Is there some way of programming a game for windows / xbox 360 outside XNA Game Studio. I assume that for Windows a just need to download DirectX and install it into visual studio but for xbox i'm not sure.
PS: If the way is XDK (for Xbox) is possible for an Indie Games Developer to get his hands on that SDK.
Thanks in advance
To self-publish a game to the Xbox 360 Xbox Live Indie Games section XNA is your only option. Licensed developers who publish either full retail games or Xbox Live Arcade games have more options but those are developers who either have a publisher working with them or Microsoft is working with them as a publisher, which I would assume is not the case for you.
As a side note, it's still the solution for 360 indie publishing, but XNA is not being actively developed any more and does not target new Windows store applications for Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. As such it works for 360 Indie games and Windows desktop games, but you you'll have to port your game to move it to modern windows platforms and there is currently no plans to support XNA on other platforms moving forward.
Related
Quoted from Windows:
If you’re a software developer, you can use the Kinect for Xbox 360
together with your computer to test the software you’re working on.
However, to get the full Kinect for Windows experience, we recommend
you download the Kinect for Windows SDK and use it with the Kinect for
Windows.
Question 1: If I want to begin working with the Kinect SDK and Visual Studio development, will the Kinect for Xbox 360 work (as opposed to the newer Kinect 2 for Xbox One)? I understand it will lack some functionality that the Windows version has.
Question 2: In the above statement, when Windows states 'develop' with the Xbox 360 Kinect, what does develop mean? More specifically, can I completely develop my application, test it, and run it with the Xbox 360 Kinect and just not be able to publish it? Or, will I only have some functionality but not be able to run the Xbox 360 Kinect with my application and be forced to purchase the Windows version?
Sorry for the lengthy questions. I have been researching this project for the past week, and I feel the difference between the Kinects and the extent at which they can be utilized with development is very ambiguous. Also, much of the information is outdated pertaining to the Xbox One and Xbox 360 Kinects, along with the Kinect SDK.
After weeks of research and downloading all of the available SDK environments for both versions of the kinect, I have finally found an answer.
key:
Kinect v1 = XBOX 360 kinect/Windows v1 Kinect - Kinect SDK v1.8 -VS2012+lower
Kinect v2 = XBOX ONE kinect/Windows v2 Kinect - Kinect SDK v2.0 -VS2013
Answer 1: Yes, the XBOX360 version of the kinect will work for development purposes, but it is only compatible with the Kinect SDK v1.8. Version 2.0 SDK is specifically for the XBOX ONE kinect. Version 2 SDK has dropped all drivers for the v1 kinect and will not support it. Also, note that The v2 Kinect will only work in the microsoft VS2013 or higher versions, whereas the Kinect v1 will ONLY work with the VS2012 or lower versions. Be prepared to install both if necessary. I have both currently installed on my windows 8 machine.
Answer 2: Yes, you can completely develop applications using the Kinect XBOX ONE/360 versions, but you cannot publish them. Also, the gaming versions do lack a lot of needed functionality compared to the Windows versions.
I hope this post brings some clarity for Kinect developers. Good luck.
I do agree to what Aimforchris has mentioned above. But obviously the quality and functionality of XBOX ONE is much better which works only with SDK V2 than its predecessor, and is much better for developing proposes in terms of accuracy of visual inputs.
And as for the second question, I have used both the the above mentioned devices with UNITY 3D and also Visual Studio via the SDK's and unity plugins such as these to develop AR based hand gesture applications and deploy them as APKs.
This question already exists:
Windows phone emulator issue in windows 7 [closed]
Closed 9 years ago.
I am completely a newbie in Windows phone app development.
I followed this tutorial to develop my 1st Windows Phone app. When I am ready to run my 1st app, I selected Debug->Start debugging on the top toolbar of visual studio 2010, but I got the following dialog:
It complains that my working machine(Lenovo W510) does not have the graphics processing unit. What can I do for this if I would like to run my app on a emulator?
When clicking on "Yes", it should launch the emulator anyways but with limited functionality. (no extensive 3D, things like that)
If it does not succeed in launching the emulator then you will have to find a system with better graphics capabilities. However, considering the W510 runs an nVidia Quadro FX 880M, I'm pretty sure it should be able to run the emulator just fine. Have you checked your GPU driver yet?
I had the exact same issue with the SDK on an older machine. For XNA and otherwise smooth effects / transitions in Silverlight projects the emulator requires Windows Phone Emulator requires a DirectX 10 or above capable graphics card with a WDDM 1.1 driver.
The issue I had is that my graphics card (some integrated Intel) didn't have WDDM 1.1 drivers. In this case, if you are looking to develop XNA projects, the only two solutions are
upgrade your graphics card
or buy a real device on which you can test.
I was watching some video tutorial for developing Windows Phone 7 apps (& hoping to develop Windows 8 apps on that basis ;) The guy in the video tutorial was using Visual Studio 2010 and I have Visual Studio 2012. He created a new project using the option "New -> Project -> Silverlight for Windows Phone". Although I don't have such an option I do have an option called "New -> Project -> Windows Phone". This got me wondering whether there is a difference between those two. Could anybody explain the difference between them, if there is any?
Visual Studio 2010 can only make applications for Windows Phone 7. And Silverlight is the only API available to third-party developers on WP7 (even XNA is based on Silverlight).
With Windows Phone 8 (supported by Visual Studio 2012), new kind of applications were added: native (C++ based), HTML5... That's why calling the category "Silverlight for Windows Phone" didn't make sense anymore, and it was renamed simply "Windows Phone".
It's just a name, it makes no difference to you. When creating a new "Windows Phone app" project, Visual Studio will ask you which version you want to target. If you pick "Windows Phone 7.1", you'll get the exact same API that you had in Visual Studio 2010.
Microsoft only trying to reduce the terminology and popularize certain ways.
Windows phone app is the same as Silverlight for windows phone. the only difference is that Silverlight project in visual studio 2010 targets at the developer choice windows phone 7.0 or Mango (Mango is numbered by the SDK as Windows Phone OS 7.1, while users call it Windows Phone 7.5) or 7.8 according to updates installed. But if you use the windows phone project in visual studio you will target either Windows phone Mango or 7.8 or 8. please note that optional updates may be needed to target some platforms as Windows phone 7.8. windows phone 7.8 is basically a windows phone 7 with some feature backported to it from windows phone 8 as multi size live tiles and some features not backported to it as arabic support.
Silverlight and XNA were completely separate ways to make apps in Windows Phone 7.0. No code silverlight code could be used in a XNA project, nor XNA code could be shared in silverlight project in WP7.0 . Programmers of Windows Phone 7.0 had to know the meaning of each and when to use before choosing. The learn paths of silverlight and xna were too separate that you could learn one and totally ignore the other; in fact most programmers learnt only one of the two. You had to choose your path between the two before implementing a big app, as there is no way back :i.e, no way passing code between the two.
However, starting of Windows Phone Mango, Microsoft introduced Silverlight/XNA. Silverlight/XNA is a new application model for Windows phone Mango. It allows XNA inside Silvelight App. Migrating an XNA game to Silverlight/XNA is not an easy task, but would be rewardable.
Silverlight have UI controls as Textblock and Drop list and have layouts as Grid and stackpanel; so it is easy to make an app in silvelight that look like a form, while XNA is geared toward games , as it is a state based programming . it is very hard to implement a drop list in XNA for most developers.
Silverlight app was renamed to windows phone app to popularize it as a starting point, without having to do a deep thinking in a choice.
Silverlight is a stripped down version of Windows presentation foundation, removing the ability to define your own controls.And Silverlight for windows phone is an even more stripped down version , removing all controls that do not fit on mobile , and removing most of cryptography libraries.
This is the same way microsoft renamed metro-style apps to be windows 8 app, and windows apps to windows forms apps; and then windows forms and WPF were renamed later to Windows desktop apps.
How can I deploy XNA apps to run on Windows RT running on ARM tablets?
No it is not and will not be supported.
However there are great alternatives like monogame which tries to map to the XNA api and you can also try Unity which while not being XNA does use c# and is very easy and flexible.
Try Unity or monogame, however just remember that unity is not XNA and while monogame looks like XNA (from an API level) it is up to 20 times slower.
the XnaWinRT project on CodePlex seems to allow you to do. So the answer must be yes, sort of.
it says:
.... However XNA Game Studio is Officially not supported by Microsoft.
This has led to developers migrating to DirectX which is a unmanaged
and a extensively large development framework for Games....,
Officially there is no support for XNA Game Studio in Windows
8(WinRT). So this is a light weight XNA Framework made using the .NET
4.5 and Metro Style APIs and is the most basic and crude form of XNA for Windows 8. More development is in Progress. Help is appreciated.
as Microsoft are releasing a tablet later this year, with a new operating system I was wondering whether we can already create apps for this platform and have them on the market place prior to release?
If this is the case where could I get my hands on the API's needed to go about creating a touch application in XNA for the upcoming windows 8 tablet.
Right now it looks like XNA applications will not be directly supported by the marketplace (source); however, MonoGame games are able to get into the Marketplace. This is an open-source alternative to XNA.
At this point, consider XNA to be around for a few more years but not directly supported in anything other than what it currently works on Xbox, Windows Phone, and Windows but not on the Windows 8 Marketplace.