Creators Club Communiqué 23

Spring seems to have springed here in the verdant Seattle-area! We all know it is a trick, though, so we’re preparing by staying inside and playing games made with XNA Game Studio. What you might not know is that several Xbox LIVE Arcade titles were made with XNA Game Studio, too! Like James Silva’s dark, stylish, button-bashing brawler The Dishwasher which just hit Arcade this week! There are also two other Dream-Build-Play gems coming to Arcade later this year – 3D pirate adventure  Yo-Ho-Kablammo and Robo-Badminton game Blazing Birds! Keep an eye out for them!

If you’re looking for an easy way to keep track of all the latest and greatest Xbox LIVE Community Games hitting marketplace you need to get yourself this amazing Windows Vista Desktop Gadget! It shows games as they become available on the Xbox LIVE Community Games Channel on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. It can be configured to filter by region (All, United States, France, etc..) or filter to show games by a particular Creator.

All the sunshine is bad for your skin, so instead you should stay safely indoors making awesome Xbox LIVE Community Games. These various articles and tutorials should help with that!

These are all fantastic for those out there who are just getting started with XNA Game Studio – or maybe just need to brush up on the basics! Want to know why beginning coders should start with XNA Game Studio? A nice article on Nuclex.org answers that very question. MVP Nick Gravelyn offers a very straight-forward tutorial on basic handling of multiple controllers. MVP George Clingerman’s site XNADevelopment.com is a treasure-trove of wonderment for those starting out with XNA Game Studio – check out his recent Introduction to Game State! When you feel your masterpiece is ready for playtest – MVP Pete’s article on submitting your creation to Xbox LIVE Community Games is very helpful!

Next week, I’ll share some links for those Creators that are ready for a bit more of a challenge – if you’ve got something that helped you out making your game don’t hesitate to send it my way - XNAKat@microsoft.com!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager