Exciting new announcements!

Well I have to admit, I’ve been anxiously awaiting the opportunity where I could finally get out and let the public know some of these things, and now the reigns have been taken off and I’ve never felt better about the opportunity to write a blog post.

First and foremost, myself.  After almost 8 long years I’ve decided to leave Microsoft because I’ve gotten an offer that is simply too good to pass up.  Starting Monday I begin my new career being the guy on the other end of the phone when that Verizon Wireless employee is asking “Can you hear me now?” continously.  Can you imagine the endless joy that can be obtained by sitting on the phone saying “Yes.” all day?  Sure, I have to take a little pay cut, and lose my benefits, and move into a cardboard box downtown, but if you ask me, it’s a small price to pay for doing something you love.

Now, I know you’re probably worried about what my leaving will do to either Managed DirectX and/or the XNA Framework.  Unfortunately with this announcement they’ve taken my secret decoder ring, so I’m no longer able to translate the secret messages I get.  However, based on my last few meetings before they stole my ring, this is the most likely direction they are going.

The XNA Framework will still be cross-platform, but Windows and Xbox 360 have been removed from the list.  That’s just “too hard”..  Every abacus platform has been added though.  This should allow us to get the results we’re hoping for.

We’ve decided that the choice of languages was entirely too large.  From now on, all managed games will be written in COBOL.

Due to these two changes, that should lower the development time of the framework, and it looks like it will be finished well before our current June 2017 release date (of course, if we run into problems with those two changes it still might slip).

As you can see, there’s a lot of great stuff going on.  I for one haven’t been this excited since..  Well, this time last year!!!!!!

Managed DirectX 2.0, Xna and Me…

One of the Program Managers for the Xna Framework recently started his first blog.  Unless you have the main RSS feed of this site subscribed, you probably didn’t notice his first post, which talks about a lot.

You may have also seen the ‘official’ press release announcing the Xna Framework.

If you haven’t read Al’s post yet, I suggest you go do that first.  It’s ok, i’ll wait for you to get done..

(Yup, i’m still waiting)

(You haven’t forgotten about me have you?)

Great, you’re back!  Anyway, there’s so much stuff I want to talk about and say, but I’m probably going to start rambling and forget mentioning things..  C’est la vie..

So anyways, like I mentioned last week, I’ve moved over to the XBox team and the Xna team specifically.  If you’re @ GDC this week, you might have the chance to see some of the demos we have written entirely in managed code running on both Windows as well as the XBox 360.  People have been asking me for what seems like forever if there would be managed support for the Xbox, and I guess we’ve finally answered that.

Of course, i’ve also had people tell me numerous times over the last 3 to 4 years that it is essentially impossible to write a game in managed code.  I have no idea why people think that, but obviously we disagree, and our demo’s are starting to show that (even considering the early nature of the work we’ve done).

So what about MDX2 though?  As I’m sure you’re now aware (since you *did* go read Al’s post), what is now called Managed DirectX 2 will be folded into the Xna Framework.  The assembly itself will still ship (in non-release ‘beta’ form) until we are ready to ship a pre-release version of the Xna Framework, but in it’s current form, it will never be officially “released.”

We’re working feverishly to get a preview of the Xna Framework out as soon as possible, and I’m quite excited about the work we’re doing, and the excitement people will have when they see it.  It’s also quite refreshing to have an entire team supporting in these efforts.

I look forward to talking more about some of the exciting things we’re doing in the (hopefully not too distant) future.

Busy busy busy!!

Lots of changes been going on over here recently which have been keeping me quite busy (well, more busy than usual).  I’ve recently switched groups over to the Xbox team (and the XNA team specifically), and I’m quite excited about the stuff we’re working on.

Don’t think this means I’ve “forgotten” about MDX though, believe me, I haven’t.  While i’m thinking about it though, it would be great if the people who are using MDX2 right now could contact me and give me some ideas on what you’re working on, and when you hope to ship.  I may not be able to get a chance to reply to everyone, but I’ll read them all.

This is quite the ‘exciting’ (yet overwhelmingly busy) time for me..  Like I said a few blog posts ago, we’re starting the revolution of managed code in gaming.

Koios Works, at it again..

So amongst the other mails I got today, i also got one from Marshall Belew from Koiois Works.  You may remember them from my posts way back since they were one of the first commercial MDX games out.

I’m sure you can guess that since i’m blogging about it now, that game #3 is coming soon.  It’s called “Panzer Command: Operation Winterstorm” and the engine they’ve done has come a *long* way since the first Tin Soldiers game..  I’m quite impressed with the screenshots i’ve seen thus far.

You can see some of said screenshots in this forum post from Matrix Games (the publisher of the 3 games).  There is also a public forum for the game here.

One of the best quotes I have from Marshall which pretty much sums up my feelings on MDX and managed code in gaming?

“We continue to be complemented by our peers in the industry for what we have accomplished with the time and budget of our games.”

I posted about the first game they did in October 2004.  It’s now Feb 2006, a mere 17 months later, and not only have they published a second game, this is going to be the third.  Big congrats to those guys.  It’s looking great.

February 2006 SDK Available..

I’m always the last person to announce these things, but.. Hey.. Did you hear?  The February SDK is out!

While the MDX2 assembly is still in beta form for this release, it’s still pretty exciting for me currently.  The time in which it will be in release mode is rapidly approaching, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m quite excited about the future.

For this release, there was more of the same as the last release.  Missing functionality implemented (you can actually save your textures/surfaces again!)  Bug fixes, performance improvements, the majority of the D3D samples were ported to MDX2 as well.

Obviously I can’t promise anything right now, but we’re hard at work trying to get this up to the quality required to be called “released”, and I’m confident of our ability to get it done. Everyone’s on board, the documentation is coming along nicely, and things are moving at a nice pace.  I’m excited because it seems to me that soon, we’ll be starting the revolution of managed code in gaming.

As always, please provide any feedback in the API you feel needs more polish.  I believe David has been deleting/locking posts in the public forums on the beta, so make sure you post them in the beta newsgroups. I try to monitor that relatively often (and when I forget, David’s there to remind me).  I’d recommend getting any suggestions/comments/feedback/bugs/anything else in quickly though. Time’s a-tickin!

The COMPLETE Effect and HLSL Guide

I just recently acquired a copy of “The COMPLETE Effect and HLSL Guide” and I must say, it delivers *exactly* what the title implies.  It also included a little ‘abbreviated version’ that is a few pages long and the size of two credit cards that makes an excellent quick reference.. I’m not entirely sure if the little quick reference is included with the book or not (it appears to be a separate companion piece), but the addition is welcome.

My only complaint about the book would be it’s all unmanaged code (for the non-HLSL parts).  Considering that’s a relatively small portion of the book (and the ‘port’ of that code to C# is pretty straight-forward), it’s a very minor complaint.

I wouldn’t want people to go get the book expecting to see lots of cool demos and samples of these awesome shaders you can write, because that’s not what you should expect (and based on the title, how could you?)  What this book gives you is the down and dirty details of the Effects system and HLSL.

I’ve noticed a lot of people that bought some of the ShaderX books because they have all the cool samples of ‘awesome’ shaders, and after getting the book realizing they have no idea what these ‘awesome shaders’ do, or how to make them do anything else.  If you’re in that boat, or simply want/need to know more about HLSL, I’d highly recommend this book.