
The other cool thing is the exposure it brings to GG. I can't wait to see what people do with this.
Also, I think I read somewhere on the USA today article that somewhere down the line people would be able to sell there games on Live.
Oh, and when did Josh become CEO?
EDIT:
for those interested in learning a little bit more about XNA you can watch the videos at this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/XNA/March2006DVD-WebVersion/DVD.aspx
Edited on Aug 14, 2006 18:00 GMT
| Kevin Johnson (Aug 14, 2006 at 18:34 GMT) |
| Alexander "taualex" Gaevoy (Aug 14, 2006 at 20:19 GMT) |
| Allyn "Mr_Bloodworth" Mcelrath (Aug 14, 2006 at 20:30 GMT) |
Edited on Aug 14, 2006 20:30 GMT
| Sean H. (Aug 14, 2006 at 20:32 GMT) |
| Pat Wilson (Aug 14, 2006 at 20:55 GMT) |
The way XNA has wrapped DirectX puts the burden for supporting these features on Microsoft, instead of on the end-user. Having C++ and not being able to have low-level access to features would, in my opinion, take away from the advantages of C++. We have achieved a very high level of performance with C# and TorqueX due to some very good research and smart implementation by the XNA team. Object pooling to reduce churn, lots of profiling using a sweet-ass tool called JetBrains dot Trace helped us greatly in the quest for good performance.
The other great thing about C# wrapping functionality, and using the XNA classes (Like the matrix/vector classes) is that, on the 360, they will be able to do even more optimization for the Xbox360 CPU to speed these up even faster. Using a debug build of the beta framework, we were able to get 60fps running the Marble Blast Ultra demo (screenshots in the TorqueX product page) with all the shiny features of MBU and the level was made in Maya, and collision was done using polysoup instead of convex hulls. The performance is really quite impressive, I have to say. I was very pleased.
| James Thompson (Aug 14, 2006 at 20:55 GMT) Resource Rating: 4 |
Quote:
You might ask, "Torque? Does that mean Torque Game Builder,Torque Game Engine, or Torque Shader Engine?" The answer is some of each.
@Pat - Nice blog, im sure a lot of people are going to love this, I certainly will
Edited on Aug 14, 2006 21:00 GMT
| Anton Bursch (Aug 14, 2006 at 21:14 GMT) |
| David Montgomery-Blake (Aug 14, 2006 at 23:54 GMT) |
This is true. And hopefully there will be something worth playing on it. Right now XBLA is about the only thing I'm enjoying (well, I have a soft spot for Kameo and Dead Rising; and DR's escort missions are wearing thin).
I do love the idea of opening this platform up, though. I can't wait to see what people come up with. Perhaps I'll see your adventure game on there sometime in the future. ;)
| Jeremy Alessi (Aug 15, 2006 at 01:48 GMT) |
| Anton Bursch (Aug 15, 2006 at 01:52 GMT) |
Oh, yeah, it's definitely coming the the 360. No questions about that. I am moving our game to a C# engine for PC right now using MDX 1.1, which isn't ideal but is all we have for now, but as soon as even the Express releases for XNA we will be porting it. I hope to be able to release a demo of the game on the 360 thru the Creator's Club when we release this game in Novemeber for the PC. Be one of the first to be releasing anything on there. ;) And then when the commercial version releases for XNA in 2007 we will be poised for releasing an entire game thru XBLA 360. That's my plan at least.
This is a damn exciting time for indie game developers. Even our company has been jumping thru all the hoops to get the dev kit. We would have to make 2 versions of the game, one for PC and one for XBLA 360, but now we can code the game in C# with MDX 1.1 and later port to XNA. But the core coding of the game is already in C# and only small portions really need changed. And that is just awesome! And when commercial releases, we won't be looking back. This is the 3rd in the series and the story keeps going already thru to 4,5 and 6. We are a perfect match for games made in XNA and releasing on XBLA 360.
| Pisal Setthawong (Aug 15, 2006 at 03:45 GMT) |
XNA Game Studio Express Beta 1
XNA Game Studio Express is a new offering targeted at students and hobbyists for game development.
XNA Game Studio Express Beta 1 will contain the following:
-A version of the XNA Framework targeting Windows development only.
- Documentation, how-to and kits that demonstrate how best to utilize the XNA Framework.
- Fully documented and playable starter-kits that demonstrate end-to-end how to build a game using the XNA Framework.
Beta 1 will be available in late August/early September.
Edited on Aug 15, 2006 03:46 GMT
| Robert Stewart (Aug 15, 2006 at 04:24 GMT) |
| Jesse (Midhir) Liles (Aug 15, 2006 at 06:39 GMT) |
| David Montgomery-Blake (Aug 15, 2006 at 13:55 GMT) |
Sweet, I loved the screenshot you showed off the other night, and being an adventure game junkie, I can't wait to pick it up through XNA connect!
| Steven Chiu (Aug 15, 2006 at 17:23 GMT) |
| Pat Wilson (Aug 15, 2006 at 20:03 GMT) |
| Jeremy Alessi (Aug 15, 2006 at 23:17 GMT) |
| Stephen Zepp (Aug 16, 2006 at 01:46 GMT) |
Of course, we expect this to change in the future, but that's all it is--an expectation. As I mentioned in a recent forum post, this is all very bleeding edge technology, and not fully fleshed out yet, on Microsoft's part.
| fireVein (Aug 16, 2006 at 01:56 GMT) |
-Jase
| JohnT (Aug 16, 2006 at 16:32 GMT) |
| Demo-man (Nov 07, 2006 at 13:23 GMT) |
How does the PC distribution work then? Will one still need to download the games through XBox Live and compile it on PC?
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