FYI - XNA Game Studio Express beta released

Queasy

Moderator<br>Console Gaming
Aug 24, 2001
31,796
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Press Release
Microsoft today released the public beta of XNA Game Studio Express, the pioneering technology designed to open up game development to new audiences, including hobbyists, students and independent developers, in the hopes of injecting a shot of creativity into the electronic entertainment industry.

Novice game creators can download the tool today from http://msdn.microsoft.com/xna to develop games for Windows XP and Windows Vista, at no charge. The games built on Windows can be migrated to the Xbox 360 console system starting this holiday season as part of the XNA Creators Club subscription for $99 a year, or a four-month trial cost of $49, opening up retail console game development to anyone for the first time.


Since the announcement of XNA Game Studio Express? upcoming availability on August 14, the public response has been overwhelming ? more than 100 schools have requested information on how they can incorporate XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula and the breakthrough news has generated millions of hits on Internet search engines.

As one of nearly 20 leading universities worldwide incorporating XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula, including Southern Methodist University?s Guildhall and the University of Southern California?s GamePipe, Microsoft announced additional support from DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington, a leader in the field of digital interactive entertainment education. Through its ProjectFUN software running on XNA Game Studio Express and summer workshops starting in 2007, DigiPen will bring Xbox 360 console game development for the first time ever to thousands of children ages 10 through 16.

?XNA Game Studio Express is an incredibly accessible tool for making games for Microsoft?s game platforms and will provide our university students with modern tools and console development experience,? said Claude Comair, founder and chairman of the board at DigiPen Institute of Technology. ?And now with our ProjectFun for XNA Game Studio Express, we?re eager to extend our educational offerings on Windows and Xbox 360 to include young children.?

In conjunction with today?s release of the XNA Game Studio Express beta, XNA partner GarageGames will begin enrollment for its Torque X beta program which can be accessed via http://msdn.microsoft.com/xna. Torque X includes both Torque Game Builder and a version of the Torque Shader Engine which have both been developed in conjunction with XNA Game Studio Express, allowing budding game developers to use drag and drop tools to easily create great games. The final version of Torque X will be released this holiday.

The final version of XNA Game Studio Express and the XNA Creators Club for building and distributing games on the Xbox 360 will launch simultaneously this holiday. XNA Game Studio Professional will be available in spring 2007.
 

mzkhadir

Diamond Member
Mar 6, 2003
9,511
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Game Studio Express Readme
1. XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) Release
This file provides setup information and describes known issues for the XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) release.

1.1. Setup
This section describes the operating systems on which XNA Game Studio Express is supported and the additional software required for running XNA Game Studio Express.

Supported Operating Systems
XNA Game Studio Express is fully supported on the following operating systems.

Operating System Supported Versions
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
Professional Edition
Media Center Edition
Tablet Edition


Remarks
Note
Although the documentation states that XNA Game Studio Express is supported on Microsoft® Windows Vista?, this support will be available only in the final release of XNA Game Studio Express and not in the Beta Release.

Windows XP requires Service Pack 2
XNA Game Studio Express is supported for all user languages that are available on these operating systems.
Administrative privilege is not required to run XNA Game Studio Express. However, administrative privilege, or administrative elevation on Windows Vista, is required in order to install XNA Game Studio Express.
The Setup program for XNA Game Studio Express will complete on Windows 2003 Server. However, Windows 2003 Server is not a supported operating system.
Hardware Requirements
XNA Game Studio Express requires a graphics card that supports DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 2.0. Other hardware requirements for XNA Game Studio Express are identical to those for Visual Studio 2005. For more information, see the Visual Studio documentation.

Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition
XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) leverages the Visual C# Express development environment, extending it for game development. You can install Visual C# Express from the Microsoft Express Editions Web site.

We recommend that you configure the Visual Studio 2005 Help system to use online Help content when available. Using online Help content ensures that you are getting the most recently updated information.

To configure Visual Studio Help to use online content
On the Tools menu, click Options.

The Options dialog appears.

In the treeview control in the left-hand pane of the Options dialog box, click the Online node beneath the Help node.

You may need to click the plus sign next to the Help node in order to make the Online node visible.

In the set of options labeled When loading Help content, select Try online first, then local.
Click OK.

Note
XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) is designed to work only with Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition. However, other members of the Visual Studio 2005 line of products, for example Visual Studio 2005 Professional, can co-exist with XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) on the same computer.

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. The Setup program for Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition will install the .NET Framework if it is not already installed on your computer. You can also install the .NET Framework from the Microsoft .NET Framework Developer Center.

August 2006 DirectX Software Development Kit
In order to author audio content for your game, you will need the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) from the August 2006 DirectX Software Development Kit (SDK). Install the August 2006 DirectX SDK from the Microsoft Download Center.

1.1.1. Known Issues
This section describes known issues that you may encounter when setting up XNA Game Studio Express.

1.1.1.1. Register Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Before Installing XNA Game Studio Express
You must register Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition before installing XNA Game Studio Express. To register Visual C# 2005 Express Edition, click Register Product on the Help menu.

1.1.1.2. Close Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Before Installing XNA Game Studio Express
Before installing XNA Game Studio Express, close any running instances of Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.

1.1.1.3. Uninstall XNA Game Studio Express Before Uninstalling Visual C# Express Edition
If you choose to uninstall Visual C# Express Edition, you must first uninstall XNA Game Studio Express. XNA Game Studio Express will not uninstall properly if Visual C# Express Edition is not currently installed.

1.1.1.4. DirectX Redistributable Files Removed Only on Uninstall
After you install Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta), a copy of the DirectX Redistributable files will persist in C:\Program Files\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio Express\DXRedist. These are temporary files used by Setup and are not supported for direct use by developers. Uninstalling Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) will uninstall these temporary files.

1.2. Content Creation
This section describes issues that you may encounter when using the content creation tools with XNA Game Studio Express.

1.2.1. XACT Does Not Work on Microsoft Windows Vista
The Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) does not work on the Windows Vista operating system. This issue will be corrected by an updated release of XACT sometime in the first half of 2007.
1.3. XNA Framework
This section describes issues that you may encounter when using the XNA Framework.

1.3.1. Cues Have a Memory Leak that Can Be Mitigated by Calling AudioEngine.Update
Cues will leak some memory upon being destroyed, eventually causing out-of-memory exceptions and other problems. This issue takes a long time to manifest itself in realistic scenarios. To help mitigate this issue, ensure that you call AudioEngine.Update in your code once per frame. This problem will be investigated as part of version 1.

1.4. Starter Kits
This section describes issues that you may encounter when using the XNA Game Studio Express starter kits.

1.4.1. Instantiating the Spacewar Starter Kit May Be Slow
Creating a new instance of the Spacewar Starter Kit may take a significant amount of time, depending on the speed of your computer. This issue is related to the size of textures in Spacewar and will be fixed in the final release of XNA Game Studio Express.

1.5. Documentation
This section describes issues that you may encounter with the XNA Game Studio Express documentation.

1.5.1. Broken Hyperlinks in Documentation
You may encounter broken hyperlinks in the documentation. To work around this issue, look up the corresponding topic in the documentation index.



 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,835
5,714
126
that's hot. i may actually download this next week and try to mess around with it. i have a few ideas that could make some nice xbla games :)
 

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Aug 20, 2000
20,577
432
126
Hmm, I was just thinking about getting into this at lunch today. Good stuff.