XBox 360, XNA and C#

2 days ago, my good friend Mark Barcinski dropped by my house to hang out,
after a few drinks and a delicious pizza our nerdyness started to take over our conversations.

While talking about the future of Flash 3D and Unity,
the idea came up to use an XBox360, and run some 3D stuff on it.
So we got on it, and quickly  found the Microsoft XNA Game Studio which allows you to code Applications that will run on the XBox360 and Windows.

But before we could start, we had to install Windows and install Microsoft C# Express on my MacBook, as that is the only option of environment.
Having some troubles here and there, in the end of the day we finally managed to compile the first sample application to my XBox360.

The next morning, not really being awake, i had to go on and dig into the XNA Framework. After a while i got used to C# and had a basic understanding of how
to draw on the canvas and render 3D objects on the XBox360.

Here is what came out of my first few hours of XBox360 development:

[vimeo 13130826]

This is a really simple and basic example and is not meant to impress anyone.
I really have to invest some time into this to get some good results,
but that won’t be a problem because, let me tell you this, i am already hooked.

First of all i am hooked because the development tools provided by Microsoft are of such a good quality, it’s amazing.
I am hooked because: C# is such a nice language and Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express is an outstanding IDE, considering its for free!
I am hooked because it is so simple: I press the deploy-button and my project will compiled and then moved to the XBox360 and executed immediately. While I still have complete debug capabilities like setting break-points, pause/resume code-execution and can inspect current values of all objects.
I am hooked because: I can also run my application on a Windows computer,
without having to rewrite my application.

Of course this is only my first impression after working a few hours on/with,
so i might feel different about in a day.
I also spotted some, in my opinion, weak points.
But i will keep them to myself till I really understand it.

I can only recommend it to everyone to try it out, the only annyoing thing is that you need an XNA-Community-Premium account, which costst 39,00EUR/4 months and 99EUR/1 year.

This is actually the very first time i am digging deeper in the 3-dimensional area,
and it is a lot of fun. Hope that i’ll soon be able, to participate in those amazing conversations that Frank, David and Ralph have, or at least understand what they are talking about.

Edit:
Here is Mark fixing my old, thought to be broken, Xbox360 by just blocking the fans with paper-clips, letting it overheat and then resetting it.
I found these instructions on youtube, and never believed that it would work,
but luckily it did and now Mark also has an XBox360 to experiment (and play) with.