May 2008 - Posts

• Community Games on Xbox LIVE - open for business

  Sorry for the cut'n'paste, but it's good news however it's delivered...   Today, we deliver on the promise we made at GDC to democratize game development with the launch of the newly designed XNA Creators Club Online Web site and the highly anticipated beta of Community Games on Xbox LIVE. When we announced this new service at GDC 2008, it was met with great excitement around the world. Now we’re pleased to offer you an opportunity to interact with this new site and test out the distribution pipeline to Xbox Live!  If you’re a already a  premium member, you will be able to join us in the Community Games on Xbox LIVE Beta immediately, where you can submit your games and review others games, and enjoy playing  them on Xbox LIVE! If you are not a member, sign up today and get involved in making history in game development.   Andy Posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008 3:11 PM from UK Academic Team Blog | 0 Comments

• XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP is here!

  Go team XNA! We're delighted to announce that the Community Technology Preview for XNA 3.0 is here. Dave Weller has the full details on the release, on the XNA Team Blog. For those of you that are still here, highlights include the ability to push games down to a Zune - hmm, OK so only a handful of us have them in the UK (new devices are awesome IMHO, and the new 2.5 software and firmware Just Plain Work - great stuff); but more importantly Visual Studio 2008 is now supported! Andy   Posted Wednesday, May 07, 2008 12:54 PM from UK Academic Team Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: XNA

• XNA Creators Club Codes are now in MSDN AA!

  While students have been able to get their own codes through Dreamspark, we've not been able to get these codes out to whole departments until now! So, if you're looking to get every single student, or every lab machine a Creator's Club subscription, and you have an MSDN AA account then I've got great news for you. You can now get 12 month codes as part of your MSDN AA subscription. Currently, you can only get hold of the creator's club codes through the ELMS download service.  But - let's be honest, this is a great facility, and you really should be using it already. If you want to learn more about ELMS, then it's worth checking out the home page. One of my colleagues (hat tip: Hillary) has also posted a couple of short videos explaining how easy the system is to operate - which I've included below... Andy ";" galleryimg="no" mce_src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/ukacademia/WindowsLiveWriter/XNACreatorsClubCodesarenowinMSDNAA_836A/video574a6a0ea623.jpg"> ";" galleryimg="no" mce_src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/ukacademia/WindowsLiveWriter/XNACreatorsClubCodesarenowinMSDNAA_836A/video9cb6aabf1cff.jpg"> Posted Wednesday, May 07, 2008 4:21 AM from UK Academic Team Blog | 1 Comments Filed under: MSDN AA, XNA

• New release roundup - Part I

  Oh boy, one bank holiday, and there's more new software than I can cope with. Here's a quick summary   Microsoft Office Labs The office team have been gathering up all the good ideas and mini-apps (I use the term 'mini' relative to Office here) and gathered them together in to the Microsoft Office Labs site.       Personal Highlights InkSeine - (pictured) A fresh look at how the UI for tablets can be optimised for freeflow notetaking and research. Community Clips - a screen recording application and "how-to" sharing site for Microsoft Office. A great way to make screencasts, and it's free!     Expression 2.0 Woah! A serious turnaround time by the Expression team here - but the new features make this a major upgrade - key highlights for me are: Silverlight 1.0 Editing ASP.NET 3.5 Support PHP Website design / editing Javascript editing My colleague Paolo has more details on what you can do with Expression.   Part II to follow shortly...   Andy Posted Wednesday, May 07, 2008 3:52 AM from UK Academic Team Blog | 0 Comments