XNA using C#

[Cloud9_]

Has anyone looked into this for any sort of game development? I've been tinkering with it trying to teach myself how to program and after a few months of reading some C# books and learning, I decided to try out XNA.

Doubtful you can do a full on MMO with this, maybe you could.. but you could defiantly do some pretty cool stuff with it.

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by Cloud9_

Has anyone looked into this for any sort of game development? I've been tinkering with it trying to teach myself how to program and after a few months of reading some C# books and learning, I decided to try out XNA.

Doubtful you can do a full on MMO with this, maybe you could.. but you could defiantly do some pretty cool stuff with it.

I've been using it but haven't really left the realm of 2D except for a few things.

I'd recommend getting XNA Unleashed.

The book was written for a pre-release version of XNA so some of the code will not compile without a little of refactoring.

[Froofy-D]

I'm doing a game in C#/XNA for my PHD thesis. It is "space diablo" basically, a twitch space shooter with RPG aspects similar to Star Control 2/3. I'd like to make a it mini-mmog with maybe 100-ish players per server. The research aspect is 'automatic content generation', in this case, all the weapons in the game will be unique, and evolved based on what weapons players use the most often. Artificial neural networks control the weapons and evolution of the weapons.

So far XNA seems very easy if you have any experience with OpenGL or DirectX. I got a 3D renderer, mouse+KB input, decent camera system, sound, and a particle system working in a few weeks, with 0 prior XNA or C# experience. I think the main thing XNA has going for is there are Microsoft produced examples for virtually everything. If OpenGL put out some tutorials that were as well done and easy to follow, it would be a hell of a lot more popular.

BTW, if anyone is decent with 3D Studio or Mod Tool (or anything that enables you to re-texture .max or .3ds files), I need these models re-textured:

player ships
ai ships

The textures are ok, but somewhat bland. I want them more vivid like the models that ship with the XNA Space Wars demo.

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by Froofy-D

I'm doing a game in C#/XNA for my PHD thesis. It is "space diablo" basically, a twitch space shooter with RPG aspects similar to Star Control 2/3. I'd like to make a it mini-mmog with maybe 100-ish players per server. The research aspect is 'automatic content generation', in this case, all the weapons in the game will be unique, and evolved based on what weapons players use the most often. Artificial neural networks control the weapons and evolution of the weapons.

So far XNA seems very easy if you have any experience with OpenGL or DirectX. I got a 3D renderer, mouse+KB input, decent camera system, sound, and a particle system working in a few weeks, with 0 prior XNA or C# experience. I think the main thing XNA has going for is there are Microsoft produced examples for virtually everything. If OpenGL put out some tutorials that were as well done and easy to follow, it would be a hell of a lot more popular.

BTW, if anyone is decent with 3D Studio or Mod Tool (or anything that enables you to re-texture .max or .3ds files), I need these models re-textured:

player ships
ai ships

The textures are ok, but somewhat bland. I want them more vivid like the models that ship with the XNA Space Wars demo.

Hehe, some friends and I are making a 2D RPG with it. None of us are skilled at using any 3D graphics applications so we had to leave that stuff out :| Nobody really had the time or interest to learn it.

I have to agree though; was really really easy to get up and running with it. We were going to just do it in mixture of C# and unmanaged C++ but we decided to just go with XNA as we wanted to see results sooner then later. The two of us who are developing the game; myself and my roomate are each handling different parts of the game. I am handing the Battle System, Sound Management and the Input Management (wrote the components for both Sound and Input in one weekend... seriously easy then again we don't do anything super advanced). He's handling the State Management, World Engine and a bunch of other crap I'm too lazy to list.

It's such a joke; we are sticking to PC right now (uses Xbox360 controller for all main game functionality with certain keyboard keys triggering debug related code)... but may port it to Xbox360 if we keep the project going instead of letting it die like most of our projects when our attention span runs out.

Both of us are still perplexed at how we are going to handle saves. I have a bunch of ideas but they all feel like a total circle jerk.

[Cloud9_]

Originally Posted by Vinen

Both of us are still perplexed at how we are going to handle saves. I have a bunch of ideas but they all feel like a total circle jerk.

what ideas did you have? This is one thing that has been bugging me. I'm trying to learn everything I can, so when I started learning C#, i wrote a text RPG. When I learned about arrays, i made an exp grid... when I learned about Serialization, and the System.IO namespace, I wrote a savegame function... etc.. so Every idea that people have often trigger more ideas in my head

[findar]

hashing!

[Hake]

XNA is awesome, especially now that they release 2.0 with networking and live connections. Few months ago after uberworld I did my own MMO engine in C#/XNA/SQL, and it's working pretty well. I had no background on massively multiplayer framework but did have knowledge on networking.

Cloud if you want to make a mmo framework you should consider SQL5 (or any database!) for backups, cpu speed, multiple parallel access of data, rollbacks, object oriented databases, persistancy, etc. Interfacing SQL with C# is easy! Although It will not work on XBOX360

For a classic game, even if it's in lan, i'd recommand XML files, there is a really cool library to handle them in XNA. However there must be some special way to handle saves if you want your game to be X360 compliant (choosing cardrige or hard drive, which xbox account, etc. all this must be provided in XNA, haven't looked!)

Myself I wouldn't advice to make a 360 game, it just gives too much hassle, first have it work on PC, and then if it's fun and you really want it done on XBOX then just do it Just my 2cp!

Hake.

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by Hake

XNA is awesome, especially now that they release 2.0 with networking and live connections. Few months ago after uberworld I did my own MMO engine in C#/XNA/SQL, and it's working pretty well. I had no background on massively multiplayer framework but did have knowledge on networking.

Cloud if you want to make a mmo framework you should consider SQL5 (or any database!) for backups, cpu speed, multiple parallel access of data, rollbacks, object oriented databases, persistancy, etc. Interfacing SQL with C# is easy! Although It will not work on XBOX360

For a classic game, even if it's in lan, i'd recommand XML files, there is a really cool library to handle them in XNA. However there must be some special way to handle saves if you want your game to be X360 compliant (choosing cardrige or hard drive, which xbox account, etc. all this must be provided in XNA, haven't looked!)

Myself I wouldn't advice to make a 360 game, it just gives too much hassle, first have it work on PC, and then if it's fun and you really want it done on XBOX then just do it Just my 2cp!

Hake.

I ended up using XML for them. I'm not bothering to be Xbox360 compliant as out of the group of friends working on it I am the only one who has a Xbox360 so it would be a PITA to test changes anyhow.

[Zuuljin]

Might be worth it soon though now that their opening the community live thing. If your game is good enough you actually get paid when people download it.

Which brings me to a completely different question I had in terms of copyright/patent/whatever.

How different do you have to make a game in comparison to another game to be able to call it original? I'm a huge fan of puzzle/strategy games, so I have some idea's, but their basically knock offs of whats currently out there, although I have my own flavor to them. Its really hard to innovate the block concept, as there's only so many ways to move/rotate and place blocks on a screen.

I wont give away my sekret sauce, but as an example, compare puzzle quest to bejeweled or to jewel quest. All have the EXACT same concept, they just vary in different things going on. Did they have to license from the bejeweled people? Is it different enough that it is its own game?

Or what about the tower defense games. What if I wanted to make my own version. Since that was a free mod for WC, am I free to make and sell a different version, even though the concept is exactly the same?

Basically I dont want to spend a month or two making games, only to find out I'm about to be sued for stealing someone elses concept.

[Hake]

From David Alex Lamb @ Designing Games: rec.games.design FAQ :

"Well, I've got good news for you, and bad news. First the good:

If you're in the US, England, any Western European Country, Canada, or Australia, anything you write is automatically considered to be copyrighted under the terms of the Berne convention that all these countries adhere to.

Now, the bad news: a copyright does not protect your ideas. All a copyright does is protect the expression of an idea. Thus, it's perfectly legal for someone to take all the rules of, say, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, paraphrase them, and eliminate references to Dungeon Master and a few other terms TSR has trademarked, and sell the resulting product.

That said, including a copyright notice in your work does give you one benefit: it makes it easier to collect damages if someone does copy your material. If there is no copyright notice, the copier can claim "innocent infringement" (that is, "I didn't know I couldn't copy it") and get off with a slap on the wrist. In addition, you may want to look into registering your copyright. In the US, at least, this provides definite proof that you wrote your material first, and allows you to collect money from copiers beyond simple damages.

To protect the ideas of a game, a patent would be necessary. In general, though, it's probably not worth the effort. To qualify for a patent, a game must include physical components beyond simple board, dice, and rules, so that it can qualify as a "machine." Thus, most games won't be eligible. In addition, obtaining a patent is a long and complicated process which will almost certainly require you to hire a patent attorney, pay his/her large fees, and pay a large (and nonrefundable!) amount of money for a patent application.

In my opinion, though, you needn't worry about protecting your ideas. Chances are that if you've thought of it, someone else has as well. Thus, refusing to discuss aspects of your game in order to protect your ideas isn't likely to keep anyone else from using that idea, and will prevent you from getting feedback which might help you improve the idea.

(A bit from my own experience: a few years ago, I came up with an idea for a die-rolling method for an RPG which I had never seen before and which greatly simplified the system I was making. Since then, I've encountered at least three systems which also use the same method, none of whose authors could possibly have seen my work.)

In general, games do not succeed because of any single "neat idea;" in fact, innovative games are less likely to succeed because most people do not want to learn large amounts of unfamiliar material."

Might as well have a look at : 10 Big Myths about copyright explained

the 11st Myth : "So I can't ever reproduce anything?"
Myth #11 (I didn't want to change the now-famous title of this article) is actually one sometimes generated in response to this list of 10 myths. No, copyright isn't an iron-clad lock on what can be published. Indeed, by many arguments, by providing reward to authors, it encourages them to not just allow, but fund the publication and distribution of works so that they reach far more people than they would if they were free or unprotected -- and unpromoted. However, it must be remembered that copyright has two main purposes, namely the protection of the author's right to obtain commercial benefit from valuable work, and more recently the protection of the author's general right to control how a work is used.

You *could* get sued if you use references to copyrighted brand names, use art assets from another game without consent, include code from another non open-source game... but I never heard of any case of such a thing

Hake.

[Zuuljin]

Thanks a ton, that cleared alot up. Guess I'm going through with it then. =)

[Hatorade]

[Froofy-D]

Well I'm impressed so far. It is so much easier than C++/OpenGL and C++/DirectX. In a couple weeks in my spare time I have a decent ship editor for the game and a control scheme demo where you can zip around space with stars/galaxies in the background. It is basically WoW controls but the cam is just locked looking down. It looks pretty cool considering I put 0 effort into looks. Just some star textures I DL/ed off the web.

Next up is particle system and enemy ships. I'm gonna make a single player demo then look for people that are interested in doing a Space Diablo mmog.

Anyway, if you've been mucking around with OpenGL or other game engines for school projects, or whatever, I highly suggest you try XNA out. It is light years easier imho.

[Zuuljin]

Did you make those spaceship models yourself or get em from somewhere?

I'm a fairly decent programmer (IMO lol) but have 0 artistic ability, so graphics/models/sound are my weakness. Would be cool if you had some free model/texture website you could share. =)

[Froofy-D]

XNA Space War demo comes with some decent ships. But yeah, I'm looking around for some more free ones as well. Need some turrets, buildings, and ships in .x or .fbx format.