well to be honest it seems like this is what I should look to be learning more the next few months. Things aroud here just seem to be moving sooo slowly
Also it helps there will probably be a couple books coming out to buy on XNA
I still am a little confused.. XNA is built on top of directX and .net 2.0 ?
So is XNA just some helper class to make coding .. doing things like loading a mesh and all easier?
Lots of people are confused. XNA is the name for an entire category of technologies. The core is the XNA framework, which is the next version of Managed DirectX. It's DirectX exposed natively to managed code and provides an application framework. For example there is a Game class, that you derive your own class from in order to override Update() and Draw() and do your logic. And there are concepts such as Game Components for expansion (and 3rd party products). These could be anything from GUI to AI to Network components to supporting additional renderers. So there's more of a structure to it than previous versions of MDX. There's an implied design pattern.
At the moment, Game Studio Express is essentially VC# Express, the XNA framework, and some application templates. "Game Studio" is hyperbole. There is still the need for higher-level APIs, which is where TorqueX and TV enter the picture.
But, yes, XNA is here, don't kid yourself. Unless you're releasing by next Summer, XNA is where your development resources should be going. No question about that. Early beta now, but this is MS. Say what you will about them, but when they decide to pursue an initiative as strategically important for greater adoption of their game console as XNA is, it's time to pay attention. This is part of their war with Sony. The exteremly high barriers for entry into PS means fewer publishers, fewer programmers trained on the system, and fewer games. Games sell consoles.
The gamble is: will it be faster to wait for TV to be ported than to (ugh!) write those higher-level APIs yourself, or to investigate other products. I'm betting that if 6.5 is productive fairly soon, it could be ported reasonably quickly (since they've already re-written it from the ground up, it would just be a change to the internal APIs TV uses, in theory).
Meanwhile, what the heck *is* TorqueX? GG says it uses parts of its 2D and 3D technologies, but is based on TGE. What does that mean? I can't envision TGE being used for 3D. So the waters are a bit murky right now.
