Archive for the ‘development’ Category
We all love games.. we all love XBOX.. we all love Zune… and now all of it is coming together… hey wait, I like to write games too.. so be it – one can now author games and run it on Zune and share it on XBOX Live!
I personally think that this is a gaint leap for the Microsoft platform from 2 perspectives:
- It is community focused. The games that are authored by community members can now be shared on XBOX Live and downloaded for FREE!
- Interoperability between MS products at a deep level. Zune and XBOX both have direct dependency on the hardware it runs on and by enabling games to be written on both, MS has unlocked huge synergistic benefits..
sometime ago, i was thinking about Zune and wondering why doesn’t it take benefit of Silvelight capabilites. going by the direction things are moving it may soon be a reality!
One can develop these games using the XNA Game Studio 2.0 toolset for free from http://creators.xna.com .. there are already 7 games available on the XBOX Live from today!
but to build games for Zune you will have to wait for XNA 3.0 to be available later in the year (with a preview in April 2008)…
Some key features that will be available:
- Ability to support local ad-hoc wireless play with up to 8 different Zunes.
- Discoverability/access to user’s music – allowing the user to customize background soundtracks or create real-time visualizations
Now i think Zune is more social than iPod and is definitely a better player than iPod.. hope that the community takes to developing these games quickly! i for once would like an “Abhishek” authored game to debut on Zune devices!
for indian software industry, this opens up new opportunities of developing new age games.. for mobile game developers distribution of their games was a big issue.. with XBOX Live opening up, there is potential for them to reach out to a larger set of audiences..
After announcing the 2.0 version of XNA Game Studio during Gamefest’s keynote, XNA general manager Chris Satchell also revealed that Microsoft will allow consumers direct, legal access to game content from a number of Microsoft-owned games.
This license is to use and display Game Content and to create derivative works based upon Game Content and strictly meant for noncommercial and personal use.
The licence is similar to the Creative Commons agreement that some writers and artists use to give their works free and open copyright to the public, gives users access to any game published by Microsoft Game Studios (but not any third-party brands).
With this materials from Age of Empires, Forza Motorsport, Halo, Project Gotham Racing, Viva Piñata and any other MGS game can be freely and legally ‘remixed’ by players.
There are some clauses: the rights don’t extend to music or sound effects, assets can’t be used for racist, obscene or pornographic ends, and players can’t claim to be adding ‘lost chapters’ to Microsoft IP, plus they have to add clear ‘©’ and related disclaimers to their resultant creations. They also can’t reverse-engineer the games, either.
However consumers may now use gameplay footage, screen shots and other gameplay elements to, says Microsoft “express their own imagination and creativity”.
More details can be found at Microsoft’s official ‘rule’ list for the agreement.
Ok.. see how much you can make a head or tail of:
- Volta
- Feedsync
- Sync Framework (yes it is different from Feedsync)
- ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions
- ADO.NET Entity Framework
It has been perplexing to see the rate at which MS has been churning out innovations day after day… while it poses challenges for developers as they need to learn new stuff, it is good for industry as such.. IMHO, the latest set of innovations coming out focus heavily on Web 2.0 enablement implemented by using attributes.. let’s check out some of them:
Volta is a framework that enables taking the decision on deployment at a much later stage of development. Feedsync is extension to RSS/ ATOM that enables RSS data to be syncronised across any endpoints. Sync Framework let’s mobile devices synchronize data amongst various data sources.. ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions – Data Availability over REST interfaces, Automatic data display & editing using Dynamic Data, ASP.NET Silverlight Controls & ASP.NET MVC pattern.
The enabler for many scenarios above is the ADO.NET Entity Framework that lets Database expose its data as objects!
Here’s Mary Jo Flo with her analysis of the confusing conundrum above:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1023
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1029
I am off to learning these technologies!
Microsoft has released a new toolkit that is guaranteed to make the ISVs and other software houses jump in delight.. drum rolls for rollout of MS Software Licensing & protection services..
the MS SLP provides reliable, convenient, and more secure way to distribute your software.
with .NET assemblies it is still possible to reverse engineer the code with right tools and enough time :).. to protect the code on a commercial basis MS SLP provides an interesting option.. Managing licensing & activation is also where MS SLP can help.
While the advanced services are avaialble for a price, the code protection is available for FREE at: http://www.microsoft.com/SLPS/downloads.aspx
To read more: http://www.microsoft.com/SLPS/
while experimenting with VS 2008 Beta 2 and WCF, i cudn’t generate the client proxy using svcutil.exe. I built the server as a WPF application and hosted the service there (self-host). i was using netTcp binding for the service.
in preparation to get the client working, i created a new IIS application and created a directory under the main directory called App_Code. I copied all the code for Service and the Contract in the App_Code directory so that it be JIT compiled before use. Added the service.svc and web.config to the application. Then browsing to the URL gave me the test page.
then svcutil.exe was to be used but it kept crashing. a live search got me to this page: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/bursteg/archive/2007/07/27/WCF-Test-Client-svcutil.aspx
and that did it!
You have done great work on developing your web application and now is the time to build forms for master tables. That is very irritating.
VS 2008 has a new way that you can build the same – Enter the LinqDataSource. LINQ is one of the key technologies added in .NET 3.5 and will be released soon.
So, if you are trying out VS 2008, you got to try it out. For detailed steps, http://weblogs.asp.net/kencox/archive/2007/08/07/speed-test-a-no-code-linq-based-asp-net-3-5-page.aspx
when technology is a part of the whole! 