Microsoft Shows Full 3D XNA Games On Windows Phone 70
suraj.sun writes "Microsoft has shown off XNA games running on Windows Phone; full 3D is a go. From Engadget: 'Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0 9. The two titles are The Harvest, a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks. Microsoft spoke to the ease of its Direct3D development platform, which was built by the same folks responsible for the first-gen Xbox. What we saw of The Harvest was built in "two or three weeks," mostly from scratch, and folks who've already built games for XNA in VisualStudio shouldn't have much trouble with a port from the sound of things: "very, very easy," said Microsoft. Right now developers can do their testing in Windows, but there should be a Windows Phone 7 Series emulator out for devs eventually.'"
Mac/Linux users - Possible ports. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't even think Mac/Linux users should despair either really.
Well, given that XNA is basically .NET with DirectX bindings (and a few other libraries), someone should sequestrate Miguel de Icaza and punch him repeatedly in the face until he accepts to port XNA on his Mono in exchange of his liberation. In fact, given how wilfully he ported Silverlight into Moonlight, we might even skip the whole punching steps and let him do the port on his own.
More seriously : .NET CLR/DLR implementation .NET implementation (Silverlight) ported to Mono
- Mono is already a functional cross-platform
- Silverlight is already an example of some domain specific
- In case of DirectX calls being directly exposed in XNA, Wine project has already some DirectX to OpenGL/Pulse/et alii wrappers (lots of games are currently playable on Macs and Linux through Wine or Crossover)
- The biggest chunk for making a Mac/Linux XNA port would be adapting the XNA specific classes to Mono
This might indeed work : :-P)
- There are already efforts [monoxna.org] in that direction (which has already been successfully adapted on one Indie Project [monoxna.org])
- I would definitely see a couple of "Google Summer of Code"-worthy projects to implement a few of the basics of this latest Windows Mobile-compatible XNA version.
- Cross-platfrom Mono/XNA means instant support on all opensource-friendly platforms: Android, Maemo, webOS, Beagleboard/OpenPandora/TouchBook, (OpenMoko
- That means that there could be also interest from the phone industry (specially the huge Android clan, but Palm has also shown interests efforts towards cross-platform development with their PDK)
- That means industry-backed salaries could be used for such a port making it an easier effort.
Though, regarding Apple support, don't expect it to run on anything but jail-broken iPhone/iPod/iPad, just like with Flash. Apple doesn't want you to run anything which was not approved by Steve-God-Himself before ending up on the AppStore.
Re:Is this spectacular? (Score:5, Insightful)
Java SUCKS for gaming. I wish both Java and Flash would disappear from gaming completely. Neither Java or Flash (excl. Shockwave) were built for gaming. Someone needs to come up with a multi-platform gaming dev platform - and as much as I hate Microsoft, kudos for giving it a shot.
Re:Is this spectacular? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced (Score:5, Insightful)
>I just don't believe Windows is a suitable OS for embedded devices.
Err, "Windows" is a trademark. The code on your Win7 machine is not the code on your mobile phone.
>The rest "just work",
As someone who has spent years using palm, then danger/hiptop, then winmo, and now iphone, I can tell you that none of these "just work." You just have a double standard because youre biased.
While Im certainly not one to defend WinMo, my previous phone was a Treo with WinMo that did a lot of the things 5 years ago that people rave about with iphone/android. WinMo didnt have an app store, but apps were easily found on the internet. Many free and without the blessing of any censorship board. Not to mention, Outlook/Activesync integration.