from Hacker News

Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK)

by LyalinDotCom on 6/24/21, 7:59 PM with 16 comments

  • by snicker7 on 6/24/21, 9:12 PM

    I clicked the link expecting some sort of open source library. Instead, the "repo" contained just proprietary binaries. Not even docs.

    "Publishing to GitHub" used to be synonymous with donating open source code, with all the goodwill and recognition that entails. Publishing proprietary binaries on GH effectively steals attention in a space that used to be reserved for FOSS projects.

  • by moogly on 6/24/21, 8:56 PM

    What on earth... Putting a bunch of binary installers in a GitHub repo. Why would you do that?

  • by orra on 6/24/21, 9:22 PM

    Another death knell for UWP. Already, you can't use modern .NET with UWP.

    Now this says:

    > [Although] the Universal Windows Platform was introduced [...] as a bridge between [...] Windows PCs, and Xbox One[, now] UWP apps and games are community-supported only.

  • by habibur on 6/24/21, 9:19 PM

    > Using Win32 + GDK is the primary, supported app model to build games for Xbox console, Xbox Game Pass (both Xbox and PC), and ...

    And I thought Win32 was dead, only to see it resurface again and again and the new shiny thing that was supposed to replace it is dead instead.

  • by adamrezich on 6/24/21, 9:54 PM

    I'm having a hard time understanding what this is and the page does a poor job of explaining it. The only question it answered was, "wait, so does this mean anyone can develop games for Xbox consoles?" The answer is, "No, not without access to the NDA'd extension that lets you do just that."

    OK, so what does this let you do then? interact with Xbox services (friends, leaderboards, achievements, etc.) on Windows?

  • by ElViajero on 6/24/21, 9:05 PM

    Github is becoming "social media" instead of a code repository. I guess that it is Ok. But I do not know how smart is that level of brand dilution.

    Slowly I am becoming less and less inclined to click on Microsoft Github links, but maybe I am the only one, and Microsoft is happy to increase that engagement.

  • by bruce343434 on 6/24/21, 9:07 PM

    Screw anyone that uses this in favor of GLFW/GLEW, SDL2, or even just a game engine. There's so many cross-platform options available nowadays, why would you use this?