Answer Questions

• Jabber Game Programming is very Hard

  I've been reading DirectX sdk tutorials and MDX tutorials and things like that, and it seems VERY VERY VERY hard. Will this new XNA studio and the documentation simplify this All these vectors and whatnot is very complicated and I'm having trouble understanding seemingly basic concepts in game programming in 3d. PdCNZ wrote: Will XNA simplify this process and make it easier to create 3D environments From what's been posted by the MS guys, they're trying to make getting a game up and running as easily as possible a goal. The Starter Kits that should be included will help accomplish this. I'm sure the community will help as well by providing samples, info, etc. Definetly. From my little experience with game prog ...Show All

• ZuliXP ID3D10Effect::Get**() - what happens when handle isn't found??

  Morning all, Just made a dumb mistake with my code that cause a bit of frustration. I now know the cause, but it doesn't make sense and I don't see how to fix it I had some simple code along the lines of: ID3D10EffectTechnique *t = g_pEffect->GetTechniqueByName( "name" ); if( NULL == t ) { // Technique called "name" doesn't exist - error! } But D3D10 plodded on straight through this trap and eventually crashed when creating a state block during rendering (note: this is a bad error - it just hangs the app, no failed return code). A bit of investigating showed that GetTechniqueByName () returns garbage instead of NULL like previous FX9 did. There is no mention in the specs I have nor the documentation ...Show All

• steveareno MDX and Vista

  Will managed DirectX (for .NET 1.1) come pre-installed on Windows Vista when it is released How about the .NET 2.0 framework I'd like to see the MDX libraries included in Vista, and also in XP service pack 3 (if there ever is one). -Jeremy IE7 does not include .NET Framework. No .Net 1.1 isn't included. .Net has never been in an XP service pack. (maybe Windows 2003 SP1 - but thats cos .Net shipped in WIndows 2003). Not including .NET 2.0 in XP SP2 was dumb, considering that .NET 1.1 is included (and I thought Microsoft was pushing .NET as a core operating system technology). You were right to push. -Jeremy Tha ...Show All

• bminard Could C# be the future of gaming?

  Since XNA is using C#, and is is a more intuitive language than C++, is it possible that in the future that C# will dominate, espessially in AAA titles. Could XNA be ushering a new way of programming in the main stream Hi Jeff, As some one who is a partner in a company (and lead developer) that produces enterprise high performance security applications, many of them in C#, I think you will be very surprised what you can do with C#. I develop in C++, C++/CLI (.net C++) and C#. C# is my favorite by far. While it certainly takes a lot of care and research to get the "barn burning" speed you can truly get out of C#. Once you know what to avoid and how to write performance critical apps in C#, you will only go back when yo ...Show All

• syhzaidi How to draw a Rectangle in XNA

  Guess the subject covers it.. how do you draw a rectangle in XNA I just started using XNA about 2 weeks ago so i still haven't get used to it yet. any help would be really appreciated.. Thanks Joran, but unfortunately it's not what i'm looking for.. i was looking for a way to draw a basic 2D rectangle and from your link i think it's for drawing 3D primitives drawing. I can't seem to find it anywhere within the XNA documentation. is it possible that XNA is unable to draw basic 2D drawings or since it's too high-level, it won't allow us to Nic-Gun wrote: Thanks Joran, but unfortunately it's not what i'm looking for.. i was looking for a way to draw a basic 2D rectangle and from your link i think it's for drawing 3D prim ...Show All

• ozhonetech JIT register allocation and bounds checking

  A few questions for Shawn or one of his buddies: 1/ Does the register allocator used in the XBox JITter use all of the available scalar floating point registers If not, how many can it deal with 2/ Does the XBox VM ever skip array bounds checking, and if so under what conditions 3/ Presumably there are no bounds checks when using unsafe code and pointers 4/ Are the method inlining limitations of the CF VM mentioned here still applicable to the XBox VM - especially the one about not inlining any method with floating point arguments or return values (yikes, that would be all floating point setters and getters!) Andy. 3/ Unsafe code is fine on the XBox. Really Have you tried it If ...Show All

• NoEgo Xbox360 to PC Comparison

  Does anyone have an idea what performance I can expect from the Xbox360, I am writing my game purely for the console because I dont want to have to write a load of code for dealing with different spec machines (throttling the number of creatures, etc) and different types of input. The game I am porting is this (original is in vb.net and MDX) - http://www.entombed.co.uk I have managed to port the models, parrallax occulsion mapping shader and per pixel lighting. But I dont know how the Xbox360 is going to perform. My PC is this spec ( cr@p ish) - Intel P4 2.4 (400 FSB) ATI X800 XT PE 768 MB AGP x4 I am receiving an excellent frame rate from my PC and wondered what I should expect from the console, will it be twice as quick or mo ...Show All

• Xcel Determining if (part of) traingle passed depth buffer test/got rendered

  My problem is simple, I want to draw an triangle (or anything for that matter) and then want to know, in the fastest possible way, if anything actually got rendered. I want to use this for a kind of portal engine. Basicly I want to draw part of a complex scene, with depth buffer enabled for read/write. Then I want to draw an transparent triangle (with depth buffer writing disabled), if part of this triangle is actually rendered (thus is within the viewing frustum and passes depth buffer test) I want to know this, so I know that which is behind it, is also visible. I need to do this several times per frame and want to keep my framerate up, so I want to do this as fast as possible. Does anybody has an idea how to do this ...Show All

• allison_h DirectDraw Deprication

  What exactly do Microsoft mean by depricating DirectDraw Do they mean DirectDraw will be completely removed in the next DirectX release If so, what are the alternatives Does XNA work in Visual Basic Also, if I continue using DirectDraw, and simply reference an old version of DirectX in order to access it, will that work Cool. So I can still use DirectDraw What Language is your preference.. Direct Draw has been depriciated for a long time now... at least 3 years, this means that there will be no more work done on it and in the future it will be removed. I do not know exactly when this is going to happen, but if you have production code you should start to move it over. All of the 2d functions can be d ...Show All

• SenPluto Problem accessing the pixels of a texture

  Hello! I'm currently writing a bitmap font renderer and for that I need to access the individual pixels of a texture that contains all the characters that make up the font so I can calculate the kerning values. I've got this working, but I'm having some issues with accessing the pixels. My texture is a 170x170 pixel DDS file (the issue is reproducable with a TGA as well) which I have loaded into memory. I create it like this: D3DXCreateTextureFromFileInMemoryEx(lpDevice, pResource->pData, pResource->ulSize, D3DX_DEFAULT, D3DX_DEFAULT, 1, 0, D3DFMT_UNKNOWN, D3DPOOL_MANAGED, D3DX_DEFAULT, D3DX_DEFAULT, 0xFFFF00FF, &d3dImageInfo, NULL, &pTexture); If I load my texture as described above, then lock it and loop over its width and ...Show All

• bennett1016 is there a very basic tuts for a newbie?

  is there a very basic tuts for a newbie I done some darkbasic like making simple windows app and such nothing to advanced at all. But like start little and learn about xna and such. I do want aim for the 360 paid for a year of the xna for it. Any help links to all the different tuts to help me get started would be very appreciated. A simple search of the forums would have turned up dozens of posts with links. Clicky ...Show All

• Kavita Kamani - MSFT DirectX Extensions Problem for Visual Studio 2006

  Hello,      I have tried to find an answer for my problem for the past week, and I am not sure if this is the right thread for it.  I have installed DirectX SDK April 2006 with the DirectX Extensions, and I am running VS2006.  When I start VS2006 I don't see the DX extension icon on the intro Splash Screen, but I am able to see it in the About Box for VS2006.  The problem is not that it is justnot loading - or something,  my problem is not being able to debug HLSL code.  If I place a break point in the *.fx file I get "This break point will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document." Now I am not sure if this has anything to do with my extensions not getting loade ...Show All

• RyanH106 Creating A Game Library (Best Practices?)

  I've created a 'Windows Game Library' project to act as a re-usable API on which to build my games. It will contain most the basics... Sprite drawing objects, Line drawing, Bitmap Fonts, Input, etc... The thing I'm running into is how best to give my library layer access to all the important details from the game layer. Properties in the GraphicsComponent and Graphics Device are two good examples. Should I design all my objects to take a "Game" object as a parameter and call back using that Is there a better way What are other people doing Thanks. Thanks, Jurak. That's the kind of stuff I was looking for. "That said, on GBA games, I would usually have a global pointer to something like "Game&quo ...Show All

• portect Delete a picture file after Bitmap.FromFile call.

  Hello, I'm loading a bitmap from a temp file using Bitmap.FromFile. After this I want to delete the file, but get an IO exception "... this file is used by a process ...". The file is used from my C# process (found with the processexplorer), so my guess is the Bitmap.FromFile call. How do I release the file lock to delete the file Thanks for help. BerW You should use either Bitmap.Dispose or create a clone of the bitmap and dispose the source. It should work... Actually, if performance matters it would be better to read the file "by hand" and use Bitmap.LockBits to fill in the data - this way you avoid having 2 copies of the image. ...Show All

• Sixon Help What do I need to download so I can connect to my 360 for XNA?

  What do I need to download so I can connect to my 360 for XNA Do I need to download windows media connect I would also recommend having your 360 and your development box on wired connections, not wireless. I haven't tried to see if wireless is detected and blocked, but I suggest a wired setup. Guys I have exactly the same problem. Just downloaded and installed Windows Media Connect (I'm running Windows XP SP2) and that worked fine and streaming from PC to Xbox 360 works fine. I guess that nails the subnet issue. I'm using Windows firewall and everything looks OK. I've regenerated, accepted and reconfigured the key *many* times, making sure I don't have any 1's or 0's in the generated key ...Show All