A group of people at Microsoft have launched the Develop Mental Institute the site is focused on the series of Game Camps (Based on XNA Game Studio Express) that have gone on in Canada. On the website you can find information on upcoming Game Camps as well as learn how to run your own Game Camp.
It's a very "interactive" website and encourage you to check it out and click around even if you're not located in Canada. Also make sure to visit the Canadian Developer Connection Blog here.
I just noticed this go up on the XNA Creators Club Online site and thought I would share, MaPZone is available to download for free which allows you to author textures.
From the XNA Creators Club Online site:
"Allegorithmic is the company behind ProFX, the middleware for the authoring and on-the-fly rendering of procedural textures. Key component of ProFX is MaPZone, the authoring tool allowing the production of AAA quality textures. To assist you in your game production tasks, Allegorithmic is pleased to provide you with a special version of MaPZone tool for the XNA Creators Club- free!"
So head on over, download a copy, and give it a spin!
When browsing the forums and news items about Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express online I see a lot of people refer to the product as "XNA". What causes even more confusion is that we have a product also called Microsoft XNA Build that tends to confuse people as they are two different products aimed at separate markets.
So if that's the case, what is XNA? If you head over to http://xna.com you'll find the following explanation:
"Microsoft® XNA™ is composed of industry-leading software, services, resources, and communities focused on enabling game developers to be successful on Microsoft gaming platforms."
To translate that a bit, XNA is a brand that encompasses all of the game development products, initiatives and services for developing games on Microsoft platforms. So you may be wondering "Who's responsible for the development of XNA Game Studio Express?" There are several teams that make up XNA
XNA Professional Game Platform Team
These are the guys who ship the SDK's that allow for professional high end game development. They were on such things as DirectX and the professional SDK developers use to ship titles on the Xbox 360. They also work on tools that are aimed at the professional game development market.
XNA Support Team
This team represents who you talk to when your having trouble with your Xbox 360 or Games for Windows title and don't know why. They also help companies that are building commercial games on XNA Game Studio Express such as Torpex Games with their Xbox Live Arcade Title: Schizoid.
XNA Community Game Platform Team
This is us :-) We're the team that develops XNA Game Studio Express and the XNA Framework. While we can certainly be a professional tool used by professionals our core goal is to give the tools to the community to let them program games easily on Windows and Xbox 360.
I know that's not a ton of information and only really scratches the surface into what the teams do and all they're really responsible for but I hope it clears up confusion if you ever hear someone say that they are part of the XNA Community Game Platform team.