Have fun!

Who are you and what do you do at XNA GS team?

I’m a programmer on the XNA Framework team. Along with my colleagues Eli, Ito, and a couple of shady characters you haven’t yet got around to interviewing (hi Tom!), we are responsible for implementing the APIs for things like graphics, sound, and input: all the cool stuff you need to make your game.

In my spare time, I write some of the samples for the creators.xna.com site, and spend way too much time answering questions in the forums.

What did you work on before joining XNA GS team?

I worked for an independent developer called Climax in the UK, where I was lead programmer on the MotoGP series of bike racing games. I also worked on engines and tool chains (we wrote an entirely custom modeling package, which the artists used to construct the bike and track models) and did some prototyping for various original game ideas.

Before that I worked on the Extreme G games on the Nintendo 64, and back in college I started the open source Allegro game programming library. That was my first experience of building an API for a whole community of game developers, and I found it so rewarding, that was actually one of the main things that made me want to work on the XNA Framework.

How did you join the XNA GS team? Tell the story!

In between MotoGP and MotoGP 2, Climax made a special MotoGP demo version that shipped alongside the first release of Xbox Live. That was a crazy experience: we had very little time to put it together, and Live was totally new at the time, so we had to figure everything out as we went along. Microsoft gave us loads of help (they needed us to finish on time so they’d have at least one game ready on day one to demo what Live was capable of!) and I got to know some of the Xbox guys pretty well. I thought

they were cool people, and Microsoft seemed like it would be a good place to work.

I later met Chris Satchell (now the head of the whole XNA organization) when he worked for Microsoft Game Studios and we were pitching a game idea to them.

A couple of years later I was looking for a new job, so I got in touch with Chris to ask if there was anything interesting going on in the Xbox group. XNA was only a vague glimmering of an idea back then, but it was interesting enough to get my attention, and has been steadily getting more interesting ever since.

At first our mission was pretty much just “figure out something cool that will help game developers, then go do it”. Things got a bit more solid when we decided this meant managed code on Xbox 360, and even more solid when we decided it meant indie and hobbyist developers, all leading up to the recent arrival of community games on Xbox Live. Exciting times!

What features did you work on for XNA GS 1.0 and 2.0?

For 1.0, I mostly worked with Eli on the Content Pipeline.

For 2.0, I mostly worked on the networking functionality.

I’ve dabbled and fixed bugs in many other areas: graphics, sound, input, security, performance optimizations.

I was thinking the other day that of all the lines of code I’ve written in my lifetime, the default shader used by SpriteBatch has probably been executed the most times. Although the blit() function from Allegro must come in a close second.

What were some of the problems faced when developing your feature?

Figuring out how to let unsigned games access the Live servers was a real challenge. The Live system has some interesting security features aimed at reducing cheating, which mostly center around signing game executables during the certification process, and then preventing anyone from modifying the game code. But if we want indie developers to use the Live service without having to go through certification, how can we make this possible without just bypassing or turning off all the security stuff? (we would never have been allowed to ship this feature if it hadn’t been properly secure). This was a fun, juicy technical problem, especially on Windows.

What’s your favorite part of XNA Game Studio, and why?

I love the C# language. You could argue this is not strictly part of XNA Game Studio, but hey, we are standing on the shoulders of giants, right?

I’ve used a lot of languages over the years, and C# is my favorite so far. It hits exactly the right balance between power and simplicity, elegance and practicality, performance and productivity.

What is your favorite Xbox 360 game?

My dirty little secret is that I’m not actually much of a gamer. I’m passionate about the technology that goes into making games, but for some reason just not that interested in playing the end result (this is one reason why working on framework technology suits me so well).

When I do play games, I usually spend most of my time examining the graphics and trying to figure out what shader techniques they are using!

Every now and then I do get stuck into something, usually because of quirky or unusual gameplay. I’m currently about halfway through Portal. Before that (by which I mean a year before that - I did say I’m not much of a gamer!) I really enjoyed Shuggy, and before that Elasto Mania.

And of course the original Monkey Island remains by far the greatest game ever created.

Share some tips and tricks for using XNA GS

Start simple. Write a game. Finish it. Give it to your friends. Rinse, lather, repeat.

This is the only way I know to become a great game programmer.

If you get bored or stuck along the way, check out some of the samples on creators.xna.com, or post on the forums. But don’t stop making those games!

Last words?

How’s this for a curious coincidence? I thought I’d look in a dictionary to see what the last word actually was. This turns out to be “zymurgy”, which means the science of fermentation. And as it happens, I have a batch of beer fermenting in my spare room even as we speak. If you haven’t tried making your own beer, you should give that a whirl sometime. It’s great fun: a proper mad scientist combination of cooking and chemistry, with alcohol thrown in for good measure.

Shawn sent me this interview that he had with his cat on my behalf…

Look… this is silly I know, but if I had to live with seeing that cat EVERYDAY at work in some form of a picture or sound, you’re gonna experience some of this with me!

Who are you and what do you do at XNA GS team?

I’m Rhys. I’m a cat. I like to purr.

I don’t actually know what the “XNA GS team” is. I did hear Shawn talking about XNA once, and I thought he said it was for hobbits, but I later figured out he really said hobbyists.

I like hobbits. They are fat and lazy and they eat a lot. Like me.

What did you work on before joining XNA GS team?

I don’t much like to talk about this, but I used to be homeless. I had a bit of an alcohol problem, so I lost my job, and then they repossessed my house. I’ve been clean and sober for over two years now.

How did you join the XNA GS team? Tell the story!

Oh, that’s a funny story. I was in a pretty bad way, thanks to living on the streets. I had tapeworm, and lungworm, and toxoplasmosis, and also I have FIV, and I had a nasty cold at the time too, and my hair was falling out. I was a poorly kitty, but those MEAN NASTY people at the animal shelter PUT ME IN A CAGE and then they were too cheap to run proper tests on me, so they didn’t even know about all my parasites. When Shawn and Tracy came to visit, I purred and purred until they decided to rescue me. It wasn’t until later when they took me to their vet that they found out how much medicine I needed. SUCKERS! I’m all better now though.

What features did you work on for XNA GS 1.0 and 2.0?

In GS 1.0, I mainly contributed my photo for Shawn to use in the Sprite Effects sample. Since then he put it in lots of other samples, and Eli started using it too, so I’m everywhere now.

For 2.0, I was supposed to provide some sound effects for the Audio 3D sample, but I got stage fright, so my friend Boo (Tracy’s cat) had to step in at the last moment.

What were some of the problems faced when developing your feature?

Some of the samples on the creators.xna.com site do not include my photo. I’m really not happy about that.

What’s your favorite part of XNA Game Studio, and why?

I love the Content Pipeline. It makes it so easy to drop my photo into Visual Studio and have it automatically built into an .xnb file, so you can put me into all kinds of different games and samples!

What is your favorite Xbox 360 game?

What’s an Xbox 360?

My favorite game is fighting with Boo. First I pretend to be gentle and lick his head, but then I bite his neck, and when he swats at me I jump down and look innocent, like nothing happened.

Share some tips and tricks for using XNA GS

I don’t like it when people use XNA GS. They should be petting me instead! Sometimes just meowing is enough to distract them from the computer. Other times I have to stretch up and lean my paws on their leg, or if that doesn’t work, I might jump up into their lap.

Last words?

Purrrr.

Note: This was Shawn’s idea :) Flame him!

It does support Visual Studio 2008 of course but ONLY allows development on Zune and PC, there is no Xbox 360 support with this release. You can install this side by side with your current installation of XNA Game Studio 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.

Read more about it here. If you run into issues, and you probably will, let us know so that we can fix them for the release.

Have fun everyone!

Deathrow (Original Xbox)

This was the first game I experienced that fits in that category. Deathrow was very well done. The game got a 9/10 review from teamxbox.com. It was a fast paced futuristic sports title with a very aggressive play style. It played on System Link (when not many games other than Halo supported that), had 4 player split screen and pretty damn good graphics. I was the only guy amongst my friends that bought that game. Never met someone that actually knew it let along had it… just died away.

The Outfit (Xbox 360)

Here’s another one of my favorite games that just died away very silently. The Outfit is a 3rd person, squad based RTS/shooter hybrid. I personally haven’t played a game like it before. It mixed regular shoot’em up style with Real Time Strategy concepts. You accumulate points and you can spend them on calling in vehicles, weapons, turrets, etc to the battlefield and you place them where you want. Excellent game, not so amazing graphics though, but still quite enjoyable. Again…died a horrible silent death…

Shadowrun (Xbox 360)

Ah… one of my super favorites: Shadowrun. A game that was prosecuted, trialed and sentenced to death before it even came out. Shadowrun was just a combination of bad decisions that clouded an astounding game underneath. First bad decision was using the Shadowrun license as basis for the game. I personally know nothing about the Shadowrun RPG world. But when fans of that RPG knew that their favorite game was butchered into a first person shooter, they instantly hated it for everything it could possibly be and never gave it a chance.

The second bad decision, which I didn’t care at all about, was the exclusion of any single player campaign for the game. I don’t play single player games, so I didn’t even notice there wasn’t one. But lots of people feel ripped off when a multiplayer only game costs $59.99. Again, killed it before it came out.

The game was the first cross platform title that allowed you to play vs PC gamers! Awesome idea, except it required Windows Vista to play. The game came out around the time Vista launched, so not many people had Vista to start with, and with drivers still in beta, most serious gamers were still on Windows XP anyway.

Game did not have the best graphics to be honest. They worked well, but with stuff like Gears of War floating around, it just paled in comparison. Not a bad decision per se, but probably not enough time to do better.

In the end though, those that stuck through all those bad decision were presented by one of the finest first person shooter in a long long time. Extremely well thought out, maps are awesome, races are very good, abilities are insanely balanced and fun. The game play mechanic is one that took a genre that is still somewhat stuck in the Doom days and enhanced on it in many ways.

Shadowrun will forever be one of those excellent games that I am very happy to have experienced. FPS games should take a few notes from this excellent title. R.I.P Shadowrun… you will not be forgotten.

Universe at War: Earth Assault (Xbox 360)

Now, this title just came out, so it’s a bit early to call it dead, but all indications so far point that way. Universe at War is a SCI-FI based RTS game that is cross platform (PC vs Xbox 360). RTS in general is one genre that is usually dismissed when it’s on a console. I will agree with everyone that it is a genre that is more suited on the PC due to mouse/keyboard. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work on the console.

UAW was preceded by titles such as Battle for Middleearth II and Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Both games made by EA. Those games were the first to bring a good and well thought-out RTS experience on the Xbox 360. But for unknown reasons, both games received zero support from EA and pretty much were left to die in their own stench of bugs and imbalance. Something you just don’t do with an RTS.

UAW brings an enhanced control scheme that is simply astounding. It is very easy to pick up and play and controls extremely well. I start to forget I am on a console after a while. The game has 3 races that play very differently and each has a huge arsenal of units and weapons that make for lots of strategies.

I don’t know… while this game is not officially dead, I am just not seeing a bright future. Looking for online games returns maybe one game. It has a world conquer mode that is quite sweet, but there are no players to fight against :( Come April 8th though, the patch to enable cross-platform play will be released. So I am hoping this will bring more people. We’ll see though…

Parting words…

So yeah… I find it sad and annoying when a great game just fades away and dies a horrible lonely death. I feel bad for the dev teams that spent months upon months working on such titles. I mean, if you release a crappy game, then you deserve for it to die. But all those game in my opinion were really good! Quite polished and very obvious that people put their hearts and souls into them. Most of them died due to bad or non-existent marketing. So they never got a chance to succeed in the first place.

Oh well… I am sure there are numerous business reasons with statistics to back them up that were used to justify their deaths. What do you guys think? Which of your favorite games were “sleeper hits”?

Who are you and what do you do at XNA GS team?

I am Scott Darnell the developer in charge of maintaining the source code for XNA Game Studio Connect and the Device Transport code base for XNA Game Studio.

What did you work on before joining XNA GS team?

I worked on Small Business Server 2000/2003 and before that I was on the MSN Passport team.

How did you join the XNA GS team? Tell the story!

I’ve always loved video games (who doesn’t!?), and I worked with someone in SBS that moved to this team.  That woke a spark in me, and I started to teach myself graphics programming techniques.  I didn’t really know what XNA was going to be, and didn’t think it would have anything as cool as what it is today. 

XNA needed somebody to deliver their Setup feature for V1, and I had happened to be the senior setup developer on the SBS team.  I decided to apply for the position, and I got the job!

What features did you work on for XNA GS 1.0 and 2.0?

In XNA GSE 1.0, I wrote Setup for the Windows components.  

In XNA GS 2.0, I started working on the XNA Game Studio Connect component.  Currently I also own the integration with the .NetCF on the Xbox 360, and the networking transport layer that is used to deploy, launch, and debug games on the Xbox 360.

What were some of the problems faced when developing your feature?

Since I own the integration between XNA Game Studio Connect and the .NetCF, I end up doing a lot of debugging into other people’s code.  This usually takes me down to the assembly level, or back and forth between user mode and kernel mode.  This can get really tricky since you don’t always know the assumptions of the code you are debugging.

What’s your favorite part of XNA Game Studio, and why?

My favorite feature of XNA Game Studio is the Content Pipeline.  In the past the one most annoying problem with writing games at home for me was finding ways to create content or to get content into my game.  It seems like all the super nice content creation tools were really expensive, and all of the free or cheap options were hard to get access to from code.  I have a ton of options available to me, and the object model for them is right at my finger tips.  This has made my “uber” programmer art much easier to consume in my games.

What is your favorite Xbox 360 game?

Worms.  This game has always been a favorite at the office with coworkers.  I introduced my family to it, and we spend time daily blowing each other up. :P

Share some tips and tricks for using XNA GS

Learn all about extending the Content Pipeline with content processors.  Doing as much one-time pre-processing at build time as you can will save your players the heartache of real-time calculations!

Zune

We have been working for a while on getting the Zune music player as a supported platform for XNA GS. Actually, if you remember from reading Yuichi Ito’s interview, this is the “secret” stuff he’s been working on for a while now! This will allow you guys to write your own games using the familiar XNA Framework and run them on a Zune device. All Zune devices are supported, old and new. You can read the FAQ that was posted in the forums about it. But I can tell you that I have used it (got it working on my Zune) and it is awesome! I was truly impressed by the work that was done so far, and it’s not even done!

Community Publishing

Ah… you’ve been asking for this since we released the first betas of XNA GS: “Can we publish our games on Xbox Live???”. Finally we have an answer that is good! Soon you will be able to upload a game you’ve written to the new http://creators.xna.com site (still in development but already looks HAWT!) and once it’s “approved”, people are going to be able to download it on their Xboxes through Xbox Live market place! So start making those games!!!! There are a lot of details regarding the publishing system that I am sure we’ll talk about more in the coming months. But trust me, this is very cool stuff. The guys working on this feature are incredibly cool and good at what they do.

XNA Games for download!

Yep, for a short while you are able to download 8 games that were built by XNA GS on Live Marketplace! Samurai Dishwasher is one of them! Go check out what people have done using XNA GS and have fun playing them. They are really cool games.

Now go have fun and I’ll get back to getting my lazy butt to continue my game series. I got some nice posts coming up… I just need to write them ;)

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.

Who are you and what do you do at XNA?

I’m Eli Tayrien, a developer for XNA Game Studio. I focus mostly on the framework and content pipeline areas of things. I’ve also worked on some of the educational content found on creators.xna.com. Hmmm.. what else do I do at XNA? Try to drive Nazeeh and Klucher as crazy as possible with weird music.

What did you work on before joining XNA?

I was hired by the XNA team directly out of college. I went to school at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where I got a B.S. in computer science. I spent a lot of my time in the IT department’s area, working on games in the lab. ( shameless plug! http://games.rit.edu/ ) I did two internships with the IT department. The first was at RIT, working on a shooter called Wings of Megaira. For the second, I worked on M.U.P.P.E.T.S, which is a really cool experimental 3d multi user programming environment.

How did you join the XNA team? Tell the story!

Pretty standard fare, I guess. After I graduated I applied for a job at Xbox. Boyd told me what his goals for the project were, and we had a fit. I still get a really big kick out of seeing my product help students and hobbyists just like me.

What features did you work on for XNA 1.0 and 2.0?

For 1.0, I worked on the content pipeline with Shawn and Klucher. I focused on the importers, mostly. For 1.0 refresh I worked on the SpriteFont code. For 2.0 Stephen and I worked on the processor parameters feature, and Shawn and I worked on gamer services.

What were some of the problems faced when developing your feature?

The hardest thing for me for so far has been knowing when to say when. There’s always more work we can do, and more features we can implement, and knowing where to make the cuts is difficult for me. Also, it was difficult to get fonts to 100%. There’s so many edge cases that can cause letters to be off by just one pixel or two, you testers are just so thorough!

What’s their favorite bit of XNA, and why?

My favorite bit? 1, probably. I’ve always been a fan of that one.

What is your favorite Xbox game?

That’s a hard one. I tend to play more casual games lately, but I played through Gears of War twice. I just beat half life 2 for the second time. That’s a great game – the levels are paced perfectly! Just when I start to get bored of one thing, they completely change it up. I’ve been playing a bunch of rock band with my friends, too. I’m a really big fan of making a lot of noise, so singing and drums are right up my alley. My roommate and I have just gotten re-addicted to Lego Star Wars, too. I love how you can jump into and out of that game as often as you want.

Share some tips and tricks for using XNA

Keep it simple. This isn’t an XNA framework thing specifically, but more general advice for students and hobbyists: making a game takes a lot of time. When you think about what kind of game you’re going to make, start small! In my opinion, you’re better off having a really polished small game than you are having a kludgy big game, with lots of half-done features.

When in doubt, check the creator’s club website! The community in the forums is really helpful, and we’ve got a lot of samples covering a variety of topics.

Learn your trig and vector math. This is true even for 2D games! It’s not nearly as hard as you think, and dot products will become your best friend J

Last words?

Thanks for your support. I’ve got a pretty cool job, and you guys make it possible.