A Primer for Microsoft's XNA

simoniker writes "Over at the education site Game Career Guide, they've got an in-depth primer of Microsoft's XNA, including interviews with Julie Ellen and Joe Nalewabau of Microsoft about the PC and Xbox 360 indie/student homebrew construction tool, as well as chats with two developers (Benjamin Nitschke and Alex Okafor) who have worked with XNA to some notable effect. Microsoft's Ellie claims of the efforts: 'Homebrew and independent developers are often very talented and have lots of creative ideas. Being able to officially write games directly for a retail console right at home is a first and could be very empowering for them. For the homebrew and indie scene to succeed we need to provide two things: great tools and access to a large audience. We're working on both.'"

Better sites

[Utopia]

I think this site is better to learn XNA:
http://www.riemers.net/eng/Tutorials/xnacsharp.php [riemers.net]

I also like Shawn Hargreaves' Blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnhar/archive/2006/12/12/ technicolor-julias.aspx [msdn.com]

Better/Free Game Development Frameworks?

[serodores]

I've been looking into this for quite some time.

I've looked at the blender environment for making games. However, it has poor network support for multiplayer games (last I checked), and is meant for smaller single person games. DirectX has had a bit better multiplayer support so far, so I imagine XNA has decent multiplayer support, or soon will. Blender is licensed under the GPL, but any scripts and artwork can be under any license you choose, and can be used commercially.

There's also OGRE3D. Althoug

Re:

[Rycross]

As a note, the Express may not come with the MFC support out of the box, but you may be able to add it. I haven't tried to do so with MFC, but normal Win32 (not .Net) applications aren't supported out of the box either. You can, however, download the Platform SDK off of Microsoft's site and point Visual Studio Express to it, and set up project templates. There are walkthroughs online. So you may want to do some quick research and see if you can do the same with MFC.

Also, OGRE has a .Net port, so you can

Re:

[serodores]

I actually looked into this, and from what I could tell (at least from 1-2 years ago), the only way to get MFC library support (legally) is to purchase a non-express version of Visual C. They even have a FAQ question about it mentioning that it must be purchased for MFC support. I did forget to mention RakNet, and it did seem to have amazing performance claims, but I never fully tried it out. (I haven't looked at it, again, in 1-2 years.)

Re:

[Pisal]

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There are other solutions, such as Garage Games, but they take a huge cut out of any money your game makes (used to be upwards of 80%). They also have mediocre network support, placing them as a poor choice in my opinion. Their claim is that they will, however, handle all of the marketing for your game and get others to play (& pay) for your game. Alternatively, you could pay a $15,000 license per game to remove royalty restrictions. There are also several OpenGL game frameworks, but they require all game releases to be under the GPL.
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If you go to the GarageGames website you can notice that the previous comment is completely wrong regarding royalty restrictions. You don't have to pay royalties for products developed over the Torque Platform. If you earn over 250k$ per year, then you need to switch to a commercial license - which is $749 - which isn't that expensive compared to comparible game engines. Regarding network support, the Torque Platform comes with a decent network engine as it was used in the popular Tribes and Tribes II G