Creators Club Communiqué 46
Salutations, Creators!
Wow! The past few weeks have been a blur for the entire team! Last week was the Game Developers Conference, where we announced XNA Game Studio 4.0 and several of its supported features. This week was MIX 2010,where we announced the availability of the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Community Technical Preview (CTP)!
With a new product release comes new questions, so for this week’s CCC we’re going to try to answer the most common ones.
Q. Where can I download the XNA Game Studio 4.0 CTP?
A. You can download it from here at the Microsoft Download Center.
Q. Why does the download page say Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP?
A. XNA Game Studio 4.0 is a set of software tools that can be used by developers to create games for Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox 360, and Windows PC.
Although this CTP includes XNA Game Studio 4.0 assemblies for Windows and Windows Phone, it only supports the Reach profile. If you try to create a HiDef game, you will get an error saying your hardware does not support HiDef capabilities. Your hardware is fine and really quite impressive! This error happens because we don’t support HiDef in the CTP..Q. Can I use this to make Xbox LIVE Indie Games?
A. Those creating games for Xbox LIVE Indie Games should continue to use XNA Game Studio 3.1.
Q. What’s “Reach”? What’s “HiDef”?
A. Shawn Hargreaves has a recent blog post that explains this in detail!
Q. What other tools and resources are available for me if I’m interested in making a Windows Phone 7 Series game?
A. There is lots of stuff!
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- Ready to create your first XNA Game Studio 4.0 game for Windows Phone? The new article on XNA Creators Club Online, Create your First Game on Windows Phone, should help!
- Speaking of XNA Creators Club Online, the team is working hard on providing a consistent cadence of new developer education content; be sure to stay tuned to our “Education Roadmap”.
- Channel 9 is hosting the Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Training Kit. It is geared for beginners that want to get started developing apps for Windows Phone. It’s useful even if you’re not familiar with Silverlight or the XNA Framework. You can also download the training kit to your computer here.
- When should you use Silverlight? When should you use XNA Game Studio 4.0? Find out here.
- The legendary Charles Petzold is writing a book called Programming Windows Phone 7 Series; get an excerpt here!
- Domenic Datti is putting together a way of managing input between devices with an abstracted IGameActionManager interface on his blog.
- Sgt. Conker has a wrapper for all four built-in effect types in XNA Game Studio 4.0 from X-Tatic.
- XNA Game Studio/Direct X MVP Joel Martinez has already made the first Windows Phone 7 Series Flashlight App!
Q. I’m having a difficult time with the Windows Phone Emulator and XNA Game Studio 4.0 CTP! Help!
A. That’s not really a question, but Michael Klucher has a recent blog post that could help!
Q. Where can I go if I have more questions about the XNA Game Studio 4.0?
A. Our forums at XNA Creators Club Online are a great place to start. Additionally, you can also use the Windows Phone forums here!
Q. Who is out there blogging? Who is Twittering?
A. Everyone! The main people you’ll want to follow when it comes to XNA Game Studio 4.0 and Windows Phone 7 Series are the following:
Superstar
Blog
Shawn Hargreaves
Andre Vrignaud
Michael Klucher
Anand Iyer
Charlie Kindel
Loke Uei Tan
Christian Schormann
Windows Phone Dev Blog
Don’t forget to follow @XNACommunity, too!
~kathleen sanders
XNA Community Manager