Anyone else been playing around with XNA the last few weeks since its beta release? I'm just wondering what others think of it so far.
I like it (since I'm primarily a .NET programmer anyways), but I am disappointed by some of its features/missing pieces. I think the community will pick up the slack (since there's a lot of .NET programmers and everything you need to do it is free).
To me, it feels too much like MDX. DX and MDX are the reasons why I began to use Irrlicht. I was hoping for XNA to simplify a few of the more simple things. I'm not that familiar with shaders and everything requires using shaders - even to draw a simple 2D line.
XNA initial review
I have never used the XNA, but I thought it was just a tool like Visual Studio.
It just gives you a bunch of support libraries and an easy way to manage resources. You still need to program everything yourself. If you are looking for some kind of engine, you will probably need to purchase something like 360 version of Torque
It just gives you a bunch of support libraries and an easy way to manage resources. You still need to program everything yourself. If you are looking for some kind of engine, you will probably need to purchase something like 360 version of Torque
Torque is a commerical product from GarageGames. TorqueX is the new Torque version using XNA. They are both commerical products from GarageGames.
XNA isn't a tool. Its just a bunch of libraries (like Irrlicht) for use with .NET languages (like C# or VB.NET, etc.).
GSE (Game Studio Express) is a plugin for Visual C# Express that includes tutorials, documentation, templates, etc.
I didn't expect XNA to be anything like a WYSIWYG game tool (like Torque and TorqueX), but I did think they would include some of the basic things like an easy way to draw primitives for programmers without a big 3d background. I've been programming business apps forever, but the 3d things totally confuse me (I still get confused with normals, etc.). Which is why, I really like Irrlicht and have used it in a few small projects/demos.
I was hoping MS would have abstracted that a bit more than they did. Also, I know nothing about writing my own shaders - which is now required to draw anything. For example, I'm now writing my own library to handle GUI elements and basic 2d drawing of fonts, lines, rect, circles, etc.
XNA isn't a tool. Its just a bunch of libraries (like Irrlicht) for use with .NET languages (like C# or VB.NET, etc.).
GSE (Game Studio Express) is a plugin for Visual C# Express that includes tutorials, documentation, templates, etc.
I didn't expect XNA to be anything like a WYSIWYG game tool (like Torque and TorqueX), but I did think they would include some of the basic things like an easy way to draw primitives for programmers without a big 3d background. I've been programming business apps forever, but the 3d things totally confuse me (I still get confused with normals, etc.). Which is why, I really like Irrlicht and have used it in a few small projects/demos.
I was hoping MS would have abstracted that a bit more than they did. Also, I know nothing about writing my own shaders - which is now required to draw anything. For example, I'm now writing my own library to handle GUI elements and basic 2d drawing of fonts, lines, rect, circles, etc.