The question is, will it take off?

g.man wrote:

VAPOURWARE.

You mean you don't trust Yves Behar? He did a TED talk, he must be trust worthy.

I'm gonna address the vapour ware claim as I meant to in my last lengthy prose

without wanting to jump on lazygunn's toes, the main difference between XNA and something like Unity, is XNA is just a coding framework.  if you want a textured cube in your xna project, you need to make that somewhere else in a different tool, which requires a different skill set to use, and possibly money to buy,and then import it into your project and handle 'spinning it' entirely in code.  in something like unity, you click add cube, add texture, make it spin.
to get people playing your 'spinning cube' on xbox, you need to pay your annual developer subscription to be able to publish it, then jump through various hoops to get it approved, and if/when it gets on XBLIG, it dies cos no one wants to pay to play your spinning cube.
with unity, you click 'publish to android', upload to the store, and it then it dies cos no one wants to play your free spinning cube.
but at least it took a lot less time to find that out.

or something like that.

VS is weak.

Can't remember my original post but I don't think gunn attempted to mention shaders in that quote. It was me so I think @mod's retort is directed that way but essentially the last post was about 4000 lines of code in the current XNA before you port in any models such as Ram's spinning cube example. It's actually quite difficult and daunting to even a two or four man team.

This summer I have been privy to apraisals of the videogames course (We run a few, programming & computer gfx, animation, and something else around the theme.) as well as this I have been present in the lead course designers presentations regarding the current state of the art xbox development versus open source. This is essentially direct X vs open GL.

It's concluded that Open GL is a bitch. However despite the flexibility of Direct X it has a lot of weight (4000 lines of initialisation code for example) but when you get past that it becomes something else. However the graduates, now graduands not only had to handle C++ Direct X, C# XNA but also Unity for a web supported game. (Something that is able to run on unity.) It was clear that we were able to inspire the students more when using Unity as it was able to produce the most results with least prereqs, (in terms of software) and knowledge base, (in terms of tools) despite these obvious contrasts it was apparent that using the Direct X, XNA or even OpenGL courses put really competent people off developing for consoles. Naturally the proffessors, lecturers, and sessionals, (such as myself) would try and explain in a company that can support you for Direct X etc there hundreds of developers working on many tiny things and it's not as bad as you may perceive.

Putting it bluntly- if you're bedroom or major the middleware platforms that a linux cross java platform can support are significantly better than anything specific to Xbox even though in reality Direct X is easier when compared to OpenGL.

Get on Eclipse fool. Get on some sort of source control too.

Essentially Unity is a massive OpenGL / WebGL wrapper depending on your deployment platform. However when you don't want unity and you go raw OpenGL is harder than DirectX. But DirectX is hard nut to crack anyway.

Hence excite at the idea we can have a Android platform that isn't a phone.

Yep, we have tools for free (Unity basic) that take care of all the complex stuff with a liberal sprinkling of cake, icing and sugar and some cherries on top, for the moderately cheap(tiny fractions of a usual xbox dev setup) cost of the pro licenses you can just extend it in any direction you wish with c

The webgl thang is relevant, unity ignored, also what with html5 happening (except to ie, strangely enough)

beano wrote:

YOU USE TEH TOUCH PAD ON TEH CONTROLOLLOLERZ! WUT!

I NO, YOU FAG

Also, SHITE

Oi bugger lugs, while you are here: Did you sort your VPN concerns? What are you doing?

Unity is definitely easier to get a game going on than XNA is.  I don't think anyone can argue (or is arguing?) that point.  

But will Ouya have a stronger range of Indie software just because it has lower barriers to entry?  Once side of me says "yes, people with good ideas will be able to translate them to reality more easily, so more will get made", and the other says "no, it's a less tempting market, so there's less incentive to do so, and if it was that good anyway, they would have done it already".  My personal experience points at the former answer: I did plenty of XNA mucking about a few years ago, and never got anything out.  I think there's a high likelihood, haven written some Unity stuff already, that I will get something out on Ouya.  It may not be any good, but if there are others like me, someone will produce something good.  (But yes, if good an successful, it will no doubt get copied to other formats, so as a consumer do you actually need an Ouya to benefit?  Guess not...)


Anyway, spiel over.  (Oh, except to say I don't follow this "VS is weak" chat.  It's far better than Eclipse IMO, and terms of ease of use and not hanging your PC for hours on end.  And yes, you can - as I do - use it with Unity for twice the fun.)  

Time will tell I suppose.  And maybe it's just vaporwear anyway, eh?

Kow wrote:

I have until the beginning of August to decide but the link you posted seems kosher enough. I will probably go for that. I'll have to figure out how to get it set up on multiple devices but I guess it's easy enough.

There's a VPN menu and everything somewhere in settings.

Somebody let me know when we can start the laughing and pointing.

@ AndyPany I've already started. FUCKING SHITE THE WHOLE THING.

Mod74 wrote:

You think there's a body of developers that have been dying to make a game but somehow didn't realise you could make them for PC, or phone, or XBLIG? Using simply tools like....ooo.. Unity. Who will be somehow mesmerised by the idea of an Android console? Right O.

err.. yes, i think 80% of the people i know interested in these things have contacted me in the last day asking what i thought. i think a problem is, from what i read in this thread, much that its much more exciting for developers than the typical end user

(i dont understand why you keep bringing up XBLIG, it's been explained in at least 4 separate valid posts, from people as experienced as me or more so with this, why it doesn't compare)

VAPOURWARE