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XNA Creator's Club is Live!

 
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
Updated the banners, but not his title


Joined: 07 Dec 2004
Posts: 3725

PostPosted: Wed May 21, 2008 2:43 pm    Post subject: XNA Creator's Club is Live! Reply with quote

Check it out! It's a pretty neat site! What this means is that members of the creator's club can download and play other Creator's Club Premium member's games, then rate them to make sure that the content lines up with what's actually in the game.

It costs either $50 for 4 months or $100 for a year of creator's club premium service, but overall that's a lot cheaper than an actual dev kit, and the tools and ability to run games on Windows are free to anyone.

I've been casually working my own XNA games so I went ahead and splurged for the membership. It's pretty neat and I'm glad I did it, but there are a few things I really don't like.

1. There's a highly restrictive limit to the number of people that can download games for review and when that number is maxed out you can't download it any more unless you do so from a personal website. This is lame because part of the reason I signed up for the Creator's Club Premium was to get early access to homebrew games.

2. People are supposed to put up finished games for review, but both of the games I downloaded weren't quite ready for prime time. One of them was a version of Pong with three difficulty settings, all of which had the ball bounce back and forth at a 90 degree angle, with the opponent never moving or needing to. The other was an online enabled "game" where people could move letters around on a giant whiteboard to spell words. It was a lot more interesting and complete than Pong, but there wasn't anyone else on so I couldn't tell if the online worked. I don't feel like I could properly rate it, so I had to refrain from doing so.

3. Some of the feedback options are too limited. The unfinished Pong game was a waste of a download, but based on the catgories I was allowed to choose from, the only one I could technically get them on was the description. He had it listed under the "platformer" genre.

4. The new site design puts a lot less of a focus on tutorials and XNA help, potentially making it much more difficult for new homebrewers to get started.

It might sound like I'm being super negative, and to be fair it's only a beta, but I have pretty high hopes for this thing and I don't want the possibility for legal homebrew on consoles to be held back any more than it already is. Other than the above things I'm super excited at the potential and I can't wait to finish my game and put it up!

Is anyone else interested in this?

-Wes
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dessgeega
loves your favorite videogame
loves your favorite videogame


Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 6563
Location: bohan

PostPosted: Wed May 21, 2008 4:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i'm interested in this but i also hate xna.
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purplechair
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Joined: 28 Mar 2005
Posts: 378
Location: in my pants

PostPosted: Wed May 21, 2008 6:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, does this actually work now? I signed up for my free student account thingy weeks ago, but I haven't seen anything playable (on Live, at least) since that time when they had Jelly Car et al, weeks ago.


Edit: What, so I can associate my Creator's Club profile with my Gamertag, but I can't use my Gamerpic instead of those ugly-ass Creator's Club portraits? Goddam.
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
Updated the banners, but not his title


Joined: 07 Dec 2004
Posts: 3725

PostPosted: Wed May 21, 2008 10:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:
i'm interested in this but i also hate xna.

Is this because it's more difficult than drag and drop or is it more of an anti-corporate thing?

Yeah, it's up now. And yes, you've got to use their cruddy Creator's Club portraits. It's still a beta though, so maybe things will be cleaned up by the time it goes live for real.

-Wes
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dessgeega
loves your favorite videogame
loves your favorite videogame


Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 6563
Location: bohan

PostPosted: Wed May 21, 2008 11:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'M RAGING AGAINST YOUR CORPORATE MACHINE, WES

actually i tried to learn xna once and it was way too complicated for me.
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
Updated the banners, but not his title


Joined: 07 Dec 2004
Posts: 3725

PostPosted: Wed May 21, 2008 11:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:
I'M RAGING AGAINST YOUR CORPORATE MACHINE, WES

actually i tried to learn xna once and it was way too complicated for me.

Yeah, it's easier than programming from scratch, but it's still programming. I've had to scale my ideas way back to get anything off the ground at all. Still, the fact that I've gotten things off of the ground (not quite flying yet) is a really good sign for me!

-Wes
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
Updated the banners, but not his title


Joined: 07 Dec 2004
Posts: 3725

PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 6:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Woah hey, so it turns out that when things get through the review process they're actually putting them up. I'm not sure if this means anyone can download them, but on the Xbox if you go to the "XNA Creator's Club" column in the "My Games" menu you can press Y to download any of them. Some of them are really impressive! There's a really cute defender ripoff and several surprisingly good Geometry Wars clones. Woo!

-Wes
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Lestrade
Bug Fister
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Joined: 24 Mar 2005
Posts: 1760
Location: Toronto

PostPosted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just wanted to update this to say I'm on here as a regular member (will upgrade if necessary in the future). You can search for the mysterious Benjamin Rivers to find me. I figured we should post our names or IDs if anyone's jumping on board.
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