Answer Questions

• MariaF Drawing Text

  How can you draw text in XNA. i have a done pong game, but need to display the scores. Before the new XNA release, i know someone made a font class, and it worked, but i need to know how to do it in the new release Its the same way as in beta. There's a few different font classes out there. Here's a few http://www.nuclex.org http://blogs.msdn.com/manders/archive/2007/01/12/stroke-based-text-rendering-in-xna.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/garykac/archive/2006/12/01/xnaextras-update.aspx ...Show All

• Scherild Possible that Update() is multi-threaded?

  I'm getting a REALLY strange exception. It only occurs when I run my game via Ctrl-F5 (rather than F5) and even then I can't always reproduce it. It's in a bit of code that is simply a foreach-loop on a List<> of Particles and calling Update(elapsed) on each of them. The error occurs on the first line of Particle.Update() which is "base.Update(elapsed)" which calls the Sprite class' Update()... which has no indexes in it. At the end of the loop I look for any particles that need to be removed from the list and do so. Based on what little debug information I can get, it looks like it's an internal error in System.Collections.ListDictionaryInternal... Count is zero, which pretty much should never be the case... there's alw ...Show All

• mf915 Mesh.TextFromFont

  I've used the following function: Mesh.TextFromFont(...), so now i have a mesh containing my text. I want to set its size or atleast get it somehow. How am i doing so That is exactly what I'm doing, the problem is when I scale it down (using world matrix) to the size I want it to be - the text looks really bad, like it lost some pixels or somthing. If Icould create it in a specific size I think it would prevent this text corruption. Thanks Canuck1, but I need more :) How about getting the bounding box of the mesh to determine its size, like this: Vector3 min = new Vector3( ); Vector3 max = new Vector3( ); using ( GraphicsStream vertexData = mesh.LockVer ...Show All

• Hokgiarto Predicated Rendering

  After D3D 10 launches, will XNA/360 get predicated rendering I read the following in an article about D3D10: "Predicated rendering allows draw calls to be automatically deactivated based on the results of previous rendering - without any CPU interaction. This enables rapid occlusion culling to avoid rendering objects that aren’t visible." I understand that hardware queries have been postponed, but this would eliminate my need for them... Thanks I was aware of the lack of Shader Model 4 hardware, but I was hoping that the predicated rendering stuff was more of a driver feature than a hardware feature :-) According to this post by David Weller, ...Show All

• Lamon Mixing use of DirectX SDK and XNA

  I know that I can't use Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.GraphicsDevice for Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D.Device for example in this crazy code: mesh = Mesh.FromFile(meshName, MeshFlags.Managed, (Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D.Device) graphics.GraphicsDevice, out materials); There is other ways that I don't know or this SDK mixing is unpossible Thank you very much for your help. Toni Ok, thank you for answer. I hope next XNA version (Beta 2 ) comming soon with mesh and animation controller support. Toni Mixing the two is not really possible, sorry! ...Show All

• daydreamsy2k Vibrate the controller for 1 second?

  Hi, I've just starting playing around with XNA for xbox 360 and have a noob question I want to vibrate controller 1 for a single second. I know to set vibration on I can use the code: GamePad .SetVibration( PlayerIndex .One, 1.0f, 1.0f); and to turn it off: GamePad .SetVibration( PlayerIndex .One, 0f, 0f); But how do you set the length of time for it to vibrate I have experience in programming with C++ but have not yet had the chance to fully immerse myself into C#. Thanks I tend to measure things in seconds, like the following...   static float rumbleTimer; void CheckForRumble( GameTime gameTime) {      if (you pressed ...Show All

• moorelg Poor XNA performance or my poor code... or normal?

  I've have created a simple scene that renders 8000 identical cubes. I know thats a lot of cubes, but I only get 4 FPS on a 2.0ghz dual core with a 7300 mobile graphics card at 640x480 with simply vertex shading and one directional light. This pc can run doom3 at 60FPS at that resolution and a program i wrote in MDX that draws about 1000 detailed spheres with specular lighting runs at over 100FPS Here is the code I'm using: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Storage; namespace WindowsGame1 { public class Game1 : Mic ...Show All

• Robert Kozak render a copy of the backbuffer

  Hello I have read several posts about that, but nothing seems to work for me, I try to save my backbuffer (to store it in a surface) then I would like to draw this saved surface... so, I need two things. 1: save my backbuffer MyBackBufferSurface=graphics.GraphicsDevice.GetBackBuffer(0,0); 2:render my backBuffer spriteRenderer.Draw(MyBackBufferTexture, new Rectangle (0, 0, 512, 512), Color .White); I used : MyBackBufferSurface= MyBackBuffertexture.GetSurfaceLevel(0); to assosiate my surface with my texture I end up with a black surface when I render my texutre please help me I on this since a week and it makes me crazy. You need to grab the backbuffer ...Show All

• Chris Beiter - MSFT From Express to Pro

  First off, let me say that this news about being able to develop and test my code on my 360 for an amazingly low price sounds excellent. I do have a quick question though. Will there be some established way to go about trying to get a game on Live Arcade that was developed with Express I know that I will definitely grab Express as soon as it's available and also have the subscription to be able to test my games on the 360, but I'm curious what my options would be if/when I write a great game :) Will there be some way to use the completed game as a pitch, or would it first be necessary for me to buy the Pro version If I had some sort of confirmation that the game would be put on Live Arcade then expenses for the Pro version wouldn't be a ...Show All

• Ryan Carlson Learning to draw in 2D (tutorial)

  We just finished a new tutorial that should help teach the basics of using sprites including rotation and scaling.   http://www.xnaspot.com/Tutorial_Learn2D.aspx   Please let us know what you think. Submit@XNASpot.com   Also we really want to post what people have been working on so if you have any code samples or even just a screen shot of a game you are working on send it in. You can use a large sprite, but there are also other ways. You can also write a tile engine, or render a 3d-background using primitives. I just finished a -simple- pong game using 2D Textures and simple movement, I'll write up a tutorial and send it in if yo ...Show All

• AlucardHellSing How to disable driver anti-aliasing

  I need to preserve the exact colors (and thus, hard edges) when I read back the rendered image via an offscreen surface filled with GetRenderTargetData. There is an option in the control panel where the driver forces anti-aliasing for all applications. If I do not set the quality-performance slider correctly, I will get anti-aliasing. Is there a way (in code) to prevent that Reading back the exact output of the pixel shader can be used for many things: picking, arbitrairy computations ( www.gpgpu.org ). I was just hoping not having to create another render target like someone else suggested. But it seems I have no choice. From my understanding, control panel settings is ...Show All

• skt metronome using directSound or directMusic

  hey. i want to code a program that includes a metronome using c++ and directSound and/or directMusic. this metronome should raise an event periodically, it should be as precise as possible and i need to change the tempo at runtime. now what i need is something like the StartTimer (UINT TimerDuration) onTimer(UINT nIDEvent) killTimer() functions in VC++ but with a higher resolution than milli-seconds and with a way to affect the duration between the timer events at runtime, as mentioned above, thus without having to stop and restart the timer... is there a way to use directSound / directMusic in order to achieve this perhaps sth with IReferenceClock:: AdvisePeriodic or does this problem not really have anything to do with ...Show All

• Sam England What units are the x, y, z components of a Vector3 with respect to screen space?

  Hi, I've just got hold of the XNA Beta and have a really basic question really. The following vertex VertexPositionColor [] vpc = new VertexPositionColor [1]; Vector3 v1 = new Vector3 (0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); is drawn from what I can see directly in the middle of the game window. I tried varying the x and y components of the Vector3 and found that it does not like values above 1.0. I can move it by incrementing the x or y components by 0.1f. And so my question really is how do the units I provide to vertex Vector3s relate to screen space I am used to systems that a) start from the top-left of the window and b) where if you say Vector3(10, 20, 0) would draw the vertex at 10 pixels across, 20 pixels down. Some pointers on t ...Show All

• Ahmad Mageed XNA Build vs XNA GSE Content Pipeline?

  Could you guys give me a quick rundown of what differentiates the content pipeline from the XNA Build that was released in March I'm only interested in the build differences, since the content pipeline includes a runtime component and XNA Build does not. Is it possible to use XNA Build with XNA Framework/GameStudio (express or pro) Or are they considered mutually exclusive technologies XNA Build is designed for commercial game developers who have very large teams producing huge amounts of content. To meet their needs, it has to be extremely flexible, and cannot impose much in the way of policy decisions, as it has to fit into however each studio wants to manage their workflow. So it is mor ...Show All

• Exellus Content Pipeline and FX files

  I noticed that on the post which Michael Klucher made on the content pipeline back in August that the FX files had importers for the Content pipeline included. I was wondering if anyone knew how it works ie does it a: simply compile the shader and create the binary shader file, which is loaded in at runtime b: Create an effect wrapper around it. By this i mean a little like a strongly typed dataset - rather than having to constantly lookup what parameters are required by a particular shader (ie worldviewproj), does it created a descendant of Effect and have properties that are set at designtime, so we know that we should never get errors from passing in values with incorrect names. I would guess that a is what will be in there, bu ...Show All