If so, how is it? I've seen several videos of games/demos made with it, and it looks promising (mostly for platformers I've been seeing).
However, I have a few questions.
Is it free?
Are tutorials and such easy to find online (preferably on a single site)?
And, how is the learning curve? While I'm certainly no expert programmer like some here are, I'd consider myself decent at BYOND programming. It didn't take me too long to get into.
ID:278234
 Nov 19 2009, 6:20 pm
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C# is like Java, not C++.
Though apparently without the absurdly bloated library of objects / functions. Supposedly. | |
http://creators.xna.com/
You can download it completely free, but to have Xbox 360 developing software you must subscribe for $99 or so. Are tutorials and such easy to find online (preferably on a single site)? Yes. And, how is the learning curve? Somewhat hard if you have no experience in the coding syntax. | |
Nope, never touched it. They charge far too much for that stuff.
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Ham Doctor wrote:
Nope, never touched it. They charge far too much for that stuff. You can use XNA totally free of charge, what are you talking about? | |
There is a $99.00 a year XNA membership charge. You are highly limited to what you can or cannot do depending if you are willing to pay the membership fee or not.
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Ham Doctor wrote:
There is a $99.00 a year XNA membership charge. You are highly limited to what you can or cannot do depending if you are willing to pay the membership fee or not. Twenty seconds to find this: "Do I need an XNA Creators Club Online premium membership to create games? You don't need a premium membership to make games for Windows or Zune. However, you must be a premium member and in a supported region to create games for the Xbox 360, to release Xbox 360 games to Indie Games on Xbox LIVE, or to peer-review submitted games." | |
If I can't do it with everything then it's being limited. Why can I do it for Zune and Windows but not the Xbox 360. There are also other restrictions in place.
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XNA is fairly easy to get a grasp of; everything is incredibly well-documented and there are a lot of tutorials. Threads are answered very frequently on the forums, by power users and/or the Xna crew themself.
Everything is free unless you want to develop for the Xbox marketplace (i.e. develop for Xbox). | |
Actually, there aren't ANY restrictions in place. You simply can't release your game to Xbox Arcade. You're still free to create games for Xbox 360.
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Not really. That's like calling writing a book restricted because you have to pay to publish your book yourself.
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The writer of The Wizard of Oz published the book himself at first, as he couldn't get it published otherwise. I'm sure there are many other examples, too.
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Actually, I am not. I took journalism for entirety of my high school career. I was the school editor for 3 of those years. I took several writing classes and several English classes.
I learned that anyone smart, never agrees to pay for their own publishing or to cover the cost of any books not purchased. And a good author, an author that the publisher has faith it, won't have to even have to deal with that part of negations to begin with. XNA sucks. Their yearly membership costs are ridiculous. And last time I checked (which had been almost a year admittedly)to test run any other Xbox XNA creations you had to have a membership as well. That or have your game published on XBL and people actually purchase it. And to get your stuff published a whole new ballpark there. | |
The only other way to publish anything on the Xbox 360 is to enter into a publishing deal with Microsoft directly. It's that, the $99/year to develop for Xbox Arcade, or nothing at all.
Not everything is free. Wah wah frickin' wah. | |
The whole point is that you're paying for the bandwidth and the space on the server you're costing them. Microsoft and Apple both have similar indie developer programs, and they work; unless you're a piss poor developer, you're going to make a good bit of money off of selling your game.
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I'd like to know how you are costing them bandwidth and space. I talked to a few people who use XNA and they have to sync their Xbox 360 up to their computer, they store all their own data, compile all their own stuff unless it gets published to the market place.
I've seen the indie games that have come out as a result of "cheap" developer programs. Most of them are trash. | |
Also, chances are C# has a decent sized learning curve; it's probably a bit like C++, which is a difficult language. However, it's still probably a bit easier than C++ itself.