XNAtutorial.com

Even though most people beat me to the announcement, the XNA Team just took the new version of XNA Game Studio out of beta, dropping the Express in the name. You can download it and play with the new features, such as networking, 3D sound in XACT, better Xbox connectivity, game packer, improved graphics-device loss handling, font kerning, and so on. (press release) (download page) (direct download)

If you are new, there are introductions available, such as info for beginners and a list of already converted samples to study.

If you used XNA GSE 1.0, you will want to get the project converter from 1.0 to 2.0 (1 MB).

There is also the XNA redistributable available separately. (info) (download 2 MB)

Dream Build Play 2.0

Dream Build Play will be back, and has already got a warm-up challenge if you’re interested in artificial intelligence. Submissions are accepted until January 27, 2008.

First prizes in the warm-up are internship interviews with Microsoft Research, Rare Ltd. and Lionhead Studios, besides $3000.

Visual Studio 2008 Express not supported yet

On top of that, a while longer ago, Visual Studio 2008 Express also exited beta. There is a single download for all programming languages now, which is nice. (info) (full download 895 MB) (web installer for C# only 3 MB)

Unfortunately, XNA does not plug into Visual Studio 2008, as the plug-in system was rewritten for 2008, and the XNA team did not have time to both integrate in both Visual Studio 2005 and 2008’s plug-in architecture. You will still need to keep Visual Studio C# 2005 to use XNA Game Studio 2.0.

However, you can install Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 side-by-side, This gives you access to XNA in Visual Studio 2005, and some new features in Visual Studio 2008 when developing normal Windows (or web) applications. The main features are LINQ language features and integration of ASP.NET AJAX controls, but I’d like to highlight some of my favorites.

When registering Visual Studio 2008 Express, you also get access to a bunch of downloadable freebies. One control to love is the Telerik Rad Ribbon Bar. Your applications will look just like Office 2007. (register before downloading)

Also great is the DarkGDK game asset kit, with hundreds of files, including 3D models, sound effects, and music. The installer will check that you have Visual Studio 2008 and DirectX 9.0c SDK installed already, so get those too. (info) (download 218 MB)

But my favorite is the peer-to-peer chat client which you can drag and rop into any application you’re making. (info) (download 33 MB)

Visual Studio 2008 Express includes .Net Framework 3.5, but you can still target multiple runtimes, such as the .Net Framework 2.0. Visual Studio 2008 Express will even provide IntelliSense errors if you try to use something not available in 2.0.

With Windows Vista, the graphics engine changed. Visual Studio 2008 Express can mix components designed for the old Windows Forms and the new Windows Presentation Foundation.

Also, Visual Studio 2008 Express supports the MUI Architecture, so now we can add support for odd languages ourselves, like Thai for example. Microsoft will do the big ones, such as English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese, and Korean.

.Net Framework 3.5

Even if you don’t download Visual Studio 2008 Express, you might be interested in getting the new .Net Framework 3.5. It includes the latest versions of both 2.0 and 3.0 as well. (download installer 3 MB) (download full redistributable 197 MB)

Do uninstall any framework betas before installing.

Nvidia PerfHUD 5.1

Nvidia PerfHud helps you analyze the performance of your Direct3D applications, and the new version supports XNA. (info) (quick tutorial 4 MB) (user guide 9 MB) (download for Vista 66 MB) (download for XP 91 MB)

Blender 2.45

Also, Blender chose to come out with version 2.45. (info) (download 8 MB)

Cheers,

Joran