XNA Beta 2 announced (date 'in a couple of weeks')

XNA Beta 2 announced (date 'in a couple of weeks')

• James A Howard

  Last week they said 'in a couple of weeks'. Today at Seattle code camp they did not commit any further to a date but said 'keep your eye on the XNA dev center'. So those who know are not talking, and the rest of us are just guessing.

  
  
  

• Warren LaFrance Jr

  Like Shawn says, the best way to make it compatible without the content pipline is to convert to the XNA internal format yourself.
  
  

• shinji360

  The XNA team have already said that won't happen in v1.0 so I think that pretty much rules it out in the beta 2 release as well.
  
  

• cmwith

  I doubt that's going to happen. I kind of defeats the whole purpose of making GSE available to everyone.
  
  

• EMShahram

  What are we likely to see added to XNA Framework Beta 2
  I wouldn't mind seeing a timeline added to the XNA website, like we have with XDK to see what is planned for each release or for the future.

  
  

• ShadowRI

  Screw the pipeline, I want support for Windows Me! </sarcasm>
  
  But seriously folks... this is awesome news. I can't wait! I'm interested to see how the pipeline is shaping up, and if there's been any changes to the audio api.
  
  

• CompuDav

  I would be interested in that template...can you put it up for download somewhere rapidshare

  
  

• Cobolman

  Its a small ZIP file, so I might as well email it to you. Hmm, whats you email Its not in your profile.
  
  Oh, and also, you need to have the express edition installed in order to install XNA itself...But the different version of VS are fine SxS anyway, so doesnt matter.
  
  
  Hrm, now that the content pipeline is mentioned...is it possible to load things WITHOUT the pipeline The way we do it now
  

• ManuFern

  I doubt any such templates will be very usefull for the second beta, because from what i've read and seen, the Content Pipeline is integrated with the IDE, and the content is processed at build time.

  I would like to use Visual C# Pro, mainly because the Express Edition doesn't integrate with Team Explorer, but I am afraid I'll have to manage my source control in another way, since it looks like it's either this, or loosing the Content Pipeline.

  Hope I'm wrong, though. Any official opinions

  
  

• Ross Watson

  Personally, I'd like to see support for VS2005 Pro so I don't need to install VC# Express just to use the Game Studio Express.
  

• lucerias

  AASoft wrote:

  Hrm, now that the content pipeline is mentioned...is it possible to load things WITHOUT the pipeline The way we do it now

  
  
  Yes, but with some restrictions.
  
  On Windows you can always just ignore the content pipeline and go on doing what you're doing today.
  
  On Xbox, you can open files using System.IO, and write your own code to read textures and vertices and mesh data from them, so if you want to implement your own functionality similar to the content pipeline, you can do that.
  
  What you can't do on Xbox is to load textures and effects directly from source formats like you do today. There is no Texture.FromFile or EffectCompiler on Xbox, so you will need some code (whether using our content pipeline or something you write yourself) that runs as part of the build process to prepare these assets into Xbox format.
  
  The inability to load assets directly from source format on Xbox is actually one of the main reasons we decided to implement the content pipeline in the first place!
  
  
  

• FergusLogic

  Yea! Bring on the content pipeline!
  
  

• yjacket2006

  I made myself a template for VS2005 Pro, and use that. If you want, I can send you the template(just a small ZIP file). Works perfectly fine. THe other benefit of that is that you can just go into the solution file, change one line, and now the solution file loads in the the express edition and works just fine - i do that ocassionally to test whether it will compile in EE.
  
  
  So, need that template
  
  
• XNA Beta 2 announced (date 'in a couple of weeks')