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[Xbox-Scene]

XNA Game Studio 3.1 is here - Community Games Renamed Posted by XanTium | June 11 16:17 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From creators.xna.com: You spoke and we listened! We've added a number of new and improved features to XNA Game Studio 3.1 enabling hobbyists, academics, and independent game developers to easily create video games for Xbox 360, Windows, and Zune digital media players by using optimized cross-platform gaming libraries based on the .NET Framework in the C# programming language. This release is incremental to Game Studio 3.0 and contains many new and improved features:     * Avatar Support: Render and animate Avatars to use in your game to represent gamers and other characters within your game.     * Xbox LIVE Party Support: Enabling gamers to communicate, even when each gamer is not playing the same game in the same multiplayer session. LIVE Party supports up to an eight-way group voice chat for gamers and keeps gamers connected before, during, and after a gameplay session, persisting across title switches.     * Video Playback: XNA Game Studio now supports the ability to play back video that can be used for such purposes as opening splash and logo scenes, cut scenes, or in-game video displays. This set of XNA Framework APIs supports the following features:           o Full screen video playback           o Video playback to simple textures in game           o Control of playback such as pause/resume and stop           o Retrieve properties of the video, such as playback time, size, and frame rate           o Determine the type and usage of the audio track, such as if it has music, dialog, or music and dialog           o Play back multiple video streams at the same time     * Audio API: 3.1 has a new usage pattern of SoundEffect.Play. Sound instances created by Play calls are disposed automatically when playback ends, and SoundEffect.Play returns a Boolean to indicate success or failure.     * Content Pipeline Enhancements: improvements making it much easier to add customer types (custom attributes for run-time of an object and run-time type version of an object, and the ability to determine if deserialization into an existing object is possible).     * XACT3 Support: includes support for XACT3 with new features including the ability to enable a filter on every track, and support for the xWMA compression format.     * Visual Studio Changes: XNA Game Studio 3.1 supports both 3.0 and 3.1 projects, and it includes support for upgrading projects from 3.0 to 3.1. Submitting 3.1 Games XNA Game Studio 3.1 games can be submitted to Xbox LIVE Community Games starting late July.  Please note! Currently, if Premium Creators want to submit or service their game to Playtest and/or Peer Review, those games must remain XNA Game Studio 3.0 projects. On July 23rd, you can submit games upgraded or created as 3.1 projects to playtest and/or Peer Review, but they will not go live to consumers until we are able to upgrade Xbox LIVE Community Games Marketplace later this Summer. For more details on using XNA Game Studio 3.1 with Xbox LIVE Community Games, check out this quick walkthrough! Name Change We've got one last surprise for you today! Savvy Creators that carefully read the documentation for XNA Game Studio 3.1 will note one big change we're making in direct response to your feedback. The launch of XNA Game Studio 3.1 begins the process of renaming Xbox LIVE Community Games to Xbox LIVE Indie Games. We're starting the communication about this transition with you - our incredible Creators. With your help hopefully this name change (along with other new features such as User Ratings!) will increase understanding and discoverability of your games! Late July, when we update Creators Club Online, we will begin revealing the name change to the Consumer side of our business. We believe this name better represents the independent spirit of XNA Game Studio gaming and creations! Official Site: http://creators.xna.com

[BigIg91]

Indie games reminds me too much of emo kids and their "indie music" for some reason.

[tbb033]

QUOTE(BigIg91 @ Jun 11 2009, 03:26 PM)

Indie games reminds me too much of emo kids and their "indie music" for some reason.

Yep. It's a dumb name change. Not worth getting worked up about, just dumb.

[dokworm]

Does the video playback allow us to make an xbmc style player?

[Dark Seraph]

QUOTE(dokworm @ Jun 11 2009, 04:57 PM)

Does the video playback allow us to make an xbmc style player?

Probably not because I doubt it would let you use codecs for different video formats outside the framework. Also I doubt it would be able to read things from outside the Apps Package. like usb or network.

[deadlokIV]

I think it's a better name change (for those who understand the concept of indie), as the average user/potential customer would have an instant idea of what they're getting themselves into.

I don't think I fully grasp the details about submission though? Xna has once again piqued my interest...