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XNA Game Studio 3.1: What's new?

Article

submitted

6/11/2009

What's New In This Release

Describes new features and changes in Microsoft XNA Game Studio.

New Framework Features
New Conceptual Content
Changes to the Development Environment and Tools
Changes to the XNA Framework API

New Framework Features

Avatars
Xbox LIVE Party
Video
Audio Enhancements
Content Pipeline Enhancements

Avatars
Avatars are three-dimensional animated characters. The Xbox Dashboard uses avatars to represent gamers who are signed in to the local console, and players in the gamers' friends lists and LIVE Party chats. Titles can also use avatars in games, both to represent gamers and to represent other characters in the game.

Concepts
Programming with Avatars
Discusses the support for avatars in XNA Game Studio applications targeting the Xbox 360 console.

Tasks
How To: Render and Animate an Avatar Using AvatarRenderer.
Demonstrates how to render and animate a gamer's avatar using the AvatarRenderer class and a standard animation.

Reference
AvatarAnimation
    Provides methods and properties for animating an avatar using standard animations (for example, celebrate).
AvatarDescription
    Provides access to the methods and properties of the description data for an avatar.
AvatarExpression
    Contains the various components of the avatar's face, such as the left and right eyebrows.
AvatarRenderer
    Provides properties and methods for rendering a standard avatar.
SignedInGamer.AvatarChanged
    Occurs when a gamer's avatar changes.
SignedInGamer.Avatar
    Description data for the avatar that represents the gamer.
AvatarAnimationPreset
    Defines standard animations for avatars.
AvatarBone
    Defines a list of the useful bones of the avatar model.
AvatarEyebrow
    Defines the standard animation textures for an avatar's eyebrows.
AvatarEye
    Defines the standard animation textures for an avatar's eyes.
AvatarMouth
    Defines the standard animation textures for an avatar's mouth.

Xbox LIVE Party
Xbox LIVE Party enables gamers to communicate, even when each gamer is not playing the same game in the same multiplayer session. LIVE Party supports up to an eight-way group voice chat for gamers. It does not matter what each gamer is doing on his or her Xbox 360 at the time—playing games, watching videos, listening to music, or browsing the Marketplace. LIVE Party chat keeps gamers connected before, during, and after a gameplay session, persisting across title switches. Furthermore, LIVE Party chat provides easy and quick ways for gamers to get into multiplayer games together.

Tasks
How To: Add LIVE Party Support
Describes how to add LIVE Party support to Xbox LIVE Community Games.

Reference
LocalNetworkGamer.SendPartyInvites
Sends game invitations to all party members that are not in the current game session.
SignedInGamer.PartySize
Gets the current party size.
Guide.ShowPartySessions
Guide.ShowParty

Video
XNA Game Studio now supports the ability to play back video that can be used for such purposes as opening splash and logo scenes, cut scenes, or in-game video displays.

This set of XNA Framework APIs supports the following features:

Full screen video playback
Video playback to simple textures in game
Control of playback such as pause/resume and stop
Retrieve properties of the video, such as playback time, size, and frame rate
Determine the type and usage of the audio track, such as if it has music, dialog, or music and dialog
Play back multiple video streams at the same time

Tasks
How To: Play Video
Demonstrates how to use the VideoPlayer to play back videos.
How To: Play a Video in 3D space
Demonstrates how to use the VideoPlayer to playback videos on the surface of a quad.

Reference
Video
    Represents a video.
VideoPlayer
    Provides methods and properties to playback, pause, resume, and stop video. VideoPlayer also exposes repeat, volume, and play position information.
VideoSoundtrackType
    Type of sounds in a video

Audio Enhancements
This version of XNA Game Studio has a new usage pattern of SoundEffect.Play. Sound instances created by Play calls are disposed automatically when playback ends, and SoundEffect.Play returns a Boolean to indicate success or failure.

Tasks
How To: Apply Basic 3D Positional Effects to a SoundEffect
Demonstrates how to apply 3D positioning effects to SoundEffects.
How To: Change the Pitch or Volume of a Sound
Demonstrates how to change pitch and volume of a playing sound.

Content Pipeline Enhancements
This changes the semantics of the Content Pipeline, making it much easier to add custom types.

Reference
ContentSerializerRuntimeTypeAttribute
    A custom Attribute that specifies the corresponding run-time type of this object.
ContentSerializerTypeVersionAttribute
    A custom Attribute that specifies the corresponding run-time type version of this object.
ContentTypeWriter.CanDeserializeIntoExistingObject
    Determines if deserialization into an existing object is possible.

New Conceptual Content

Graphics
The XNA Rendering Pipeline
Provides a high-level view of the graphics rendering pipeline for XNA games.
What Is a Model Bone?
A model bone is a matrix that represents the position of a mesh relative to other bones in a 3D model.

Changes to the Development environment and Tools

Visual Studio Changes
XNA Game Studio 3.1 supports both 3.0 and 3.1 projects, and it includes support for upgrading projects from 3.0 to 3.1.

Tasks
Upgrading XNA Game Studio Projects
    Describes supported and unsupported XNA Game Studio project versions, provides guides for upgrade scenarios, and offers advice on troubleshooting upgrade issues.
Upgrade Guide: XNA Game Studio 3.0 to XNA Game Studio 3.1
    Describes how to upgrade your XNA Game Studio 3.0 game to XNA Game Studio 3.1 in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.
Troubleshooting Upgrades
    Describes common issues with upgrading XNA Game Studio projects.

XACT Update
XNA Game Studio 3.1 includes support for XACT3. XACT 3 has a number of new features, including the following.

Ability to enable a filter on every track.
XACT3 now exposes a filter on every track, letting the sound designer set the filter type and parameters (filter width and the cutoff/center frequency). The filter can be set directly on a track or it can be attached to an RPC. Sound designers either can set specific filter parameters or they can specify a range. When setting a range, they can select a random value for the parameter each time the track is played.

Support for the xWMA compression format.
XACT3 now supports xWMA decoding in software on both Xbox 360 and Windows. xWMA uses the WMA bitstream format in a lightweight wrapper, and it can provide 1.5–2× the compression compared with XMA at similar quality. xWMA is very useful for types of content, such as dialog or music, for which you can afford a small CPU hit to achieve much greater compression. A quality setting similar to XMA's allows you to increase or decrease compression to adjust sound performance.

Changes to the XNA Framework API

Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content
ContentSerializerRuntimeTypeAttribute
A custom Attribute that specifies the corresponding run-time type of this object.
ContentSerializerTypeVersionAttribute
A custom Attribute that specifies the corresponding run-time type version of this object.

Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Serialization.Compiler
ContentTypeWriter.CanDeserializeIntoExistingObject
Determines if deserialization into an existing object is possible.

Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices
AvatarAnimation
    Provides methods and properties for animating an avatar using standard animations (for example, celebrate).
AvatarDescription
    Provides access to the methods and properties of the description data for an avatar.
AvatarExpression
    Contains the various components of the avatar's face, such as the left and right eyebrows.
AvatarRenderer
    Provides properties and methods for rendering a standard avatar.
SignedInGamer.AvatarChanged
    Occurs when a gamer's avatar changes.
SignedInGamer.Avatar
    Description data for the avatar that represents the gamer.
SignedInGamer.PartySize
    Gets the current party size.
AvatarAnimationPreset
    Defines standard animations for avatars.
AvatarBone
    Defines a list of the useful bones of the avatar model.
AvatarEyebrow
    Defines the standard animation textures for an avatar's eyebrows.
AvatarEye
    Defines the standard animation textures for an avatar's eyes.
AvatarMouth
    Defines the standard animation textures for an avatar's mouth.
Guide.ShowPartySessions
Guide.ShowParty

Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media
Video
    Represents a video.
VideoPlayer
    Provides methods and properties to playback, pause, resume, and stop video. VideoPlayer also exposes repeat, volume, and play position information.
VideoSoundtrackType
    Type of sounds in a video

Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Net
LocalNetworkGamer.SendPartyInvites
Sends game invitations to all party members that are not in the current game session.

Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Storage
StorageDevice.DeleteContainer

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