Archive for category Xbox 360
Tech Ed Australia 2010 Day 1
I was recently invited to speak on a pre-day for faculty and students at TechEd Australia, held on the Gold Coast. The plan is to write up a little bit about each day, although it might not be up the same day, depending on internet availability.
So today was Academic Day, in particular, for faculty members, who had been invited to hear about what students want, directly from students. (That was the theme)
A couple of weeks previously, Andrew Parsons (@MrAndyPuppy), the local Academic Developer Evangelist asked me to do a presentation on Windows Phone 7, with a split between the experience promised by Microsoft, and developing for the phone. After I learned that I really cannot do a reasonable phone demo in 10 minutes, I cut it down to a demo of pre-made code.
Either way, some big highlights arose today. I managed to get Andy to let me see and use a developer phone, and I must say, awesome, however I cannot go into specifics, nor can I take photos unfortunately.
The other highlight was the awesome keynote presented by Michael Kordahi (@delic8genius) with a special appearance by August De Los Reyos (@augustdlr) presenting his experiences developing User experiences on the Surface, and even the Windows key on the keyboard. Some awesome demos for a theoretical Foxtel experience (Cable TV in Australia) that uses all devices, including a Surface table (jeez they love that thing). They then showed off the big devices for this year, Kinect and Windows Phone 7, and seeing this in person was really awesome. I cannot wait for next week when I will get to try out a device. (Unfortunately they took the device back to Sydney right after the keynote.)
Photos will follow as I can sort them out, and maybe videos depending on what I’m allowed to post, and what connection I can get.
Exciting days remain ahead, I have to present Windows Phone 7 to students on Thursday, and of course I must experience the great TechEd sessions.
XNA 4.0 – Reach/HiDef & My Article(s)
Posted by Michael in Programming, Xbox 360, xna on March 12, 2010
Shawn Hargreaves just posted this: http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnhar/archive/2010/03/12/reach-vs-hidef.aspx
I suggest you have a read through it if you are interested in the kinds of things I post on this blog, especially the Light Pre Pass technique.
One of the key parts of Shawn’s article are the changes that will be made to Render Targets, and the bucketing of the RenderTarget/Texture formats into the Reach and HiDef profiles.
It would be safe to say that future articles here will require the HiDef feature set. I make use of some of the Render Targets that do not exist in Reach, and while there may be a way to use a Reach Render Target, for the purposes of conveying the technique, I will not be adding extra code to support it. I may however note where alternatives can be used, and hint or mention how to use them.
I know I have previously used BGRA formats in my sample, and in future this will become RGBA, no big deal. I won’t change the 3.1 sample for now, but if I need to change other things to upgrade it to 4.0, then that will be “fixed”.
This shouldn’t be much of a problem, if you are going to be using the articles I plan to write, then you’ll have a computer that works with HiDef, or an XBOX.
As a side note, I no longer have a valid Creators Club subscription, so I have not tested the recent Light Pre-Pass article on the XBOX. If anyone has any issues let me know and I will try and look into it. I plan to get a premium subscription soon and test future articles on the XBOX.
Robbie Bach Uni Talk
Posted by Michael in Games, Programming, Students, Xbox 360 on January 31, 2010
Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division is giving a public talk at the University of Sydney on Tuesday 9th February 2010.
For any readers who are in Sydney, this would be a great event to attend. E&D covers everything from the XBOX to the Surface, even Keyboards + Mice from MS hardware.
Hopefully there will be a Natal unit on display, and maybe a demo, although no confirmation yet.
RSVP by emailing kumarman[at]microsoft.com
Rewrite of LPP Article Planned
Posted by Michael in Programming, Xbox 360, directx, xna on December 12, 2009
I recently went about making the current Light Pre Pass system run on the XBOX 360, and had to fix some issues that appeared there. As a result, the next article to go up will be a rewrite with all of these fixes included. I should also be able to provide the sample code at the same time.
This time around I will cover Point, Ambient and Directional lights in the same post, as well as including information about an alternate light buffer format that allows for improved specular + per-material specular.
Expect this either during the weekend of 20-21st Dec, or shortly after that.
Unfortunately I could not test the code on the XBOX the first time around due to subscription issues, however everything is fine now, and I can and will test on both XBOX and my desktop PC beforehand. (Perhaps also other PC configs depending on who I can find online at the time, and what other machines I have on hand 
)
Light Pre Pass in XNA: Basic Implementation
Posted by Michael in Programming, Xbox 360, directx, xna on December 1, 2009
NOTE: This article is now obsolete. An up-to-date sample and article can be found at http://mquandt.com/blog/2010/03/light-pre-pass-round-2/
In this part I will cover how to implement the basic form of the Light Pre Pass renderer, with support for point lights, and the basic Blinn-Phong shader, including Albedo texture support.
As this article is fairly advanced in nature, I have to make certain assumptions about my audience, so that I do not spend half my time explaining basics. Firstly, you should have an understanding of basic concepts such as Cameras, Fullscreen Quads (including how to render one) and rendering a mesh with custom effects.
This pretty much means that as long as you have done some 3D work before, you should be fine. It would be best if you also knew XNA, as I will be using that to write this implementation, however as long as you can translate from C# and get the basic idea, that should be enough.
As you can see from these requirements, this article is not aimed at beginners, and if you are looking for tutorials on how to get started with XNA for 3D development, I would recommend you visit some great sites such as:
Those sites will help you get started with XNA, and once you are familiar and comfortable with the concepts behind 3D graphics, you can return here to learn an advanced renderer implementation.
My focus in this article will be on the implementation of the renderer, as a result, I will not be referring to the implementation of cameras or scene graphs.
Now that the housekeeping is out of the way, we can begin.
Nebulon Now Available
Just letting everyone who reads this know that Nebulon is now available on XBOX LIVE Community Games. The official website for the game is http://nebulon.darkomengames.co.uk and you can go through there to buy online, or find it on your XBOX 360 console.
We are considering bringing this to PC, there are some things that need to be done before that can happen, but if DapydTheBard is willing it will probably happen.
Nebulon in Peer Review
I mentioned previously that a game by fellow DOG member DaphydTheBard was undergoing play testing. Well I am happy to report it is ready for peer review and hopefully should be out soon. If anyone has a Creators Club Premium account, it would be great if you could peer review Nebulon and help speed up its release.
You can get to the peer review page using this link: http://catalog.xna.com/en-GB/GameDetails.aspx?catalogEntryId=7432580d-50e3-439e-b180-f1ca39df65a3&type=1
Hope you enjoy the game, and let us know what you think on the DOG blog.
Edit: Seems it failed due to a MU issue that should be fixed soon. The DOG blog and other places will have further info when the game goes back into peer review.
Nebulon in Playtest
For those of you out there with a Creators Club Premium membership, head on over to http://creators.xna.com and help us (Dark Omen Games) out by playtesting Nebulon, our first game on the service. You can see a trailer for Nebulon in my last post here, and using the normal interface on the Creators Club website, you can access the build of Nebulon we have up there and try it out. Let us know what you think and if you encounter any issues in the associated forum thread.
Hope you enjoy it!
You can find out more about Nebulon here. We hope to have a game website up shortly with screenshots, videos, and information on both the PC and XBOX 360 versions.
[Review] Halo Wars
Platform: Xbox 360
Developer: Ensemble Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Rating (USA): T (Teen)
Rating (AU): PG (Parental Guidance Recommended)
Demo: Available on Xbox.com
(This review is based on a release copy of the game graciously provided by MGS)
Halo Wars is the final game to emerge from the venerable Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires series), and the first title from Ensemble to be exclusive to the Xbox 360 console. The game will be released in PAL territories on the 26th February 2009, and in North America on the 3rd March 2009. The title is available in Standard and Limited editions, with the limited edition contained in a plastic covering that holds a Steelbook case for the game, and an extras package for the bonus items, just like Halo 3.
The limited edition contains a code for a Honour Guard Wraith vehicle that can be redeemed on Xbox Live, and a code to download the upcoming Mythic Map pack for Halo 3. It also contains a rubber patch from the Spirit of Fire (the UNSC ship in the game), 6 leader cards that describe the leader powers, and a graphic novel set in the Halo universe.