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XNA 3.1 Extensions for Zune HD
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Ready to develop for your Zune HD? A downloadable Extensions pack for XNA 3.1 adds support for the Zune HD product line, including two brand new API’s for developers (touch input and accelerometer support, both features of the Zune HD), to tailor their games for Zune HD.
Unfortunately this release isn’t dedicated to Zune HD, it just adds support. So no new 3D graphics support, no AA on rotating sprites, basically nothing else new at all. Which is a shame, as the current XNA portable framework in no way lets us take full advantage of the power of Zune HD’s nVidia Tegra chip. Bring on the dedicated SDK guys.
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Posted by Johnny on 15 Sep 2009 in HD, XNA, Zune |
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First glimpse at games….
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Yep, there’s been a lot of Zune HD details slipping through recently (which I haven’t been quite keeping up-to-date here at the moment due to personal issues), but one which many of us have been wanting to know more about is gaming. It’s no secret that the Zune HD is going to include games, heck its even been in official promotional material for a few weeks now, but until today we haven’t actually seen what it’s going to look like. 2D, 3D? XNA? Native Code? Better than an iPod Touch?
While we can’t answer the latter questions, just let, looking at the image above shown in a recently released promotional video is footage of the rumoured Burnout game running in full 3D on the Zune HD, thanks to it’s powerful nVidia Tegra processing chip. Undoubtedly Zune HD has more power under it’s hood than the iPod Touch, and it does have a smaller screen resolution to cater for, so we should be looking forward to even more impressive games than on Apples device, although unfortunately it does suffer the same pitfall – no buttons. Not game breaking obviously, but there will be times when they are sorely missed. Still, one more reason to get excited. Just 4 days now.
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Workaround: Getting CCGAME files on your Zune in Windows 7
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So you may have heard by now that Microsoft are currently well on their way to shipping their most anticipated Operating System release yet: Windows 7. And many of us, being a the tech lovers we are, have jumped onto Microsoft’s BETA program, already have pre-release versions of the OS up and running on our home PC’s, and many us even taking the risk to use it as our primary OS! For the most part though its entirely stable, so its not that much of a risk. There is one problem though…
It seems CCGAME files are of no use for us Windows 7 users, as the “XNA Game Studio Package Utility”, which deploys the game to the Zune, instantly crashes. Of course this isn’t helpful for me, so I went looking for a possible fix. And, while it seems that as of yet there is a no fix for this (though the XNA team are aware of the issue), there is a workaround for it.
To start us off, download your CCGAME file to your Desktop itself. Next, we need to open the XNA Game Studio Command Prompt. To do this, Open the Start Menu, click All Programs, expand the Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0 folder, then expand the Tools folder, then click on XNA Game Studio Command Prompt.
Now, we need to give it some instructions, in this format (Where you replace GAME with the name of CCGAME file saved on your desktop)
xnapack.exe unpack Desktop\GAME.ccgame /run
So, for example, if I were to download PaintZ BETA to my desktop, and would like to install it, I would type in like this:
Now, connect your Zune and turn it on. Make sure the Zune software is closed. Now press enter. Your Zune should enter the XNA Game Studio connection mode. If it fails the first time, don’t worry. Just turn your Zune back on and re-type the instruction into the command prompt. If all goes well, you should end up with something like this:
Congratulations, you’ve now got the game successfully installed on your Zune! Do it again for every game or app you want to install. If you’re still not entirely sure what to do or are getting errors, just ask on this thread in the forums, and we’ll try and help you through!
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Games Marketplace Picks for week ending 21 February
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So, here’s a new something I’m trying for the weekends, a quick roundup highlighting some of the more interesting games and applications that have hit our Games Marketplace during the past week.
 Responsible for millions of hours lost of work time on PC’s, the popular single player card game “Solitaire” comes to Zune thanks to coder Netrix, who’s efforts have resulted in a sublime recreation of the game. Featuring well designed graphics, and optimized to help reduce battery consumption, whilst including basic favourite options like 3 card or 1 card draw along with 2 different scoring options, this isn’t just a quick afternoon knock up of the game. A lot of effort was put in, and it really shows. The only think its really missing now is some touch control.
Check it out!
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 One of the things the Zune firmware is curiously missing is support for displaying Asian language characters in song info, instead displaying them as square boxes. Of course, for those with large collections of music with these characters, this can be really annoying.
Thankfully, sectionboy has come along with a solution: An XNA based Zune Player! Using a smartly designed GUI, sorting your albums by genre, it natively displays all the Asian font characters. Check out this video to see what its like in action. Of course, performance is better on the Zune 30, but it still works albeit with added slow-down on other models. Its also worth checking out if you just want another cool way of displaying your music on Zune.
Check it out!
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Games Marketplace 2.0
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Update (20/02/09 23:38 GMT): It’s now LIVE! Check out the Games Marketplace here, or click games in the nav bar above, or the link in the nav bar on the right. Enjoy =) Comments and user registration will be coming soon, and I’ll be letting Dev’s know how they can get involved real soon too. Oh, and please visit the Feedback thread in the forums to vote in the poll and, y’know, leave us some feedback on it!
Simple to browse. Pleasing to the eye. Easy to contribute to. Full of everything Zune XNA related. That was my entire design document for the original Games Marketplace. Did I succeed? Well I got the first half I reckon. But that’s not good enough, only reaching half your goal. So I took the entire thing back to the drawing board. I needed to re-think. I scrapped the oddball, re-jiggered forum backend, and decided to find something powerful and flexible enough to achieve my goal. And I found it. Meet the all new Games Marketplace.
Over he last few (looooong) days, I’ve been working on replicating the general interface of the older Marketplace onto our new system, but improving it in the most important area: the download pages themselves! Gone are the hard to read and un-intuitively laid out pages, replaced with cleaner and more clearly laid out ones.
Notable features and changes include:
- Bigger, fatter, chunkier download button, which has been moved up the page from the bottom, to make downloading easier
- CCGAME downloads take centre stage with the download button
- Cleaner, more compact download pages
- File information is now tabled and easier to read
- Ability to upload additional related files (e.g. extra skins, themes, etc)
- Developers now only have to simply fill in the required fields to have their downloads automatically entered to the database
- Advanced sorting options
- Users can now rate downloads
- Users can now comment on and discuss downloads
- New sorting options
- Added “Email to a friend”
Okay, it doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, when you see the new system in action you’ll appreciate how much better it really is. This new system is FAR easier for both games developers and myself to maintain and add games and applications to, as well as FAR easier for users to find and download programs. Hopefully you’ll all like what I’ve done with the place! I’m just putting the finishing touches on it, and within the next 24 hours I’ll open it up to the public!
So then, have I succeeded in my original 4-point plan then? Well, I’m now 3/4’s of the way there, and now the last part is just going to get easier!
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XNA Game Studio 3 is live!
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 After months of development and testing, Microsoft has finally released the long awaited game design tool, XNA Game Studio 3.0, for public download.
“Our ultimate goal with XNA Game Studio 3.0 is to continue to provide easy-to-use, approachable tools for hobbyists, academics and indie game developers capable of producing the best games to be shared with the world on Xbox 360, Windows PC and Zune.
With XNA Game Studio 3.0 game developers will be able to develop truly cross-platform games that work on Windows, Xbox 360 and Zune with minimal effort”
With XNA GS 3.0, game developers can freely design games for the Zune platform, and distribute them for free.
[source: XNA Creators Club]
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Posted by Johnny on 31 Oct 2008 in XNA |
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Site Design Copyright 2008 Johnny M.D. Westlake.
Certain design elements based on those used in the official Zune software, no
copyright infringement intended. ZUNE and the ZUNE logo are Trademarks of Microsoft.
This site has no affiliation to Microsoft. News posting powered by WordPress.
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Here’s some awesome news for ya: the final version of the long awaited XNA Game Studio 3.0 will finally be available for download on Thursday 30 October.