Answer Questions

• Davids Learning AI Resources

  I'm reaching out to the XNA Community for some good (and free) information on Artificial Intelligence and/or pathfinding Anyone know any ...or if not free, some book recommendations Those are great starts. Thanks guys! I'm more referring to the rest of the Game Programming Gems book (non-AI stuff). I'm sure the AI stuff hasn't been plutoed, but I don't know about the rest of the book. Does anyone that have the book want to comment Wikipedia is a place I often start. There is an article on pathfinding there with links to descriptions of A* and Dijkstra's algorithm. So I looked into those websites an ...Show All

• Bruce M Deployment Woes

  Whenever I try to deploy my application, either with Publish or manually, it runs completely fine on my computer. When I try to run it on any non-GSE computer, it comes up with a generic/unreadable error message. The computer has DirectX9c, .NET 2.0, and I installed the XNA Beta2 Redist. Are there any .dll's I might be missing I even tried to run the default XNA project and it failed. What am I doing wrong Alright!  You are the greatest.  That did the trick.  I knew I had used that before (the DX Web Installer), but I wasn't sure if it installed the latest version.  If you want to check it out, my devblog is www.infillion.blogspot.com , but right now my server is down, so the game isn't currently hosted.  ...Show All

• David Norris ODE.NET2

  Hello, - I've updated ODE.NET2 to work with XNA math. - Bumped it up to the 0.7 version of ODE (ode.org). However, not all functionality has been "wrapped" yet. - No samples yet. I only tested a few primitive collisions but it seems fine so far. Can't test mesh's yet. - I'm also working on ODE Components for XNA. :P For those wondering, ODE is a physics engine. http://www.pepperboy.net/ The problem is that ODE itself is ALL unmanaged code. ODE.Net is a wrapper on top of it. vidalsasoon , Thank you very much for your work on this!  Those of us who have used your ODE.NET 2.0 know full well the quality work you do.  I can't wait to see this finished. Thanks! UPDATE: Added a s ...Show All

• LightFootedEagle Copying a model

  I want to use the same mesh for multiple instances of a bad guy. When i load the model twice both models point to the same mesh therefore they share the same transforms. How do I create two unique instances of a model that use the same mesh initially but can have unique transforms You can just load your model into a single object and when you draw your model with its meshes you apply different matrices for transformation, so: apply transform matrix one on model and draw it apply transform matrix two on model and draw it To have this transforms stored somewhere to update for example in Update() you can create a class to wrapp the xna model class and store you transform matrices in a List<Matrix&g ...Show All

• Kamii47 Animate Mesh C#

  Hello. I'm trying to animate a mesh (tiny.x). I've been looking through some diffrent applications that animates meshes (or is it called skinning ), I've found that most does use HLSL to fix this but some seem to manage it by only using the fixed pipeline. Is it possible to animate a mesh by only using the fixed pipeline . I've been searching for a good tutorial to animating meshes for quite some time and it would be great if someone knew a good tutorial where someone explained how to animate a mesh in depth :-). Thanks in advance!. Sure you can animate using the fixed function pipeline but why whould you do it while its easier and better to do with HLSL check out the sample tutorial in DirectX sample ...Show All

• Lingonsylt Sound Recording or Automated Speach

  I want to create a program to train for Quiz Bowl. It allready has most of the logic in place for timing and stuff but I want it to ask the questions. I tried to find a library for the microsoft program Narrator but I couldn't. I think that the best way would be to have the program record the questions and save them in WAV files. They could be played back when needed. I need to, somehow in my program, identify a sound recording device like a microphone or webcam, start gathering data from it, and stop getting data from it on cue. If anyone knows how to do this in VB, your help would ge greatly appreciated. Thanks The ZMan wrote: we needed a way to actually record the sound - hence the DShow forum. Which I thi ...Show All

• .NETPhreak Developing solely on the XBox 360

  What major disadvantages are there in developing only on an XBox 360 My laptop here is not exactly a top-of-the-line gaming machine, which means that I can't run XNA games on it (no shaders). One option would be to just get a new PC, but for a student that's not exactly cheap, and I might not want to get a new one anyways before Vista comes out. One thing I heard might be a problem is profiling my code. I understand the only thing for profiling on the 360 is the GC profiler, which might not be quite enough. Will the situation get better in the future Should I just get a new PC or would the 360 be a good inexpensive solution for game development How'a bout this solution: http://www.nuclex.org/articles/ ...Show All

• DadUnit Is the D3DXFragmentLinker going away?

  I have been hearing talk about this feature going away in D3D10 and that uber shaders will be preferred instead. So just to confirm, is this true Hello, I am a developer who has been using the fragment linker quite extensively recently and this news saddens me a bit but also raises my curiosity. I was wondering if you can provide more detail on the optimizations that take place in the effect interface that dont when linking at run time with the fragment linker. I would also be curious in the level of optimization (is it really that much more expensive ) Currently i use the fragment linker for a material editor where the user can select differnt pixel and vertex shader modules to combine into o ...Show All

• Thomas2054 Using .X files for world model

  In my game, using .X file format for objects in the world (players, health pack etc...) is okay. Right now, my game doesn't have a detailed world. When it does have a detailed world, can I use the .X format for the entire world One .X file for a huge level or part of the level If I use it, Can I get the individual triangle vertices from the mesh Using one or more .x files for the level is up to your choice. The two solutions will work. You can get vertices from a mesh using ID3DXBaseMesh interface and LockVertexBuffer function. You'll have to use the vertex declaration obtained with ID3DXBaseMesh::GetDeclaration or GetFVF functions to understand the vertex buffer layout. Triangle indexes can also be fetched using the ID3DXBaseMes ...Show All

• Pablo Jord Joystick Values not correct

  Hello, I have a DirectInput code which reads values of a joystick. The code works fine but I have noticed that the value for the throttle (slider) axis is wrong until the player moves the stick. For example, the game starts and the throttle is set to 60% but the rglSlider field in the joystick structure returned by g_pJoystick->GetDeviceState is 0 . Is this behaviour normal How can fix this Thanks in advance, MDE It sounds like it could be a limitation of your device. If it's only telling DirectInput what position the slider is in when it changes, DirectInput won't know where it is until the user moves it. Thanks Ross. Later, I had the chance to test with a Logitech ...Show All

• Bret Grinslade .swm

  These files are very simple in structure, and it wouldnt be hard to write a converter. Heres how it goes: {       String version (i.e "1.0.0.0")       String originalFile (i.e "E:\dev\xna\source\starterkits\SpaceWar\media\projectiles\pea_proj.x")       Int32 triangleCount       Int32 vertexStride       Int32 vertexStart       Int32 vertexCount       Int32 batchCount             (for each batch)             {   &nbs ...Show All

• sniwas24x7 Deploying my own game assets

  I've chosen not to use the content pipeline provided with GSE. How do I deploy my game assets to the 360 HD Is there a command line utility so that I can build it into my tools Thanks. -Nick Yes, I'm aware of that. Above is how I've done it in the past, which works fine on the PC. Now I'm trying to figure out what utility to use or where to put the assets to deploy them on the 360. I'm going to use streamreader to read in the compiled code. How do I compile my shader code I'm attempting to compile my hlsl code using fxc, but am getting the following error: error X3501: 'main': entrypoint not found Here's my code: uniform extern float4x4 WorldViewProj : WORLDVIEWPROJE ...Show All

• kennm creating custom effects for .x models

  I want to use a .x file just for the vertex data so I can create my own shaders and try to implement different effects. Does anyone have any samples or tutorials on this Here you can find an example on how to do this I am trying to do the same. Basicaly i'd like to render a .x model with a custom .fx How do you assign the effect to the mesh subset effect property I am starting from the "how to render a model" tutorial. I want to replace the basicEffect with a simple.fx as suggested by the tutorial. I am not even trying to see something right now (the matrix arent set), but having something that runs at least. Here is the simple.fx file added at the same level as the ...Show All

• vkan Reading the vertex data from the opaquedata in a content processor.

  My question is really how would this be accomplished I asked earlier how to write a custom processor, and now I've got one, but I'm not sure how to get vertex data, or certain vertices out of the NodeContent and put it into the ModelContent. I'm trying to do this for precisely the kind of thing that was demonstrated in the "Gamefest Content Pipeline Demo" video. I would like to read certain marker batch vertices to be able to give me access to that data for placement of other meshes on top of a base mesh at the right spot. I would be much appreciative for help with this! :) The right way to know that it's a MeshContent is to use " as ". MeshContent isMesh = theNode as MeshCont ...Show All

• hrubesh Missing parts for XNA Game Studio Express

  What are those missing components/documents I need for real XBOX 360 game programming Will forthcoming XNA Game Studio include those files I know that subscribing to somewhere, I can get those missing pieces but for now I should be happy for documents only. Peca For information regarding this you should have a look at the FAQ , it will answer most of the questions. If you still have questions please be more specific with what you ask. If you do want to program games along the lines of Halo or the like you will need to look at the new Game Studio Pro, But there are no deatils for this yet and you will have to keep an eye out on the XNA Team Blog for more information. Remember there will be a cost for the pro version... ...Show All