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edg3
25-03-2009, 09:43 AM
XNA Team Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2009/03/24/dream-build-play-2009-and-xna-game-studio-3-1-announced-at-gdc.aspx)

Dream Build Play 2009 and XNA Game Studio 3.1 Announced at GDC!

You?ve been waiting for this news and now it is here!

Beginning Monday, April 6 developers from all over the world will have an opportunity to submit their unique game creations to the Dream-Build-Play 2009 competition for a chance to win a cash prize and an opportunity to sign an Xbox LIVE Arcade publishing contract. Winners will be announced this fall. Last year, more than 7,800 members of our amazing community enrolled in Dream-Build-Play, yielding more than 350 completed games from all over the world developed using Microsoft?s free XNA Game Studio tools.

Several of last year?s winners, including Team GAMBIT for ?CarneyVale: Showtime? and Mommy?s Best Games for ?Weapon of Choice?, collectively took home more than $70,000 in prizes and have since become top sellers on the Xbox LIVE Community Games Channel. Winners from 2007, ?The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai,? ?Blazing Birds? and ?YoHo Kablammo!? from the United States, Canada and UK respectively, are all slated for release on Xbox LIVE Arcade in the coming months.

Additionally, Creators will be happy to hear about our improvements to the XNA Game Studio development tools, available to professional and hobbyist developers this spring, which will allow developers at any level to take advantage of new partner additions and Xbox LIVE features. Community Games developers will be able to include customized Avatars, which have quickly become one of the most popular features on Xbox LIVE. We'll have many more details about XNA Game Studio 3.1 soon

Stay tuned for more news from Team XNA and GDC 2009!

Note: Dream.Build.Play website (http://www.dreambuildplay.com/main/default.aspx) hasnt been updated yet

So, who is planning on entering?

dislekcia
25-03-2009, 01:26 PM
Yeah, the site update should only be coming on April 6th. At least that gives people time to brainstorm a little before the competition opens.

I think my first response is "oh bugger", mainly because I hadn't thought they'd do a DBP this year so I didn't plan for it.

Although the idea of having a user's avatar head lobbed through a couple of filters as the main character's head in UQ would be epic...

Azimuth
25-03-2009, 01:33 PM
Although the idea of having a user's avatar head lobbed through a couple of filters as the main character's head in UQ would be epic...

I had a similar idea ...

Kensei
25-03-2009, 01:48 PM
I might...er...yeah.... Although I won't be able to compete with the 'big boys (and girls)' I might get a stroke of inspiration and it would be good practice

edg3
25-03-2009, 01:58 PM
Im undecided about entering, I have way too much that is still unfinished. But, I have a few brainstorms here, might get around to it yet.

Kensei: We're all here to help :) and with your epic ideas Im sure you can get an idea thats good enough to compete with the big boys and girls (as you put it) :P

Azimuth
25-03-2009, 02:02 PM
Chippit and I started on our entry a couple of months ago already, but we've been neglecting it lately to fix up Ultimate Quest instead. Hadn't quite banked on DBP starting so early this year. :P

I'm sure we'll still be scraping something together, anyway. We're playing around with some really, really cool stuff. ^__^

Fengol
25-03-2009, 02:30 PM
With my new found skills in XNA I'd submit something

FuzzYspo0N
25-03-2009, 02:41 PM
maybe scr will be ready by then , but im not sure if ill enter

Fengol
25-03-2009, 02:49 PM
Can I make a suggestion that if you're going to develop an entry, setup a page on GreatGamesExperiment and post screenies and stuff which the community can follow and I can blog about?

FuzzYspo0N
25-03-2009, 04:13 PM
lol, sure. it would make sense giving the community the ability to watch it, though you could put it on personal blog/gge/website/nag forums as well :) i vote yes

Kensei
25-03-2009, 04:55 PM
Kensei: We're all here to help :) and with your epic ideas Im sure you can get an idea thats good enough to compete with the big boys and girls (as you put it) :P

lol, Thanks for the encouragement, edg3 :) Now I need to think of that killer idea ^_^


Can I make a suggestion that if you're going to develop an entry, setup a page on GreatGamesExperiment and post screenies and stuff which the community can follow and I can blog about?

Goes without saying :) Expect a GGE page from me when I think of what to make a game about ;)

edg3
26-03-2009, 01:24 PM
Invite friends. Now developers can take advantage of even more Xbox LIVE multiplayer features, including Xbox LIVE Party. With this feature, developers can let players create a virtual party and connect their friends to their favorite entertainment, easily send in-game invitations and play a game with up to seven other friends.


The party APIs are exactly the same for Community developers as in XBLA.

There isn't actually a ton of new functionality here, though. In fact you can already do parties today using Game Studio 3.0. The majority of the party system is handled for you by the Guide UI, and it communicates with the game by delivering invites, so if you make a multiplayer network game that supports invites, you already support parties "for free".

The new APIs add some extra richness that can make a more polished user experience, but you don't have to use them for basic party support. The new stuff covers:

* Some new Guide.Show* calls for bring up Party related screens (optional, since the player can get to these same screens by pressing their Guide button)

* A SignedInGamer.PartySize property, so you can detect whether or not you are currently in a party

* A LocalNetworkGamer.SendPartyInvites method, which you can call after creating a session to invite all the members of your party to join it (again optional, since the player can do the same thing via the Guide)




Barkers Crest:
Lets say a person would like to make a small crowd of random avatars. Would we be able to somehow load avatars from a gamers friends list or other profiles on their xbox?

The only way to create an AvatarDescription is by looking it up from a SignedInGamer, or using AvatarDescription.CreateRandom. You cannot query the avatars of other games who are not locally signed in.

If you are making a multiplayer game where you want each character to use their avatar, you need to have each machine look up its own AvatarDescription, then send this over the network to the other players at the start of the session.



Big Daddio:
I would hope we can re-dress the avatars, have our own clothing, so that like say the easy golf would have golf outfits, an army game would have uniforms, etc.

There is no programmatic way to do that. The player avatar belongs to the player, so your game doesn't get to change that or alter their clothing.

If you want to use other avatars (not the player one) as characters, you are free to do that. You can either create them randomly, or while you are writing your game, you could make a tool to save out just specific ones that you liked. You could do that either by randomly creating a bunch of different ones and picking the ones you liked the look of, or you could go into the dashboard and change your own avatar to look however you wanted, then save out the resulting AvatarDescription object. Once you have the AvatarDescription the way you like it, print it out back to the Visual Studio debugger, and hard code that particular AvatarDescription into your game, after which you can recreate exactly that avatar whenever you like.

Some more reading candy.

Fengol
26-03-2009, 04:40 PM
I've been day dreaming of a DBP09 entry using the new avatars and I was think it'd be cool to play Theme Hospital where you and the people on your friendslist come in as patients with the hilarious problems. Even Theme Park would be awesome and fit in with MS's family orientated policies.

Actually, any Bullfrog game will do *goes off to have dark thoughts about his 360 avatar being in the syndicate and blowing people up, and Dungeon Keeper*

AndrewJ
30-03-2009, 03:05 PM
Fengol, you're freaking me out. Just yesterday I was thinking of how I would create a Syndicate clone, the (admittedly) scary-to-think-about-just-off-the-cuff-code involved behind it. I also was wondering where I could get a copy of Theme Hospital from so that I could play it again - I've only played the demo :-(

Kensei
30-03-2009, 04:20 PM
Fengol, you're freaking me out. Just yesterday I was thinking of how I would create a Syndicate clone, the (admittedly) scary-to-think-about-just-off-the-cuff-code involved behind it. I also was wondering where I could get a copy of Theme Hospital from so that I could play it again - I've only played the demo :-(

:D

I picked up a copy of it 2 weeks ago for ?1, I plan to play it when I am finished my other games and between making another killer game

edg3
30-03-2009, 05:48 PM
Just a note about the avatars, we cant decide on anything till the TOS regarding using them are out unfortunately. It'll probably be more restricted then the current XNA Community Games TOS though.

Fengol
31-03-2009, 09:55 AM
Yes, but we can dream can't we? I mean who WOULDN'T want Miktar's avatar in BDSM leather running around a dungeon setting traps?