XNA 3.1 is Here...
by John Kanalakis · 06/11/2009 (5:05 pm) · 5 comments
Here's XNA 3.1...
Yay! XNA 3.1 is now available and can be downloaded here.
The new exiting features include support for Xbox Live Avatars, persistent Xbox Live Party Chat, Video playback, and new XACT audio support. These are awesome features for a point-release!
Before Upgrading Projects
Consider this... XNA 3.1 is not yet supported on the Xbox Live Community Games Marketplace. So, if you are making games for Xbox 360 and the Xbox Live Community Games Marketplace, do not convert your projects yet. There will be an Xbox Live Community Games Marketplace update in a few weeks that adds the marketplace-side support for XNA 3.1. You can run your XNA 3.1 games on your own Xbox 360, but not share them as Creator's Club content. If you want to still post games for testing and for sale in the marketplace, you still need to submit them as XNA 3.0 games.Update, But Don't Upgrade
I suggest that Torque X developers uninstall XNA 3.0 and then install XNA 3.1 immediately. This XNA release supports both XNA 3.0 and 3.1 projects. So, you don't need to do anything after upgrading your XNA. Just restart your computer and Visual Studio 2008 and then open your game project as you normally do.To upgrade your game project to XNA 3.1, find your game project name in the Visual Studio 2008 Solution Explorer, right-click on it, then choose: "Upgrade Solution". This will make the necessary changes to your project files to become XNA 3.1 games. Now, you should be able to access the new XNA functionality.
Again, upgrading your project means that you can no longer post your games to Xbox Live Community Games. At least not until "late summer", probably "end of July" according to Microsoft.
Update your Xbox 360
There's also an update to XNA Game Studio Connect for the Xbox 360. You will need to uninstall your current version of XNA connect from your Xbox 360, then go to the Games Marketplace, All Games, and scroll down to the XNA Connect item. After you download it, you can resume deploying your Torque X games to the XBox 360.As for Torque X
I've already gone through a lot of testing to make sure that Torque X 3.0 is fully compatible. So your games will compile and run exactly the same in either XNA 3.0 format or XNA 3.1 format. This release of XNA contains new features, but no breaking changes which negatively impact Torque X.John K.
www.envygames.com
About the author
John Kanalakis is the owner of EnvyGames, an independent game development studio in Silicon Valley that produces games and tools for Xbox 360, Windows, and the Web.
#2
Zoidy, thanks for the clarification. I just Love ambigous dates. I'll also look out for your forum questions sometime in the early summer. ;)
John K.
www.envygames.com
06/11/2009 (6:39 pm)
I forgot to mention one more thing... After you convert your project over to XNA 3.1, you also need to rebuild your audio projeccts using XACT 3. Don't worry if you forget this step, the content pipeline will fail to compile and remind you.Zoidy, thanks for the clarification. I just Love ambigous dates. I'll also look out for your forum questions sometime in the early summer. ;)
John K.
www.envygames.com
#3
06/12/2009 (1:08 am)
Well, I decided to just do the upgrade, I was hoping to have my first XBox Indie game submitted by beginning of July, but dont mind pushing that back to end of July to Tidy it up a little. Thanks to your query about Ticky Tacky John, I decided to complete 'Ticky Tacky Battle Edition' :-)
#4
John K.
www.envygames.com
06/12/2009 (1:46 am)
YES! Battle Edition! You might need to change the name to Tic-Blast-Toe or something like that. John K.
www.envygames.com
#5
I like that. I may just hand creative control of naming to the kids.
Just trying to think of extras for the battle side. So far we have Board Shakes, Tile Swaps and Bomb Drops.
Will have some screenshots for a blog in next few days
06/12/2009 (3:22 am)
:-)I like that. I may just hand creative control of naming to the kids.
Just trying to think of extras for the battle side. So far we have Board Shakes, Tile Swaps and Bomb Drops.
Will have some screenshots for a blog in next few days
Torque Owner zoid
.
Just to confirm, the "end of July" is referencing the time at which you will be able to submit XNA 3.1 games for review. The exact date for this is July 23rd, IIRC. "Late summer" is when 3.1 games will be avaliable on the Community Games (or should I say Indie Games ;) ) section of the marketplace. At least, I'm 95% sure that's what they meant!
Also, expect a whole load of questions from me in the Torque X 3D forums soon (most likely tomorrow); I'm interested in purchasing TX3D, but would like some information on it first. :)
Cheers