The first trailer for Grand Theft Auto V was released today at noon. You’re not going to find out much about the game from it, other than:

• It takes place in what seems to be present-day “Los Santos”, the analogue for Los Angeles in the world of Grand Theft Auto. Los Santos is one of the three cities in the sprawling Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
• The plot seems to involve a guy trying to start a new life in a new city, not unlike Grand Theft Auto IV’s Niko Bellic or Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’s Tommy Vercetti. I think it’s safe to assume that his plans get waylaid and through a series of bizarre circumstances and friends and associates with poor life-planning skills (no shortage of such types in the world of GTA), our hero lands himself in a whole world of trouble. It would also be safe to assume that he gets out of said trouble by causing a lot of mayhem.
• The voice-over in the trailer sounds a helluva lot like Ray Liotta, who played Tommy in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

As with most of Rockstar’s trailers, this one’s all cinematics and mise en scene. There’s no indication of what the gameplay is like, whether you’re playing the story or in multiplayer mode. There’s also no indication of what platforms it’s coming out for (although it’s safe to assume that Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 will be supported, with a PC version to follow later) nor when the game will be released (I assume sometime in 2012).

Mari0, a creation of StabYourself.net, the people behind videogame alterations such as Not Tetris 2, combines Super Mario Bros. with Portal for some weird and wonderful 8-bit gameplay. This is a supposedly real working game, and I can hardly wait to get my paws on it!

YouTube user JoshuaMutter, who makes a lot of Minecraft machinima, created this video that mashes up the gameplay from Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which I still have to get) and Men Without Hats’ 1982 dance-synth-pop classic, Safety Dance. All it needs is the little minstrel from the original music video.

No Escape is a short film set in the world of Portal, and it’s seven very well-done minutes.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

A test version of Smiles running on my WP7 device.

In between chatting with developers who dropped by today’s Coffee and Code in downtown Toronto and getting some work done, I’ve been playing Smiles (pictured above), an incredibly cute and incredibly addictive puzzle game by London, ON-based development shop Sykhronics.

Here’s a video of Smiles’ gameplay in its “Drop” mode:

Mike Kasprzak of Sykhronics was kind enough to send me an early test version of Smiles to show off the Phone’s game capabilities as well as the level of “polish” that Windows Phone 7 developers should be aiming for in their apps. Mike’s got some pretty high standards and is working to make sure that Smiles for WP7 meets them, and it shows! Even in this test version, Smiles looks and feels like a polished arcade classic, and when it’s done, it’s going to be a must-buy.

Keep writing those apps, and aim high! We’ll do what we can on our end to help out, which includes:

• Articles on Windows Phone 7 development in Silverlight and XNA
• Articles on good mobile user interface design and marketing your apps
• Announcements of upcoming Coffee and Codes and WP7 Deployment Clinics across Canada
• Coverage of “Phone Heroes”: People building apps for Windows Phone 7 – and hey, you could be one of them!
• Pointers to useful tools, resources and other things to help you build WP7 apps

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Can’t see the video? Download Silverlight or download the video in high-quality WMV, medium-quality WMV, MP4 and MP3 (audio only) formats!

XNA is the game development framework that makes it easier to develop games for Windows, Xbox and Windows Phone, and it lets you do it with managed code – that is, using C# instead of C++. In this video, Microsoft’s Shawn Hargreaves and Charles Cox talk about all things XNA, including:

• XNA Game Studio
• XNA Creators Club Online
• Game Development for Windows Phone 7
• XNA Game Studio and Silverlight – Games and Apps
• GPU Acceleration
• The History of XNA Game Studio
• .NET Garbage Collection Tips for XNA Game Studio
• Managed Code Performance Tips
• DirectX 11 or XNA Game Studio – Making the Choice
• Introducing Reach and HiDef Graphics Profiles
• Visual Basic in XNA Game Studio
• XAML and Event-Driven Programming in XNA Game Studio

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

I was a teenager in the 1980s, which meant that along with watching Knight Rider, going to Depeche Mode concerts and playing blocky games on an Atari 2600, I had a Rubik’s cube. These puzzle toys were such a big craze at the time that toy and game stores couldn’t keep them on the shelves. I’m told that even decades later, it’s still considered to be the number one-selling toy of all time.

It’s nice to see that Ottawa-based developer Magmic, who specialize in mobile casual gaming, are bringing Rubik’s cube – the real officially-licensed thing – to Windows Phone 7. Naturally, you can try solving the classic 3 * 3 * 3 cube that we all know and love…

…but the game lets you go beyond the classic with:

• Four different sizes of cubes
• “Free play” or the more challenging “Timed mode”
• A timer to keep track of your best solution times
• Variations like “CRAZY cube” and “Picture cube”
• A solution guide to help you learn how to solve the puzzle
• Anaglyphic 3-D mode (3-D glasses not included)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The Week-Long Discussion

Andrew Stellman, co-author of O’Reilly’s excellent and easy-to-read C# intro, Head First C#, is holding a week-long “Inner Circle” discussion on C# and .NET 4.0 in the forums for O’Reilly’s “Head First” book series. In this discussion, he plans to cover a wide range of topics, including:

• Why use C# instead of any other language?
• C# best practices
• Becoming a better C# developer
• Dealing with objects
• Productivity hints
• The best of C#

If you want to follow the discussion, simply point your browser at the Head First Labs Forums’ “Head First C#” section and look for topics started by Andrew Stellman. You don’t have to log in to just read, but you’ll have to register for the forum if you want to join in the discussion and comment back.

The Challenge

In his first discussion topic, Andrew issues a challenge: build an old-school, text-mode game in C#! In the 1980s, the computing world was seen through the command line in an 80-character by 24-line grid (40 characters if you were on an Apple ][, Commodore 64 or Atari 400/800, even fewer if you were on a VIC-20), and that’s how we played a lot of games, whether they were commercial or typed in from source code in magazine or books like the ones scanned into the Atari Archives.

If you’ve never written a text-mode game before (or in my case, if it’s been a long, long time), he’s written an article to help out — Understanding C#: Use System.Console to Build Text-Mode Games.

Your efforts in building an old-school text-mode game will not go unrewarded. Submit a text-mode game and you can win a prize! He’ll judge them on the following criteria:

• Game play
• Fun
• Technical coolness
• General awesomeness
• “Retro nostalgia” for extra point

The winner will receive five O’Reilly eBooks of his or her choice. He’ll also choose runners-up who will get a free O’Reilly eBook.

If you’re looking for ideas for an old-school text-mode game, check out these books at Atari Archives, with source code written in old-school line-numbered BASIC. Some of these take me back to my high school days:

• Creating Adventure Games on Your Computer
• BASIC Computer Games
• More BASIC Computer Games
• Big Computer Games
• BASIC Computer Adventures

Video Q&A: Stellman on C#

As a prelude to the discussion, Andrew recorded videos of his answers to questions about the C# programming language and the second edition of Head First C#…

Why should developers learn C#?

What kind of applications can you build with C#?

How hard is C# to pick up?

What’s the toughest thing to learn in C#?

What’s new in the second edition of Head First C#?

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

It’s On!

When Windows Phone 7 was first shown to the public in March, we got a taste of the Games hub and were told that Microsoft was working with a number of big game developers to bring games to the new phone platform. Late yesterday, we got the announcement of the first games coming to WP7:

It’s one thing to see a slickly-produced ad showing the games, but it’s an entirely different thing to see actual games being played on an actual phone. Here’s Engadget’s video of the game experience on one of the prototype phones – the Samsung “Taylor”, which I have and which you might have seen at the last “Coffee and Code” event in Toronto:

Here’s what Engadget had to say about the experience:

We’ll preface this by saying that both the hardware and software we demoed was still unfinished (the latter being the Samsung Taylor dev phone and the LG QWERTY model we broke news of on the Engadget Show). Regardless, the gameplay for the arcade titles seemed excellent, with frame rates holding fast even during graphically intensive 3D sequences (such as the chaotic, scattered-pixel play of Rocket Riot). The Harvest, while a bit familiar to our eyes, still showed the graphic promise of the platform. Gameplay was definitely well suited to a touchscreen device, though Microsoft’s Kevin Unangst told us that developers could target controls for both touch and QWERTY-equipped phones (provided that a touch version was always present). The screen response seemed accurate and sensitive, reacting quickly to our input. Particularly in the Crackdown title — a tower defense game "set in the Crackdown universe" — pinch zooming, rotation, and finger tracking was excellent.

The New New Xbox Experience

The “New Xbox Experience” or “NXE” – the revamped Xbox user interface that introduced avatars – comes along for the ride on Windows Phone. You can access your Xbox Live account on WP7, check out your gamerscore and achievements, and like Xbox-based games, your avatar can also be used within WP7 games and apps.

In this Engadget video, we see avatars being used to give a little twist to some standard smartphone apps such as “flashlight”, “spirit level” and “coin flip”:

Here’s another video showing more avatar action as well as some of the social networking features of Xbox Live, as done on WP7:

The Games

The games that have been announced for Windows Phone 7 so far:

• 3D Brick Breaker Revolution (Digital Chocolate)
• Age of Zombies (Halfbrick)
• Armor Valley (Protégé Games)
• Asphalt 5 (Gameloft)
• Assassins Creed (Gameloft)
• Bejeweled™ LIVE (PopCap)
• Bloons TD (Digital Goldfish)
• Brain Challenge (Gameloft)
• Bubble Town 2 (i-Play)
• Butterfly (Press Start Studio)
• CarneyVale Showtime (MGS)
• Castlevania (Konami Digital Entertainment)
• Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst (MGS)
• De Blob Revolution (THQ)
• Deal or No Deal 2010 (i-Play)
• Earthworm Jim (Gameloft)
• Fast & Furious 7 (i-Play)
• Fight Game Rivals (Rough Cookie)
• Finger Physics (Mobliss Inc.)
• Flight Control (Namco Bandai)
• Flowerz (Carbonated Games)
• Frogger (Konami Digital Entertainment)
• Fruit Ninja (Halfbrick)
• Game Chest-Board (MGS)
• Game Chest-Card (MGS)
• Game Chest-Logic (MGS)
• Game Chest-Solitaire (MGS)
• GeoDefense (Critical Thought)
• Ghostscape (Psionic)
• Glow Artisan (Powerhead Games)
• Glyder 2 (Glu Mobile)
• Guitar Hero 5 (Glu Mobile)
• Halo Waypoint (MGS)
• Hexic Rush (Carbonated Games)
• I Dig It (InMotion)
• iBlast Moki (Godzilab)
• ilomilo (MGS)
• Implode XL (IUGO)
• Iquarium (Infinite Dreams)
• Jet Car Stunts (True Axis)
• Let’s Golf 2 (Gameloft)
• Little Wheel (One click dog)
• Loondon (Flip N Tale)
• Max and the Magic Marker (PressPlay)
• Mini Squadron (Supermono Limited)
• More Brain Exercise (Namco Bandai)
• O.M.G. (Arkedo)
• Puzzle Quest 2 (Namco Bandai)
• Real Soccer 2 (Gameloft)
• The Revenants (Chaotic Moon)
• Rise of Glory (Revo Solutions)
• Rocket Riot (Codeglue)
• Splinter Cell Conviction (Gameloft)
• Star Wars: Battle for Hoth (THQ)
• Star Wars: Cantina (THQ)
• The Harvest (MGS)
• The Oregon Trail (Gameloft)
• Tower Bloxx NY (Digital Chocolate)
• Twin Blades (Press Start Studio)
• UNO (Gameloft)
• Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet (i-Play)
• Zombie Attack! (IUGO)
• Zombies!!!! (Babaroga)

…with more on the way, as big game dev companies sign up and Microsoft’s Mobile Games Studio kicks into high gear.

How Do You Get in on Some of That Action?

If you want to just play Windows Phone 7 games, it’s easy – the phone comes out in the fall, in time for the holiday shopping season.

If you want to build Windows Phone 7 games, it takes a little more work, but it’s worth it. You’ll need to:

1. Get your hands on the development tools. They’re free-as-in-beer and you’ll get:
   • The IDE, Visual Studio for Windows Phone Express (and if you have Visual Studio 2010, the necessary parts to do WP7 development)
   • Windows Phone emulator
   • Silverlight for Windows Phone (app-building framework)
   • XNA 4.0 for Windows Phone (game-building framework)
   • Expression Blend for Windows Phone (UI-building tool)
2. Learn XNA development. There are a number of good tutorials out there, including:
   • The Channel 9 tutorials on game development for Windows Phone
   • The many tutorials and starter kits at XNA Creators Club
   • Charles Petzold’s and Microsoft Press’ free-as-in-beer ebook, Programming Windows Phone 7
   • You can learn a lot about Windows Phone game development by learning from any book on XNA 3.0, which you can find at your local bookstore. I particularly liked O’Reilly’s Learning XNA 3.0, which covers the development of both 2-D and 3-D games.
3. And finally, keep an eye on this blog. As a Windows Phone 7 Champ, I’ve got a direct line to the WP7 team, I always point you to the good stuff, and I’ve got some surprises in store!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

BulletAsylum by UberGeekGames is a gorgeous game for Windows Phone 7 that’s part Missile Command, part Geometry Wars and all awesome. It’s written using XNA and coming soon to both WP7 and Xbox live and coming out later this year.

Here’s their blurb:

BulletAsylum is a new spin on the classic defend-the-city-from-meteors genre. Simply touch the screen on a WP7 device, or push the thumbstick on the Xbox 360 to create a literal fireworks show out of your enemies with an impenetrable wall of firepower. Instantly purchase new towers and cities without breaking up the action. Split your fire in two directions by touching the screen in two places or using the right thumbstick. Unleash the screen-clearing Overdrive when you’re in a tight spot.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

I’ve been spending summer playing a couple of Xbox 360 games situated in dark nightmare worlds. One is Microsoft Studios’ and Remedy’s Alan Wake, which could be described as an homage to Stephen King (so much so that they name-drop him in the opening credits); the other is Limbo, an Xbox Live Arcade game: 

Calling Limbo a “2-D side-scroller game” does it as much injustice as referring to Red Dead Redemption as “a cowboy third-person shooter”. Limbo is the most gorgeous and haunting side-scroller I’ve ever played.

The world of Limbo is a monochromatic one, shrouded in gloom and fog and nothing but the game itself. The screenshot below shows what the game actually looks like while you’re playing:

No heads-up display, score or distractions of any kind: it’s just you and Limbo’s world. The controls are minimal – you just use the left thumbstick to move, the A button to jump and the B button to perform actions on things (typically push or pull objects). Where Limbo goes deep is gameplay – this game really sucks you in.

You control your character, a young boy who wakes up in a dark forest, with no idea what’s going on. There’s no opening cinematic, no explanatory text, no little pop-up hints, but somehow the game manages to convey a sense of what to do next solely through the way the game reacts to your actions. The developers, Playdead – an indie game dev shop in Copenhagen – did an amazing job in programming Limbo to communicate just through gameplay.

With its black-and-white graphics, smooth animation, minimal sound (you only hear things you need to hear) and the many, many ghoulish ways your character will die as you learn to navigate the game’s many deadly puzzles and traps, Limbo feels like the sort of ghastly-but-addictive game that Edward Gorey might have conjured up, had he decided to take up programming rather than becoming an illustrator.

As of this writing, Limbo has a Metacritic score of 90, placing it just below Super Street Fighter IV and Red Dead Redemption, having earned heaps of praise from all sorts of reviewers, including this one.

Limbo may just be the best Xbox Live Arcade game ever released, and I suspect it’ll be in my “Top 5” for 2010. If you’re looking for a stand-out game for your Xbox 360, Limbo is well worth the 1200 Microsoft Points.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The Hand Eye Society describes itself as a “not-for-profit coalition of people and projects in support of Toronto’s videogame communities”. Their goals are:

1. To help people make games
2. To connect game makers with each other and with an audience, offline
3. To foster diversity in game creation and public perception of games

I shouldn’t be surprised that one of the people behind the Hand Eye Society is Jim Munroe. He’s a former Adbusters editor turned self-publishing author of a number of enjoyable science fiction books such Flyboy Action Hero Comes with Gasmask and Angry Young Spaceman, developer of indie games including the interactive fiction piece Punk Points (the online version requires Java), maker of movies and all-round Toronto DIY-espousing creative type.

Also connected with the Hand Eye Society are other indie videogame notables including:

• Capy (whom you might know as Capybara Games)
• Superbrothers
• Metanet
• Queasy Games
• RSBLSB (short for “Right Square Bracket, Left Square Bracket”)

The Hand Eye Society is throwing a social this Thursday, May 27th in Toronto at Unit Bar (1198 Queen Street West, a shade east of Dufferin/Gladstone, halfway between the Drake and Gladstone hotels). The doors will open at 7:00 and there may be a set of curated videogames for you to check out.

At 8:00 p.m. special guest dignitary Brandon Boyer, Chairman of the Independent Games Festival and contributing editor for Boing Boing and Boing Boing’s games blog Offworld, will, as the Hand Eye Society’s blog puts it, “deliver some form of immensely significant communication to the assembled videogame creators, enthusiasts, organizers & slack-jawed onlookers.”

If I weren’t going to be in Montreal that evening for the Make Web Not War conference, I’d most certainly at this event (I’ll definitely catch the next social). If you’re in Toronto and love videogames (especially ones that break from the mainstream) and especially if you love making them, catch the Hand Eye Society’s social this Thursday!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Photo by Rick Macwilliam, The Edmonton Journal.

The Kodu game building system got some coverage in today’s Edmonton Journal. In a piece titled Kudos for Kodu, the Language of Kids, they cover the story of how St. Mary Catholic Elementary School is using Kodu to teach not just programming, but parts of the science curriculum as well. The kids are building a Kodu world that simulates a wetland ecosystem, filled with creatures that explain their roles. It sounds more fun than my grade school science classes and echoes my own philosophy of “don’t learn to build, but build to learn”.

Want to learn more about Kodu? You can get a quick introduction by watching me and Junior on Developer Junior:

…after which, you can look at Hello, Kodu!, my article that walks you through the process of programming Kodu the robot to respond to the gamepad controls. It also provides links to more Kodu tutorials.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

My tech show for kids, Developer Junior, premieres today on Butterscotch.com! In this episode, Junior (the puppet) and I (the human) take a look at the Kodu game builder system and go through a quick tutorial:

Developer Junior is a show on Butterscotch.com aimed at the younger set and is all about helping kids make the most out of the technology in their everyday lives. It’s about writing programs, creating media, playing games, and having fun with technology. (It’s also a dream come true for me – I always thought I’d be a great host for a kid’s show.)

There’s another episode coming up, in which Junior and I walk through the process of making a movie using Live Movie Maker. Watch for it!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series.

The Game Developers Conference is a good time to make game development announcements, and that we did: version 4.0 of XNA Game Studio, Microsoft’s framework and toolset for easier game development. Here’s what it means in a nutshell:

• No matter whether you develop with managed or unmanaged code, it’s what you’ll use for game development on Windows Phone 7.
• You’ll create better mobile games faster, thanks to a powerful and comprehensive set of tools.
• Xbox LIVE comes to mobile, meaning that you can take advantage of the Xbox’s popular gaming social network.
• For those of you already building games with XNA, you’ve got a brand new platform, and it’s one that you take everywhere you go.

You’re going to see all sorts of details about XNA Game Studio 4.0 over the next couple of weeks, and here are some of the best places to get them…

Follow the “Seven Samurai”

By “Seven Samurai”, I’m referring to the Windows Phone 7 Series development team:

• Charlie Kindel (blog | Twitter)
• Shawn Hargreaves (blog | Twitter)
• Andre Vrignaud (blog | Twitter)
• Anand Iyer (blog | Twitter)
• Christian Schormann (blog | Twitter)
• Loke Uei (blog | Twitter)
• Michael Klucher (blog | Twitter)

Check Out These Sites

• Michael Klucher’s blog entry, Achievement Unlocked: XNA Game Studio 4.0 for Windows Phone
• The Official Microsoft Blog: Game Developers Have a Great Opportunity with Windows Phone 7 Series.
• Keep an eye on XNA Creators Club Online’s “News” page.
• Follow the Windows Phone Developer Blog.
• Don’t forget the MIX10 conference site, which will have a lot of information from the presentations.
• ZDNet has assembled a team to cover the MIX10 conference, where all  will be revealed. The people covering it: Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Kip “LiveSide” Kniskern, Benjamin “Neowin” Rubenstein, Paul Thurrott, Long “IStartedSomething” Zheng.
• Mary Jo Foley’s article, Microsoft Adds XNA Game Studio 4.0 to its Windows Phone 7 Arsenal.
• And of course, this blog!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Last week, I presented Kodu (pronounced “Code-ooh”) to a group of teachers and high school students at Corpus Christi Catholic Secondary School. Kodu is a system created by Microsoft Research for programming videogames without using a traditional programming language; instead, you use a combination of menus and visual programming. It was designed to be a gentle introduction to programming that would appeal to children, but many adults – myself included – have ended up getting drawn into it, spending hours constructing and tweaking game worlds.

Kodu was built using XNA, Microsoft’s framework, toolset and runtime environment for building games for Windows, Xbox 360 and Zune. It was released for the Xbox 360 last summer as an Xbox Indie Game; you can download it for 400 Xbox points — about 5 bucks – or you can try the free trial version (it’s time-limited, but full-featured). If you don’t have an Xbox 360, you can download the Windows version of Kodu for free.

Kodu’s a little tricky to describe – it’s one of those things that’s much easier to show rather than tell. Here are a couple of videos that should give you a bit of Kodu’s flavour. First, here’s IGN’s look at Kodu:

Here’s XNA Roundup’s review of Kodu:

Kodu was designed to be programmed with the Xbox 360 gamepad, which you can use if you’re programming it on the Xbox 360 or a computer (if you’re using a computer, you’ll need either a wired Xbox gamepad plugged into one of its USB ports or a USB adapter for your wireless Xbox gamepad). If you’re using Kodu on a computer, you have the additional option of using the keyboard and mouse.

This is the first of a series of articles on Kodu programming that will appear here from time to time. If you’ve got kids (or know some) who are curious about programming, or if you’re looking to try a completely different kind of programming, get Kodu on your Xbox or PC and give it a try!

In this first installment, I’ll show you how you can build a simple little program that lets you drive an avatar around a small world. In later installments, I’ll show you more game-like elements and the “code” for a game of mine called “Stupid Sparkling Vampire Game”.

Touring Teran00bia

In addition to a programming “language”, Kodu provides you with tools for editing the worlds in which your games take place. I often start with a simple, no-fuss world that I created called “Teran00bia”. It’s a small, flat square world suitable for experimentation. If you have the Windows version of Kodu, you can download Teran00bia here. I can also share the Xbox 360 version, but you have to “friend” me on Xbox Live first – my gamertag is “Accordion Guy”.

Teran00bia is a blank slate, a world with nothing in it. Here’s what it looks like when you load it:

In this exercise, we want to stick a single character – Kodu – into the world and allow the player to drive him around using the controller’s left stick.

To start programming, get into Edit Mode. Press the “Back” button on the gamepad to switch to Edit Mode. Your screen should now look like this:

In Edit Mode, the left thumbstick moves your “cursor” (the purple “donut”) around the world, while the right thumbstick changes your camera angle. You use the left bumper (that’s the button just above the left trigger) to zoom out and the right bumper (the button above the right trigger) to zoom in. The screenshot below shows a zoomed-in view of Teran00bia:

The floating icons near the bottom of the screen make up Kodu’s menu. You use the left and right triggers to scroll through the menu and the A button to select a menu item.

Select the Object Tool from the menu. It’s the second menu item from the left, and its icon is Kodu, who looks sort of like a blue fish with an antenna. When you select the tool, the Kodu menu disappears and you’re now using the object tool, as shown below:

The Object Tool lets you add items to the world or edit any existing ones. There aren’t any items in the world at the moment, so let’s add one. Use the left thumbstick to move the cursor to the spot where you want to place an object, then press the A button. The following menu will appear:

This menu lists the items available to you. Starting at the top and going clockwise, the items in the menu are:

• Kodu (the game system’s mascot, who can be used as either a player character or a non-player character)
• Apple (useful as a health power-up, but nothing stops you from making them poisonous or explosive)
• Bots 1 (a set of characters that can be used either as player characters or non-player characters)
• Bots 2 (more characters that can be used either as players characters or non-player characters)
• Objects (things that characters in the game can interact with, such as rocks, coins, castles and factories)
• Tree (another object that characters in the game can interact with – I have no idea why trees weren’t part of the set of Objects)
• Path (lets you draw paths which Kodu and the other bots can follow)

Use the left thumbstick to select Kodu from the menu, then press the A button to confirm the selection. A Kodu will appear:

You can move Kodu around by pressing the A button to select him, using the left thumbstick to pick a new location and then pressing the A button to drop him there.

What we want to do is program Kodu to move in response to the left thumbstick, as is the convention for most Xbox 360 games. While Kodu is selected, press the Y button. The screen should look like this:

Every programmable object in the Kodu game system has a set of behaviours, each one having two parts:

• When, which describes the event that the object will respond to
• Do, which describes what the object will do in response to the event

The behaviours are numbered starting at 1 and are listed in order of descending priority – that is, behaviour 1 has first priority, followed by behaviour 2, then behaviour 3, and so on.

Your programming “cursor” is the pencil. Move the pencil over the “+” in the “When” part of behaviour 1 and press the A button. You’ll see a menu pop up:

This menu lists the events to which Kodu can react. For now, we’re concerned with making him respond to the left thumbstick, which is part of the gamepad. Select “Gamepad” from the menu with the left thumbstick, then press the A button to confirm the selection. The menu will vanish and you’ll see that a “Gamepad” tile has been added to the “When” part of behaviour 1:

We need to specify which gamepad control Kodu should respond to. Make sure the pencil is over the “+” of the “When” part of behaviour 1, then press the A button. A menu containing various controls on the gamepad will appear:

Use the left thumbstick to select “L stick”, then press the A button. The menu will disappear and you’ll see that the “When” part of behaviour 1 has two tiles: “Gamepad” and “L Stick”:

We’ve just described an event that Kodu should respond to. Now it’s time to describe the response. Move the pencil over the “+” of the “Do” part of behaviour 1 and press the A button. A new menu will appear:

This menu lists responses to events. In this case, we want Kodu to move where the player tells him to move, which is specified by the left thumbstick. Select “Move” from the menu with the left thumbstick, then press A to confirm the selection. The menu will vanish, and you’ll see that a “Move” tile has been added to the “Do” part of behaviour 1:

We’ve now completely defined a single behaviour for Kodu: “When the player moves the left thumbstick, move in that direction”. It’s time to take our (admittedly simple) game for a spin.

Press the Back button to stop programming Kodu. You’ll now be in the Object Tool. Press the Back button again to return to Edit Mode, where Kodu’s main programming menu will become available. Use the left trigger to select Play Mode and press A to confirm the selection.

The program will start with the intro screen. Press A to dismiss the intro screen.

You’ll now be in the game world. Use the left thumbstick to move Kodu around:

Kodu moves, but he’s not so fast. Let’s look at a way to speed him up a little. Press the Back button to exit the program and return to Edit Mode. Use the triggers to select the Object Tool from the menu, then press the A button to confirm the selection.

Move the cursor under Kodu so that he’s selected:

Press the Y button to program Kodu. You’ll be return to his set of behaviours:

Move the pencil over the “+” of the “Do” part of behaviour 1, the press the A button. A menu will appear:

The menu will contain modifiers for the “Move” response. Select “Quickly” from the menu using the left thumbstick, then press the A button. The menu will disappear and you’ll see a “Quickly” tile has been added to the “Do” part of behaviour 1:

To make Kodu move even faster, you can add another “Quickly”:

…in fact, you can add up to three “Quickly” tiles to push Kodu to his maximum speed:

Play Around

I could cover more Kodu features, but you should use it the way it was meant to be used – experiment! Try adding other objects to the world and adding behaviours to them. Take a look at the  programming behind the worlds that were provided with the Kodu game system (be sure to check out “Left 4 Kodu Classic”, a cute Kodu version of the zombie thriller game Left 4 Dead).

Links

• Kodu Game Lab for the Xbox 360 (400 Xbox points)
• Kodu Game Lab for Windows (free-as-in-beer)
• My “Teran00bia” world, handy for experimenting
• The Kodu Blog
• Generic Wars: A Kodu video tutorial showing you how to build a full game
• Planet Kodu has a couple dozen tutorials
• …and of course, keep an eye on this blog!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

[Found via Certified Bullshit Technician.]

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Anthony Suarez suggested a possible upside to Disney’s purchase of Marvel: there’s potential for a really interesting sequel to the game Kingdom Hearts.

Mental Models and Bill Buxton’s “Draw a Computer” Exercise

In the mid 1990s, well before he was Microsoft’s user interface guru, Bill Buxton often asked people to carry out a simple little exercise: draw a picture of a computer. Most, if not all, of the people he asked would draw something that fit the common mental model of the desktop computer of the era: cathode ray tube-type monitor, keyboard, mouse and that box housing the motherboard and drives that many people mistakenly refer to as “the CPU”.

If Buxton were to ask the question today, the drawings of computers might look like these:

If he asked the question in the mid-to-late 1980s, the drawings might’ve looked like these:

And had he asked the question in the mid-60s, the drawings might’ve looked like this:

Buxton likes to point out that the changes in computers from the 60s onwards are largely in the implementation technology, processing power and outward appearance. When most people draw computers, he said, they’re merely drawing their mental model, which is based on the outer packaging.

However, if you use the mental model of a technologist, computers have been essentially the same instruction/ALU/storage/input-output boxes whether they’ve occupied whole rooms or fit in your pocket. They’ve been pretty much the same at their core, in the same way that fancy tech and hybrid engine aside, there really isn’t too much that separates a present-day Toyota Prius from a Model T Ford.

If Bill Buxton could approach Microsoft Corporation as a person — and hey, that’s the way the law treats corporations, so why not? – and asked him/her to draw a computer, I suspect that s/he would draw something based on mental model of a souped-up circa 2000 computer: a desktop computer with a nice flatscreen monitor, running Windows XP and having a somewhat limited connection to the ‘net.

I think that this is a problem. I also think that the source of this problem is Microsoft’s success.

Microsoft’s Company Mantras

“A PC on every desk and in every home” was Microsoft’s longest-lived slogan and the company mantra for the first 24 years of existence. Like the best slogans, it succinctly summarized the company’s goal. The problem is that the goal has pretty much been reached. In most parts of the first world, a good chunk of the second world and even a sizeable fraction of the third world, you can easily find a desktop computer, and it’s quite likely that it’s running some sort of Microsoft software.

Since 1999, the company mantra – I really hesitate the use the phrase “vision statement” — has been a little more vague. The company’s been thrashing between them a little more frequently, as you can see in this list of mantras taken from chapter 1 of How We Test Software at Microsoft:

• 1975 – 1999: “A PC on every desk and in every home.”
• 1999 – 2002: “Empowering people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.”
• 2002 – 2008: “To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.”
• 2008 – present: “Create experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of internet services across the world of devices.”

The post-1999 mantra all seem a little limp in comparison to the original. Reading them, I cannot help but think of a quote attributed to web design guru Jeffrey Zeldman:

"…provide value added solutions" is not a mission. "Destroy All Monsters." That is a fucking mission statement.

Because the old mantra lasted for so long and the new mantras just don’t have the same straightforwardness and gravitas (How We test Sofware at Microsoft quotes Ballmer as saying that we may never again have a clear statement like the original to guide the company), the original remains quite firmly etched in the company culture and mindset.

I think it’s holding us back.

The Desktop as the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg

The original mantra doesn’t just focus on the desktop, it actually mentions it by name. In 1975, when computers were room-filling behemoths that you could access either via batch or time-share, the concept of a desktop computer was downright radical. If you think the iPhone is impressive (and yes, it is), imagine how mind-blowing the Altair 8800, the first commercially-available desktop computer, must have been to a geek back in the Bad Old Days. It was the platform on which Microsoft’s first product – a little programming language called Altair BASIC – was launched, and it was BASIC that in turn launched the company.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how the Altair 8800 was a golden opportunity for Bill Gates and his buddies at his fledgling company, then called “Micro-Soft”. Unlike a lot of other companies at the time, they took the desktop computer seriously. Even when IBM got into the desktop computer game in 1981, it was a product of their Entry-Level Systems division, a clear indication that they thought the PC was a machine you bought until you were ready to graduate to a real computer. I don’t think that this philosophy ended up serving them well.

Since the big boys were paying no mind to the desktop computer, upstarts like Microsoft had a big empty field in which to play, and they thrived. Crack open just about any late 70s/early 80s computer that had BASIC built in – even Apple machines — and you’ll see a row of ROM chips with a Microsoft copyright notice. It was Microsoft that swooped in with PC-DOS when a deal with Digital Research for a PC version of CP/M was slow in coming (and this is despite the fact that Gates recommended that IBM go to Digital for an OS). A lot of people’s experience with desktop computers (and Microsoft revenue) is defined by circa-1995 Microsoft thanks to Windows 95 and the results of Bill Gates’ memo titled The Internet Tidal Wave, both of whose influences are still felt to this day.

Once upon a time, it used to be unusual to walk into someone’s home or office and see a computer. These days, it’s unusual to walk into someone’s home or office and not see a computer, and Microsoft’s focus on the desktop had a lot to do with that.

The Desktop as Albatross

When electric motors first became available, engineers envisioned factories and eventually houses being equipped with a single electric motor. They imagined that the central motor would, through a series of gears and drive belts, be connected to whatever machines in the house or factory had to be driven by it. What happened in the end is that rather than relying on some central motor, electric motors “disappeared” into the devices that used them. Here’s an exercise to try: go and count the electric motors in your house or apartment right now. The number should be a couple dozen, and if you can’t find them, this article might help.

When big, room-filling computers first became available, engineers envisioned businesses being equipped with a single computer in a manner roughly analogous to the aforementioned big central motor. We know what happened in the end – while many businesses do make use of big datacenters, a lot of the computing power got spread out into desktop computers.

I have a theory that comes in two parts:

1. Just as electrical motors disappeared into the devices that needed their work, and just as computing power got spread out from big mainframes into desktop machines, computing power is now both disappearing and spreading out into mobile devices and the web/cloud.
2. Microsoft, with its desktop-centric approach, at least outwardly appears to be missing out on this migration of computing power.

Most of the company’s attention, at least to an outside observer, seems to be focused on Windows 7. Yes, chances are that with computer sales being what they are, Windows 7 will probably end up on more of laptops and netbooks than desktops, but I consider those devices to simply be the desktop computer in a more portable form. It worries me that there have been more concrete announcements about Windows 7 on netbooks than upcoming versions of Windows Mobile, despite the iPhone and BlackBerry-driven evidence that the real mobile action is in smartphones.

(Tomorrow, I’ll post an article in which I argue that netbooks are a dangerous red herring pulling away our attention from devices like smartphones.)

Even when the company reaches out beyond desktop development, there’s no escaping the desktop “gravity well”. Consider ASP.NET (that is, the “traditional” ASP.NET, not the recently-released ASP.NET MVC). To my mind, as well as the minds of a lot of other web developers, it’s a web framework that tries really hard to pretend that the web doesn’t exist. It makes use of a whole lot of tomfoolery like ViewState to create a veneer of desktop app-like statefulness over the inherently stateless nature of the web and a programming model that tries to mimic the way you’d write a desktop application. It’s almost as if it were designed with the mantra “the web is like the desktop, but lamer” instead of “the web is like the desktop, but everywhere”. Although the framework works just fine and there are a number of great sites and web apps built on it, I think a lot of developers sensed this design philosophy and went elsewhere for web development.

(An aside: My old boss at OpenCola in late 2001 told me that he’d been meeting with Microsoft people and suspected that Internet Explorer 6 would be the final version of their browser. The expectation that web pages and web applications would be replaced by Windows client applications pushed over the net, a prediction similar to one made by the Java folks a few years prior.)

The same situation exists with Windows Mobile’s current user interface, which is basically a subset of Windows’ standard UI controls for the desktop, scaled down to fit smaller screens, and with a stylus standing in for the mouse. It’s almost as if it were designed with the mantra “mobile computing is like desktop computing, but lamer” instead of “mobile computing is like a mobile phone plus PDA and an MP3 player, but cooler.” If the ASP.NET design mantra is a whisper, the Windows Mobile mantra is a scream.

I suspect that the reason the XBox 360 didn’t fall into a similar kind of trap — “set-top boxes are like desktop computers, but lamer and only for games” – is that the XBox team is situated off the Microsoft Campus and less susceptible to the desktop influence.

My Mission

At my most recent one-on-one meeting with my manager John Oxley, we talked about a need for each member of our Evangelism team to define his or her area of focus. The Microsoft platform is a vast, nerdy expanse spanning the range from embedded computing all the way to Cray supercomputers; no single person can hope to cover it all.

He already had a good idea of what I wanted to focus on, and by now, I guess you do as well. I feel that just as computing expanded beyond the big computer rooms and onto our desktops, computing is expanding beyond our desktops into all sorts of different places:

• Invisibly, into the web and cloud in the form of web applications and services
• Visibly, into our pockets and living rooms, and embedded into all sorts of real-world things

While I believe that Windows 7 is a necessary part of the Microsoft platform, I’m not too worried about focusing on it – there are more than enough people at the company to promote and evangelize it. I want to focus on the platforms that I feel that Microsoft hasn’t given enough love and attention: the non-desktop platforms of the web, mobile and gaming, as well where they intersect.

It’s a big area to cover, but I think Microsoft needs to be active in this area if it wants to be true to its forward-looking roots. I even have a mantra for it: “To help web, mobile and game developers using Microsoft tools go from zero to awesome in 60 minutes.” I want to give developers both that rush when getting started with a new technology as well as the sustained passion to keep working with it, in the same way that Ruby on Rails and the iPhone got developers with an initial flash of excitement and turned it into long-term passion. It’s an ambitious, audacious mission, but no more so than the one coined by a bunch of scruffy nerds in New Mexico in the the 1970s: “A PC on every desk and in every home.”