Team Interview: Aaron Nonis
Hey everyone! I am back again with yet another interview with a member of the XNA GS team. Today I bring our very own Aaron Nonis! This dude is actually responsible for me being on this team in the first place! My wife worked with him in his previous team and through him I moved to the XNA GS team. Anyway, I’ll save that for another post! I am really excited to bring you Mr.Aaron NONIS!
Who are you and what do you do at XNA GS team?
Hello, I’m Aaron Nonis aka Ajonis Jackson aka SideBiter. I’m a developer lead on the XNA Game Studio team. In general I lead the tools effort, as opposed to the framework/API effort. I’ve also chipped in some code here and there for each release. I’m also in charge of the internal build system used by the developers.
What did you work on before joining XNA GS team?
I’ve been in the software industry for a little over 11 years. Immediately before joining the original XNA team, I worked in the Small Business Server (SBS) team at Microsoft. There I was in charge of the admin tools, mostly MMC snap-ins and wizards. Before that I worked at a smaller contract studio (Microcrafts which became Vanteon). There I was a contract developer on multiple projects such as the stationery and landscape products for Sierra.
How did you join the XNA GS team? Tell the story!
It’s a pretty funny story, really, on how I became the first developer on the original XNA team. I have always been a passionate UI developer, and so I was prodded into interviewing for the Xbox LIVE UI team by a friend. They were working on the alpha Xbox 360 at the time, and Boyd Multerer was the Dev Manager for the Xbox LIVE team. So I was first in line to interview for a very popular job position. I got told a week and a half later that someone with more experience narrowly beat me out. I resigned myself to another 2-3 years with Small Business Server while I waited for more Xbox positions to open. Well, it just so happened that Boyd was moving on to become the Product Unit Manager for this new upstart team, XNA. He called me up and offered me the first developer job, which I promptly took!
What features did you work on for XNA GS 1.0 and 2.0?
As a manager, I mostly work behind the scenes, arranging schedules, making sure that the developers are happy and making good progress. I did, however, implement some of the networking layer that allows the Windows PC to talk with the Xbox 360 console in XNA Game Studio Express. I also implemented the new out-of-VS (Visual Studio) XNA Game Studio Device Center application and wizard for managing multiple Xbox 360 consoles. (Ed: I tested that feature for him!)
What were some of the problems faced when developing your feature?
There were a few! Trying to achieve the Vista look-and-feel in our application while still supporting XP turned out to be much more difficult than I had imagined. We scaled that back a little in order to give a more consistent XNA Game Studio feel. Also, the Big Endian nature of the Xbox 360 console and the Little Endian nature of the Windows PCs made some of the networking layer particularly tricky.
What’s your favorite part of XNA Game Studio, and why?
This is pretty tough to pin down, but I’ll be completely honest: My favorite part isn’t a part of the product itself, it is what the product means to the industry. I am excited to come to work every day because I know that we are truly making an impact on game development throughout the whole industry; be it professional developers that use XNA Game Studio to prototype their games, or amateur enthusiasts (like myself) that have always had a barrier with DirectX and the Win32 Game Loop to making their games.
If I had to choose a particular feature in XNA Game Studio, it would be the templates, starter kits, and tutorials that we put out that make it really easy to get your feet wet. They provide a fantastic bread-crumb trail to lead you towards that game you always wanted to make but never had the time to figure out the details.
What is your favorite Xbox 360 game?
My favorite Xbox 360 game, currently, is Rock Band. I am a music nut, and the completeness of the band experience in this game is incredible and incredibly fun!
Share some tips and tricks for using XNA GS
Did you know that you can connect both a desktop PC and a laptop to the same Xbox 360? On the Xbox 360, you can select “Connect to Another Computer”. This will issue a new 25 character key for your second Windows PC. However, once the second Windows PC has successfully added the Xbox 360 console, both the first and second Windows PC can communicate with XNA Game Studio Connect. This can make it convenient to develop your game on the laptop while you are in the living room, but also use your desktop to download others’ games and deploy them from another room.
Last words?
If you’ve ever wanted to make a game… ever… You owe it to yourself to download XNA Game Studio 2.0. It is a free kit with free tutorials, free sample code, and free forums that can allow you to freely develop your game programming skills. It is amazing to see the games that have been made, and I look forward to those that are still twinkling in the eye of budding game developers.
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February 19th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Interesting post.
For some reason I was think of folks I played in Orchestra with in High School Aaron Nonis and Doug Dearmin came to mind, so of course I googled them. You may pass this note on to Aaron if you like. Always interesting to see what people are up to. Perhaps he will remember this bass player, maybe not.