Using windows forms components with XNA?

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Using windows forms components with XNA?

Is it possible to use windows forms components with XNA For instance... what if I wanted to add a menu bar to my game I realize that most games have their own interface, but it would still be very useful to have (especially for setting up quick temporary interfaces).

Any ideas


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Using windows forms components with XNA?

  • VisualDragon

    Cant use forms in the XNA window - but its no problem to run forms in seperate windows. Wont help you with ingame stuff - but very helpfull for editor, runtime debug interface ect.

  • Witold

    It is not really possible to directly integrate Window Forms controls and XNA (or Direct3D). Providing a full featured GUI solution is one of our top priorities for the next version.

  • JGP

    Mitch Walker - MSFT wrote:
    Providing a full featured GUI solution is one of our top priorities for the next version.

    Is there anymore information regarding this Any list of expected features I am a Windows developer (not expecting to do anything with XBOX) and find XNA a bit too limiting. Having to use bitmaps for fonts, buttons, TextBoxes, etc., is a little frustrating at times. But THANK YOU to Garykac for his extremely helpful XNAExtras classes.

    Will the GUI solution provide easy TextOut functions The ability to use context menus And what about simple graphics like circles, polygons, etc. I recently did a strategy game and would have preferred to simply draw a circe around the selected piece. I was unable to do this and instead reverted to a simpler solution of just setting the color of the avatar to Color.Black.

    Any change to the event model Similar to Forms

    I realize these are big, lofty questions.

  • qrli

    EricBrown wrote:

    Can you run XNA in a control on w win form, like say some sort of Picture box that'd be handy too.

    Yes you can. The higher level XNA application model (the Game class, and associated component system) are not designed to coexist with WinForms (because Game itself creates the application window, that will conflict with any existing windowing system). But if you create the underlying GraphicsDevice directly yourself, you can use that to render onto any WinForms control.

    The current issues using XNA alongside Avalon are nothing to do with XNA, but a more general incompatibility between Avalon and any kind of Direct3D rendering. Any fix for that will have to come from outside the XNA team.



  • Leonids

    I've made an app that has winforms componenets and an xna window (panel on the form).

    There are many MDX examples on how to do this. All you have to do is some minor modifications to the code to make them compliant with xna. You'll lose some xna compatability as you will be creating your own GraphicsDevice and not using the graphics component used in xna games.

  • gullu

    Mitch Walker - MSFT wrote:
    It is not really possible to directly integrate Window Forms controls and XNA (or Direct3D). Providing a full featured GUI solution is one of our top priorities for the next version.


    @Mitch: I had posted a couple of comments on your blog but they were never shown. In one of them I had asked a question similar to black dove's.

    Anyway, will it be possible to integrate XAML-based components with XNA in the near future



  • CirdanCelebrindal

    Mitch Walker - MSFT wrote:
    Providing a full featured GUI solution is one of our top priorities for the next version.

    Is there anymore information regarding this Any list of expected features I am a Windows developer (not expecting to do anything with XBOX) and find XNA a bit too limiting. Having to use bitmaps for fonts, buttons, TextBoxes, etc., is a little frustrating at times. But THANK YOU to Garykac for his extremely helpful XNAExtras classes.

    Will the GUI solution provide easy TextOut functions The ability to use context menus And what about simple graphics like circles, polygons, etc. I recently did a strategy game and would have preferred to simply draw a circe around the selected piece. I was unable to do this and instead reverted to a simpler solution of just setting the color of the avatar to Color.Black.

    Any change to the event model Similar to Forms

    I realize these are big, lofty questions.

  • edukulla

    Something is happening with the forum: I tried to edit/delete some of my posts in this thread (which appeared repeated like 4 times or so) and this message pops up:

    We apologize, but an unknown error has occured in the forums.

    This error has been logged.




  • John X. C.

    Ultrahead wrote:
    Something is happening with the forum: I tried to edit/delete some of my posts in this thread (which appeared repeated like 4 times or so) and this message pops up:

    We apologize, but an unknown error has occured in the forums.

    This error has been logged.


    This has been happening to me for the past couple of days, when just posting a message as well as editing and deleting.



  • shah_hs

    Ultrahead wrote:
    Anyway, will it be possible to integrate XAML-based components with XNA in the near future


    I'm not an expert on this area, so could have got this entirely wrong, but bearing that disclaimer in mind...

    My understanding is that the Avalon engine used to render XAML components cannot currently coexist with raw Direct3D usage. Since XNA sits on top of Direct3D, this would prevent mixing XNA and XAML in the same application as well.

    I can't speak for the Avalon team, but it's certainly possible that this situation may improve in future.


  • treegum

    What if I wanted to run windows forms components side by side with xna in the same window So there wouldn't be any overlap, but they would still both be attached to the same window

  • BriceGuy

    Can you run XNA in a control on w win form, like say some sort of Picture box that'd be handy too.

    Even if it's a special XNA Control, that can live on a win form.

    Cal-

  • Smallmaj

    Given the GDI is being replaced by XAML components and the later also sits on top of DirectX it would be reasonable to expect that XNA could let us use -in the middle run- the XAML's way to program the visual layer. And with that to use XNA to program GUI like level editors and such.


  • magicalclick

    Mitch Walker - MSFT wrote:
    It is not really possible to directly integrate Window Forms controls and XNA (or Direct3D). Providing a full featured GUI solution is one of our top priorities for the next version.


    @Mitch: I had posted a couple of comments on your blog but they were never shown. In one of them I had asked a question similar to black dove's.

    Anyway, will it be possible to integrate XAML-based components with XNA in the near future

  • Using windows forms components with XNA?
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