Answer Questions

• KervyChoa Shadows in 2D

  I'm writing a 2D game and it looks nice, but its missing something. I've never handled shadows with 2D games before, but I believe this would add a nice touch. Can anyone give me any pointers (no, not the programming type) Is there an easy way with XNA to make the shadow appear on my standard background when just doing 2D Shadows in 2d can be easy to do, how I have done it in the past ( Link ), is to copy the sprite image as above and make the color a dark shade of grey. Then change the transperancy on the shadow sprite so that you can see through it. You then draw it below and slightly to one side. As the sprite is transperant you will then be able to see the textures underneath it. There is ...Show All

• Manivannan.D.Sekaran Just saying Hi

  Hi! I have wanted to make a game for some time now... and I never really wanted to put much time into it until now. I have the whole game drawn out on paper (classes, skills, the way the networking works) but never got around to implementing it. I have been playing with this XNA GSE and have a car that I can drive around a track. Hopefully I will have more soon. I would like to "build up" to my main goal which is the game I was talking about before, but that includes animation which I am waiting for a nice example/tutorial for. Anyways, just figured I'd say Hi and I'm sure I'll be able to help out with normal programming stuff for now (I'm a software engineer for 2 years now), and maybe others can help me out with ...Show All

• DTHMTLGOD Allow Users to offer user created Games through Xbox Live to everyone, Is it Impossible for Microsoft

  I realize that there are challenges but, if it were, that users could offer there own creations over xbox live to all 360 owners, there would be an entirely new world to explore. I believe that it could be done. Microsoft would have an infinitely expanding library. Most commercial game creators cant take the risk of trying new and uncertain gaming ideas with production costs being so high. They would love to have the freedom to always give gamers new and unique experiences. But most times they continue the traditions that work and are going to sell. Thats why I believe that users should be given the ability to share their creations with all. We dont fear any risks and with xbox live, the downloads could be tracked and popular creators coul ...Show All

• ACCOUNTINGONLINE.US Projecting 2D Coordinates Into 3D Coordinates

  I just got started with XNA (and C# for the most part, though my experience with Java seems to help) and ran into a snag. I did the tutorial about display points using the VertexBuffer object and wanted to take it to another level. I wanted to get the mouse coordinates when the mouse is clicked and put a new point on there. I got the input and figured out how to add points to my array, but unfortunately I can't figure out how to take my 2D screen coordinates from the mouse and put it into 3D coordinates. Does anyone know how I can do this If it matters, here's the code I used to create my projection and view matrices: viewMatrix = Matrix.CreateLookAt( new Vector3(0, 0, 5), Vector3.Zero, Vector3.Up ); ...Show All

• zort15 Depth buffer problems

  Ok, this is beginning to frustrate me a little - try as I might to get depth buffering turned on, I can't. Does anyone know if the fx file used by BasicEffect turns depth buffering off So far I have tried adding the following before calling ModelMesh.Draw() (using a BasicEffect for shading): GraphicsDevice.RenderState.DepthBufferEnable = true ; GraphicsDevice.RenderState.DepthBufferFunction = CompareFunction . LessEqual ; GraphicsDevice.RenderState.DepthBufferWriteEnable = true ; I have also tried adding: void graphicsDeviceManager_PreparingDeviceSettings( object sender, PreparingDeviceSettingsEventArgs e) {     e.GraphicsDeviceInformation.PresentationParameters.AutoDepthStencilFormat = DepthF ...Show All

• Dattaforit Is my video card too old?

  Hi, I searched the forum before I posted :). When I start the SpaceWar game, and run the retro, it puts double ships on the screen. When I start the evolved version, It looks good for about a second and then just goes white. Only some of the graphics are left. I can see the jet engines on the ship, but the background just flashed once when the game starts and then goes away (with the body of the ship itself gone too). It's got double ships too. Is my video card just too old ATI Radeon 7500 I already had to do the graphics.AllowMultiSampling = false ; to get everything working. I'm just thinking if I upgrade all will go well. Thanks . I intentionally tested SpaceWar on a machine with a ...Show All

• JamesE In Depth tutorials?

  I wanted to know if anyone knew of a more in-depth tutorial then the one that comes with GSE...so if you know could you tell me   Check out these... http://xbox360homebrew.com/content/XNATutorialMasterList.aspx ...Show All

• JHagan How to get a Side from a TextureCube

  I cannot see anyway of extracting a RenderTarget2D/Texture2D from a RenderTargetCube/TextureCube, except for GetData<> which I really dont want to do. Is your data trapped once you render into a cube format It was to extract cubemap faces for a skybox (potential side specific modifcation before drawing). You could set the 2D rendertarget, then draw a quad sampling just one side of the cubemap. I'm curious - what do you need to do this for ...Show All

• Emmanuel.Pastor Simple BreakOut Demo (Source included)

  Well there it is, my first ever C# and XNA program I hope it'll help some of you. Download BreakOutDemo.zip v0.31 Thank you MS for that wonderful gift that is the XNA. I forgot to uncheck "Sign the ClickOne manifests", sorry about that. The files have been updated. Screenshot looks good, but any chance of a zip version XP Handles zip natively! :D Am I the only one Error 1 Unable to find manifest signing certificate in the certificate store. BreakOutDemo Nicely Done! I believe that this is the best XNA game in the history of mankind!!! ...the only bad thing about that is someone else will take that title in a day or 2. :) The issue has ...Show All

• WV John Embedded resources, Xbox 360, and the ContentPipeline.

  I have an IDrawable (DrawableGameComponent) that I wish to include in a windows/360 game component library for use by other developers or even personal reuse. To make the component more friendly and useful I would like to include some resources that are to be used by default without having to force the end user to not only include the component library, but also include any resources that the component would offer by default. Now under XNA on windows I have already figured this problem out and can embed and access embedded resources. However when my example is moved into a XBox 360 game project the function I rely on under windows, Texture2D.FromFile() is not exposed (I use a resource manifest stream to access the embedded data). I have lo ...Show All

• spshah "The project type is not supported by this installation." with Beta 2

  I've installed VC# Express (side-by-side with my VS Std) and then XNA Game Studio Express Beta 2. When I start a new project I can see no XNA templates, though. When I try to open an existing example (built with beta 2) I get the error message "The project type is not supported by this installation." I've not had XGS beta 1 on this machine. I've tried uninstalling both XGS and VCS and reinstalling to no avail. Please help. How can I get XGS to work /Mikael When you followed the suggestions outlined in this thread (mentioned earlier), what errors do you see in the activity log after running "vcsexpress.exe /resetskippkgs /log" This is probably obvious, but just in case... You mu ...Show All

• Lisset Onscreen Keyboard Component Now Available

  At xnaresources.com , we've just uploaded a new XNA component for both Windows and the XBox 360 that allows you to display an on-screen keyboard (similar to the XBox 360 Dashboard Keyboard) to accept player input. The full souce is available (of course) and can be found here: http://www.xnaresources.com/pages.asp pageid=27 Sweet! Good work guys. Looking good, If you are taking suggestions for the next one, how about a dialog box like the shutdown console dialog on the 360. One that would overlay the main screen and allow the user to select yes/no or others... :) ...Show All

• CrashPlaxton About the fate of DirectX?

  Hi, I'm new here =) Hopefully I'm not asking a question that's been asked a million times before. =) I think I must be missing something important. I read the XNA FAQ, and it sounds to me like they've already deprecated Managed DirectX... does that mean that XNA has/will entirely replace DirectX If I want to write a program using DirectX in .NET, would this then mean that my program will need to be rewritten using XNA in the coming months And what about users who need the common graphics API provided by DirectX but don't have Shader support in their video cards Just curious, because that FAQ about Managed DirectX being deprecated alarmed me a bit (for the reasons expressed above) I have read in the DirectX 10 forums that there wi ...Show All

• Harish1 XNA on IRC

  Join us on IRC in #XNA on efnet We are growing a community where people can get real time help on their issues and work on projects together! Thanks, Ziggy I dont know of any to suggest :( I'll have to see if that works at my job. They block normal chat stuff. Yeah, you can find me on #xna on EFNET as LetsKillD, because IRC was written when there were only 0's on the internet. 1's hadn't been invented yet. Want realtime Q&A join us on IRC :) Not bashing anyones channell (heh), but after being on both of the other channels on AfterNet and EFNet, I'll say that the one on Opa-Ages.com has the most "chatter". EFNet is cool though, I hear AfterNet is kinda like a grave...lol. ...Show All

• thukralz Calculating FPS

  Ok so here is a real newbie question lol. What is the proper way to calculate FPS I noticed in the Update() method for the XNA project it does something of the sort: // The time since Update was called last float elapsed = ( float )ElapsedTime.TotalSeconds; I was wondering if I can properly calculate FPS based on this I tried to do something like: fps = 1 / elapsed; But it always seems to be 60.0024 FPS so I believe I am doing it wrong. I am only rendering 2 sprites, so I can't believe its only going 60 FPS. That and if I put a thread.sleep(500); it still says 60 although it should be 2FPS lol. Obviously I am doing something wrong. Is it more proper to use a timer of 1 second and just tally up the frames etc Thanks and t ...Show All