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Fengol
07-04-2009, 10:16 AM
http://www.dreambuildplay.com/main/default.aspx

Here's an important little footnote:
"**PLEASE NOTE: The Game portion of your Entry must be submitted in the XNA Game Studio 3.1 format. XNA Game Studio 3.1 will not be available until May 2009. In the meantime, you can start working on your Game using XNA Game Studio 3.0, and, if you register for the Contest as instructed below, we'll notify you when XNA Game Studio 3.1 is available and provide guidance for how to port your game from XNA Game Studio 3.0 to XNA Games Studio 3.1."

Kensei
07-04-2009, 10:35 AM
Yay :)

Now I need that killer idea :(

cairnswm
07-04-2009, 03:29 PM
Standard M$ rediculousness - also known as - Upgrade or else!

Why can't they see how rediculous this requirement is? Develop your whole game in one technology but you have to submit it in another....

Chippit
07-04-2009, 03:38 PM
It's not different from last year. They just want stuff for their Community Games. Stuff that doesn't suck like what's there now. Basically, it's just a big test for the viability of this whole idea.

Fengol
07-04-2009, 04:04 PM
I have to agree with Chippit, the DBP is the prooftesting of the XNA product line.

dislekcia
07-04-2009, 06:44 PM
Standard M$ rediculousness - also known as - Upgrade or else!

Why can't they see how rediculous this requirement is? Develop your whole game in one technology but you have to submit it in another....

What? Seriously cairnswm, you should know better...

"Upgrading" to XNA 3.1 doesn't cost you anything, apart from bandwidth. It's got new features, will upgrade smoothly from XNA 3.0 and shouldn't cause any headaches, I think I had to change 2 lines of code when upgrading from GSE 1.0 to GSE 2.0 and none whatsoever from 2.0 to 3.0.

You're being given new features for free, in a dev environment that's free and being given FREE access to develop on a next gen console. Oh yeah, then on top of that there's no charge to be hosted on an internationally available service where people can buy your games at one of the best royalty splits available.

Yeah, money-grubbing M$ scumbags... Obviously.

cairnswm
08-04-2009, 09:23 AM
LOL

I've been a developer too long. Too many times I've had to 'upgrade' to a newer better version and then find out certain functions/methods return different values that the previous version did - so you HAVE to retest everything over again. :(

I didnt say anything about Money - I know XNA is free.

Gazza_N
08-04-2009, 09:57 AM
Well, I won't be submitting anything this year, but that free Creator's Club membership is looking mighty tempting, even if I only use it to act as a Totally Official Game.Dev DBP Beta Testerer (R)(TM)(C)(-0-).

Microsoft won't have me assassinated if I register without submitting anything, right?

Right? O_O

Fengol
08-04-2009, 10:06 AM
I've told everyone on SA Developer .NET to register just for the free trial

dislekcia
08-04-2009, 11:51 AM
LOL

I've been a developer too long. Too many times I've had to 'upgrade' to a newer better version and then find out certain functions/methods return different values that the previous version did - so you HAVE to retest everything over again. :(

I didnt say anything about Money - I know XNA is free.

You're getting bitter in your old age ;)

Like I said, I've only ever had one function that needed a slightly different input (it made a lot more sense the new way, less memory pool hassles) when moving to 2.0, the XNA team is an example of how to do migrations right. They even give you an upgrade tool which conveniently backs up your entire project before doing all that testing you mentioned ;)


Well, I won't be submitting anything this year, but that free Creator's Club membership is looking mighty tempting, even if I only use it to act as a Totally Official Game.Dev DBP Beta Testerer (R)(TM)(C)(-0-).

Microsoft won't have me assassinated if I register without submitting anything, right?

Right? O_O

Like Fengol, I recommend everyone here interested in devving on 360 register for the 12 month code, even if you don't enter the competition itself. It's really not every day that you get to work on a console.

tvdbon
10-04-2009, 09:08 AM
Hi Guys, (1st Post ;))

I'm also planning on participating in the competition and I have signed up for the free trial and currently busy setting up my xbox for connection to visual studio. I do have one question about the whole competition. Can we as south africans enter ? I mean, I had to go through a whole process of setting up a windows live id with a non SA locale and had to enter an totally different address for the XNA game studio connect just to make everything wanna play along. When the time comes for me to submit the game will it be accepted ? I tried redeeming the code with my regular login and it just kept on giving me an error.

Did I miss anything ? Or is this just a really stupid question ? ;)

Coolhand
10-04-2009, 09:59 AM
Considering that 2 teams from South Africa finished in the top 20 last year, I think that you should be OK :)

Kensei
10-04-2009, 01:06 PM
I would guess that your best bet is to wait for dislekcia to respond to this post and tell you how he has set up his Xbox (The smart cookies that he and Aequitas are the came in the top 20 last year [not to discount Evolution and his team])

I do not see why South Africans would not be eligible for this competition :) Good luck and please keep us updated with your progress :)

Azimuth
10-04-2009, 01:20 PM
Residents of the Province of Quebec, Canada, and the following countries are ineligible to participate: Cuba; Iran; North Korea; Sudan; and Syria.

Presumably it's open season for everyone else.

Coolhand
10-04-2009, 05:35 PM
So Quebec is now officially part of the Axis of Evil?

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

tvdbon
10-04-2009, 08:35 PM
Thanks for the comments everybody. Very excited about this. We're planning on doing a remake of an old retro game that we used to play as kids. Got some cool ideas. I'll start a blog to keep track of whats happening

tvdbon
11-04-2009, 10:34 AM
I've setup a blog for progress report on our DBP 2009 entry : http://tbdbp2009.blogspot.com/

Evolution
11-04-2009, 04:54 PM
There is a strong possibility that we won't enter this competition as I am unable to get my hands on a xbox. We are working on a game for windows using xna so if we can get hold of a xbox we can easily port it for DBP until then we are just focusing on the windows version which will have features that the xbox doesn't support, so the extra features that are windows specific we will get rid of when it gets ported.

dislekcia
11-04-2009, 06:01 PM
There is a strong possibility that we won't enter this competition as I am unable to get my hands on a xbox. We are working on a game for windows using xna so if we can get hold of a xbox we can easily port it for DBP until then we are just focusing on the windows version which will have features that the xbox doesn't support, so the extra features that are windows specific we will get rid of when it gets ported.

But you guys entered a 360 game before, right? What happened to that xbox?

Evolution
11-04-2009, 06:30 PM
But you guys entered a 360 game before, right? What happened to that xbox?

We never entered the compitition before, we have just been working on a 3d rpg using xna which is taking forever so we decided to work on something else. We using the engine we built for the rpg in the game we going to develop. The programmer that does most of the programming seems to have a xbox 360 so he will have to work on the port on his own after the windows version is complete. The game that we entering is a freelancer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(computer_game)) clone, the game will be in a 3d top down view. We just hoping that everything get done in the deadline.

dislekcia
11-04-2009, 08:41 PM
We never entered the compitition before, we have just been working on a 3d rpg using xna which is taking forever so we decided to work on something else. We using the engine we built for the rpg in the game we going to develop. The programmer that does most of the programming seems to have a xbox 360 so he will have to work on the port on his own after the windows version is complete. The game that we entering is a freelancer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(computer_game)) clone, the game will be in a 3d top down view. We just hoping that everything get done in the deadline.

Oh, my bad, I just assumed you were part of the Save Jack team... Wish those guys would actually establish contact.

Kensei
11-04-2009, 10:20 PM
There is a strong possibility that we won't enter this competition as I am unable to get my hands on a xbox. We are working on a game for windows using xna so if we can get hold of a xbox we can easily port it for DBP until then we are just focusing on the windows version which will have features that the xbox doesn't support, so the extra features that are windows specific we will get rid of when it gets ported.

Do you know that if my XBox in SA was not completely broken (AV connection does not work, tried 4 different cables, she is truly broken :( ) I would gladly donate it to you. Honestly and truly, I would rather see it being put to good use by SA developers than gathering dust in my cupboard (Since I use the almost brand new one I have in the UK)

Edit: D, are you and Aequitas entering this year? I am assuming that the Azimuth/Chippit team is already hard at work ^_^

Evolution
12-04-2009, 09:01 AM
I would rather see it being put to good use by SA developers

Our team is 50% SA and 50% USA 3:3.

george
15-04-2009, 11:09 AM
I've got basically the same question as tvdbon had. What is the correct way for a South African to register?

My live account is UK. During registration for DBP, should I also choose UK as my region? I chose South Africa and when I try and redeem the trial code, I get an error referring to the trial code not matching my area code.

It is probably obvious that I should also choose the UK for DBP registration, but I can't understand how people from non-live supported countries are allowed to enter, but will have no way to test their games on a 360 if they don't lie about their region. Also, in the top 20 lists from last year, it is known that SpaceHack was from a South African team. Does this then mean that dis and aeq registered as South Africans?

I R CONFUSED

I probably won't have anything finished by the time the competition closes, but I don't want to lie and then suffer the consequences if caught. But, if everything goes as planned, I'll be in the UK in August. So technically, is it still lying if it will be true in the future?

dislekcia
15-04-2009, 11:44 AM
My Xbox account is signed up as being in the UK so that I could get Live, but my box's locale is set to South Africa.

Unfortunately I haven't used any of the creators club codes that I've gotten via DBP because I signed up (and paid!) for CC membership when it first became available. I know that Aeq and quite a few others used their codes last year (Aeq used both the trail and pro code that you got on submission) and that worked fine. You should be able to edit your location in the DBP account settings if signing up as being in the UK is the only way to get the code to work.

I wish I could be more helpful, have you tried searching the CC forums for an answer, it seems like a lot of people haven't been able to use their codes for some reason. Maybe last year they weren't region-locked?

Gazza_N
15-04-2009, 11:53 AM
Odd. I have a US-based LIVE account, and registered under South Africa for my code. Works fine.

tvdbon
15-04-2009, 12:59 PM
just to clarify, I am also registered on the xna site under South Africa, but my xbox live account had to be US based before I could use the code on my xbox.