Talk:Microsoft XNA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Video games. For more information, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.	CVG Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.
CVG To-do: edit  Gaming Collaboration of the week: Imagic Expand: New CVG Articles, Normality, Pac-Man World 2, Operation Flashpoint: Elite, Call of Juarez, Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar, Ford Street Racing, Betrayal at Krondor CVG Peer Review: List of F-Zero titles, Kya: Dark Lineage, Wii Remote, Dynasty Warriors 4, The Sims 2, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Kirby's Dream Land, Electronic sports, Fire Emblem, Dante (Devil May Cry), The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Final Fantasy XII, Sonic the Hedgehog (16-bit), Classes in World of Warcraft Cleanup: Age of Mythology, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Betrayal at Krondor, List of Nintendo trademarks Merge: Deletions / Essential articles / Magazines Assess and Prioritise articles (Log)

edit

Archives

Upto September 2006

Contents 1 Criticism Section very POV 2 Managed DirectX.Net 2.0 Controversy 3 Incorrect citation 4 Is that really what it stands for? 5 No 3D Sound 6 Advert 7 Initial Community Focus Section

[edit] Criticism Section very POV

The criticism section cites nothing and uses weasel words. Once one corrects for these things, there is really nothing of merit left to it. XNA is a system in production, to complain about XNA is to complain about a construction crew not having put walls on the house yet. Give it some freaking time.

Although already adopted by a large number of developers worldwide, XNA has not become widely used for its main purpose ^{[citation needed]}; it was supposed to make game programming simpler.

It has made game programming simpler. Additionally, this statement is a non sequitur, as it does not elaborate on "XNA's main purpose" or how XNA has failed to acheived it. Perhaps if we had a citation, we would know what the original author intended by this sentence. As it stands, the first portion of the sentence (adoption) is unverifiable, and the second and third portions are vacuously empty. Deleting.

However, because it lacks features such as Skeletal animation, code which would seem complicated for a beginner is still required to get things moving.

No mention is made of the possible reason for this exlcusion, i.e., the early production status of XNA. If developers express a desire to have a skeletal animation system in XNA, then it's pretty likely Microsoft will include it. This sentence needs to be changed to indicate that lack of features are simply a function of lack of maturity, not some greater flaw in XNA's design itself.

Another problem with XNA is that some people say it takes too much control away from the developer^{[citation needed]}, which is why many large game developers choose to directly access the DirectX APIs through a language such as C++.

Weasel words (some people say...), and probably untrue. Established developers use C++ because of A) a mature toolchain for work in C++, B) mature assets, including 3D engines that are coded in C++, C) proliferation of C++ knowledge amongst game developlers in general, and D) fear, uncertainty, and doubt of new, untested technologies. Ten years ago, game developers railed against switching to C++ from C, ten years before that they railed against C in favor of to-the-metal assembly coding. There is no loss of control, it is a trading of control from that of the hardware to that of the expression of the game.

Given the cost savings one can have through the rapid application development principles brought to game development by XNA, if more developers had confidence in .NET and C#, XNA would see higher adaption. It's not because of a "lack of control." Control has no meaning, it's bottom dollar profit, and getting games done on time and under-budget increases profits.

Finally, if one were to develop a game in C++/DX that did everything a .NET/XNA game did under-the-hood, they would have similar runtime profiles. C++ is not magically several orders faster than JIT compiled .NET code. Equivalent operations take equivalent processing time, no matter in what language the program was originally written. The problem comes from a misinterpretation of what constitutes an equivalent operation. Garbage Collection and Managed Types are features, features that sometimes get hacked into systems when attempting to compensate for their lack of inclusion in C++. You'll be hard-pressed to find anyone that can code a more performant implementation of GC than what is in .NET.capnmidnight 21:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Managed DirectX.Net 2.0 Controversy

• Companies have developed for Managed DirectX.Net 1.0 and 1.1 for years.
• Near the end of 2005, a beta for 2.0 (2.0 from now on) was released, with no warranties, as usual.
• This did not stop several companies from starting to develop for 2.0.
• Six months later, Microsoft declared that they would never release 2.0, but merge much of it into XNA instead.
• The companies which were developing for 2.0 got the advice to rewrite six months of coding for 1.1, and legally release their program, then rewrite it again for XNA once Microsoft was finished with their new API.

As Managed Directx wasnt going to anywhere, they decided to revitalize it in the form of XNA. Commercial games mostly use Assembly and C/C++, so this decision maybe only affected some "student" or "hobbyist" projects, big deal.

Yes, big deal. I can dig out forum posts of professional developers who had entire teams working on MDX2, if you really can't find them yourself. I've seen some of those claim losses of up to roughly $40000, and that's not counting scrapping the entire project, but just the cost of the rewrite. I do agree that XNA, in its current state, is a bit for hobbyists. That's because the professional version is still not out yet (three years in the making). I'm betting that many big studios will switch, because they need reusability in today's huge projects. Just as Blizzard dumped assembly and C in favor of OOP reusability with C++ (a decade ago). C++ was not designed for OOP from the ground-up, which (the non-proprietary) C# was. Even uber-coder Carmack has given up on C, and the OOP shows when you play DOOM III.

[edit] Incorrect citation

XNA Game Studio Express is the IDE for homebrew developers that will be available free of charge during the 2006 Christmas period

This has nothing to do with the linked article: [1]

Nothing is said about a release date in the cited press release (though I believe this information to be accurate).

Timbatron 04:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is that really what it stands for?

Microsoft has a history of naming things just because it sounds cool... "Xbox"? What the hell? "Xbox360" What the hell-er. But I like it :D

The [XNA Faq http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/] just states :

Q: What does XNA stand for?

A: XNA’s Not Acronymed

Does that really mean XNA expands to XNA’s Not Acronymed, or it was just to say that there was no expansion for XNA? --soum^সৌমোyasch 08:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the self-referencing acronym explanation better than the latter. Since it's capitalized: "XNA’s Not Acronymed", I would assume it's the former. Otherwise the answer would be "XNA’s not acronymed." — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:46, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe I heard that it was Cross Platform Next generation Architecture in Looking at XNA Part 1 from Channel 9. Amnesiasoft 01:43, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[Link to Channel 9 vid http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=257928]. Explains that the acronym came first. I suspect the answer XNA's Not Acronymed can be taken as meaning both it is not a valid acronym and it could stand for "XNA's Not Acronymed" on purpose. Sort of a double entendre.(124.152.38.104 06:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC))

That's not what Microsoft's web site says. See above. — Frecklefoot | Talk 10:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I too like the self-referencing acronym, but can anyone say "Rip on GNU?" As with most things in the Microsoft world, it's not original. David Mitchell 00:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

GNU wasn't the first to do it by a long shot. If you're really going to argue "lack of originality" here, you're going to have to date it back further than GNU. --Steven Fisher 01:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Just for the record, the name "Xbox" wasn't random. Originally, it was called the DirectXbox ('cause it ran DirectX and this was right after they decided to ditch OpenGL in Win95). This article explains the whole thing a lot better than I can.

As far as the acronym goes, I wouldn't be suprised if it orginally was "Cross Platform Next generation Architecture" and then changed it. I can't pick out "indie game development framework" out of that. Why doesn't someone post on the MSDN forums and ask? « SCHLAGWERK^{Talk to me!} 00:16, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I may be missing the point, but isn't it supposed to be humerous? Since XNA is an acronym that expands "XNA’s Not Acronymed", there is the contridiction that it is both an acronym and not an acronym. It seems to be more of a homage or parody of GNU, HURD, WINE, and LAME, and other "backronyms" common in software. -Hyad 07:55, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The first thing that springs to mind is, ironically, "Microsoft has sold out". Microsoft's using recursive acronyms now? Gee, before you know it Windows will be open source. :-) Sounds like a cheap way to add some genuine hacker flavor to a Microsoft product. 82.92.119.11 20:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Could not agree more, that bit and the whole article make me wanna puke. Microsoft are quite sly and seem to use wikipedia for free advertising a lot 60.241.89.195 10:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No 3D Sound

On a technical note, the lack of 3d sound support in XNA v1.0 and the uselessness of "XACT" make the whole thing a joke. Once you get past the hype (like this article) and try to use this XNA for a real game you start to see what a hack job it is. 60.241.89.195 10:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

3D sound will be added in the April 2007 release.

[edit] Advert

I removed the {{advert}} tag from this article, which was placed by User:204.50.199.4 without comment on 2/12. Looking at the number of different contributors to this article and the content, I do not believe this reads like an advertisement (though it may need cleanup). If you disagree, please comment here before reverting my edit. --J Morgan^(talk) 14:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Please make certain the XNA page remains factual, and remains free of personal opinions. For instance, statements about XNA not being useful is based on personal experience, opinion and even bias, not fact, since there are people such as myself who do find it useful. Simply state what the XNA Framework can and cannot do. Let the reader reach their own opinion. Instead of a Critisim section, there should be a Pro and Con section for better factual balance.

[edit] Initial Community Focus Section

The section provides nothing more than the results of a google search, and the phrase "XNA Game Studio Express exited beta status first" makes no sense as there is no context. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.82.189.227 (talk • contribs).

The phrase does make sense, in the context that the Express version is for the hobbyist community, and it has already been released, as opposed to the Pro version, which is not yet out there. No matter, the entire section is just link spam anyway, so I see no need to reinstate it. In similar spirit, I'm removing the link to 'George's XNA Programming', as is also link spam. I will continue to monitor this page and remove link spam every now and then. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.120.188.146 (talk • contribs).