Is *ANYTHING* the same as the last Beta?!?!?!
WHAT THE *&#@$ is wrong with you!?!?!?!?!
Sorry guys, this totally pisses me off here... I had a solid game engine going with the last beta and now NOTHING works.
Sorry, you guys suck for this one... Don't give me the whole beta schpeel either, cuz you DON'T change that much between betas, you have that nailed-down beforehand... If the last one was called "Alpha" I wouldn't be complaining, but wow this blows and I don't know if I'm even going to PORT my game from You to YOU!!!
Re-*&#@$-diculous!
I'd have to ask "What's wrong with you?" Why would you start building a game engine using beta software that it seems you're figuring on using for release? That's just asking for trouble.
There's a lot that's the same as beta 1. Just because your stuff doesn't work doesn't MS is wrong for making changes. I'd say you're wrong for assuming that you'd be able to use code from beta to beta. You must not have done a lot of work with betas. 
Betas are for testing purposes. If something is found to not work well in real life situations you change it. That's the way it works.
@Jim: Nobody is going to participate in betas if they KNOW it's not worth it. I'm not saying people should start making release-commercial-ready products with beta software (well they can but it's their risk) BUT betas should be attractive enough (or in other words, avoid being PITA) so that developers don't lose interest in them.
@Davod: Jim is right to a point. You need to be ready for these changes. On the other hand, they did document them. Did you read the team blog? They explain what they changed and how to change your code to make it work with beta 2.
Personaly I hope this is the last big API "change" (adding new stuff is ok). A few methods here and there is ok but this change was relatively big.
 Almindor wrote: |
| @Jim: Nobody is going to participate in betas if they KNOW it's not worth it. I'm not saying people should start making release-commercial-ready products with beta software (well they can but it's their risk) BUT betas should be attractive enough (or in other words, avoid being PITA) so that developers don't lose interest in them. |
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You're correct. The betas have been very attractive to many people. I don't believe I've heard anyone whine about having to make changes to their code between beta 1 and 2, until now. Beta is beta, there's going to be changes to things. My feeling is that if you can't deal with it, don't take part in it; or at the very least don't write code you're not prepared to change when things change.
ok sorry, i calmed down a bit. i hope i wasn't the only one who went through some significant frustrations when just about everything went boom on that first re-compile, though perhaps i was the only one who lashed out... here's a more articulate (i hope) expression of my discontent.
i understand that things need to change if it's going to be done right. however, there were many things missing that were good (i.e. WindowsGame_Starting/Exiting overridables) and are now gone. in addition, many changes were outright arbitrary. adding the full-screen feature is a good example of what you *want* to do in a second beta -- though it is a basic enough feature that i personally would have handled it before i released a beta. i know i was disappointed that a full-screen toggle wasn't there already.
i've built apis before, so i know how you do it. what you want to do *before* a beta is work out the interface as completely as possible. in my opinion microsoft was irresponsible by even calling this a beta in the first place. i'd say the first release was more like a pre-alpha. the *first* release after an interface "code freeze" is an alpha release. then you find out the frozen interface has some issues so you fix them, test them again, and release a beta.
whether you agree with my classifications or not, you must agree that this is not a typical beta. i feel like we aren't beta testers, we are guinea pigs -- not only in that they are experimenting on us but also that they are dispassionate about how their tests affect us. i saw some pretty willy-nilly changes to the interface (i.e. changing "GameServices" to just "Services") and i feel like the xna team totally reamed me here -- hard. i had a fully working and actually *fun* game going and now i basically have to start again from scratch -- the port is too painful. am i the only one who has never ported an app to this extent from one beta to the very next? i don't think i've ever had to do more than maybe a few parameter changes to an interface between betas -- maybe it's just because i think ahead. these guys, not so much.
again, i apologize for losing my temper, but i feel very wronged here and i just about cried when i realized that no one will be able to play my game as-is since beta2 contains massive amounts of changes and the beta1 download was pulled off the website.
this is not a beta, don't kid yourself. i know what a beta is and this, my friends, is far from it. i never would have even started a game if i knew i was helping them *form* their api and not testing it. further, i will not be re-building or porting my game for xna until it is finally out of beta. good luck to all you like banging your head against a wall, though -- lol.
peace,
dave
Someone was bound to complain but I don't see anything Microsoft did wrong. If they had changed it after it had been released there would be cause for complaint, but not beta. They did include a migration guide by the way.
Betas change. That's one reason they're beta. People who don't like their API changing underneath them should really wait until it's released. They were looking for feedback, presumably so they could do any last minute tweaks and end up with a better product. Hard to argue with that.
Because I was expecting changes I tried to avoid doing much serious coding although I did end up coding a big chunk of my GUI under beta 1. I was able to get it moved over in a few hours.
I normally avoid betas just because I don't like to build on shifting sands.
@David: I totally agree with you. When beta 2 came out I felt like I had the rug pulled out from under me with the changes that were made to the API, in particular with the RenderTarget stuff and of course that wonderful bug they introduced into the Plane class (incorrectly calculating the normal for 3 points). These changes cost me roughly a week of debugging time. It was a real nightmare. My sole consolation is that the changes supposedly bring XNA more in line with how 360 works, but considering 360 didn't just come out it seems like the XNA team should have been more aware of how the system works.
