Answer Questions

• Sanjeev Reddy Can a managed DirectX app keep running if a DirectX problem would normally crash an unmanaged game?

  We have probably all seen DirectX games crash, usually due to driver issues, or bugs in a particular game (where you may find a patch to fix them later, or update your drivers, and the problem doesn't happen any more) -- and they either drop you on your desktop or cause the PC to restart. Usually the games also lose whatever changed in the game since your last save as well.. In either of these cases, if the game were written in .NET, using managed DirectX, and caused exactly the same problem.. would it simply be treated as an exception, and the game could recover (assuming you programmed it that way), or would it crash just like an unmanaged game If it's possible for it to recover, it could re-initialize everything related to DirectX, o ...Show All

• iljanated Unknown Warning

  Hi! I searched on Google already but I couldn't find anything... I am getting this warning: Warning 1 Referenced assembly 'C:\Programmi\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio Express\v1.0\References\Windows\x86\Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll' targets a different processor than the application. Actually I am including only two Microsoft.Xna.Framework references + mscorlib + System. They should be the default References... Is this a known issue Warning 2 Referenced assembly 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio Express\v1.0\References\Windows\x86\Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll' targets a different processor than the application. BreakOutDemo Apparently the documentation got ahead of the programming. Here ...Show All

• gdrivas232096 SpriteBlendMode.Additive

  I have a dumb question, but I cannot find any information on this. Can someone tell me what SpriteBlendMode.Additive does I mostly use SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend in my code, but I would like to know in what scenarios would I want to use SpriteBlendMode.Additive I appreciate any feedback. I have another question though, (if you don't mind) you would normally use the SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend mode when rendering the HUD correct Additive would be more suited for in-game objects Thanks! You pretty much put it in clear perspective for me! Thanks a lot for your quick reply! The page was very informative! ...Show All

• Rajesh Kumar J 3D game sample/tutorial

  Has anyone released any samples/tutorials/simple games that are 3D for XNA I am really not interested at all in doing anything 2D. I have made some progress making a game with MDX, though I haven't completed it yet. However, I am still having a mental hurdle with how to structure things in XNA. Not having the fixed pipeline isn't helping much either. No there are no visual designers or automatic visualizers with GSE. (though mitch did a demo showing that you can make a game component to do that http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2006/08/31/734204.aspx ) I suspect once the content pipeline is availalbe (nobody knows when....) then we will se people writing components like this. >>>>&g ...Show All

• yeos_lee Confused about getting sounds to work.

  Hello everyone! I've just read "How to: Add a sound file to your game using XACT" and "How to: Play a sound" in the msdn xna documentation but I'm very confused. I added two wave files to my Wave Bank and dragged them to the left corner (Cue Name panel) of the Sound Bank. They showed up and everything seemed fine. I saved the project inside my project directory inside a subdirectory: <project-dir>\Content\Sounds\sounds.xap. This also added to folders to that directory called Xbox and Win, they were however empty. Then the "How to: Add a sound file to your game using XACT" howto ended. Now I started reading the "How to: Play a sound" howto and I was supposed to have some more files ending in .xgs, .xwb and .xsb. I fou ...Show All

• awj100 Fullscreen mode doesn't seem to work for me...

  Hi, I was wondering if anyone had any insight into this. I have my app, and it runs fine in windowed mode, but when I switch it to fullscreen mode, the display seems to clear the screen to grey every frame.  I initialize my gfx component like so: gfx = new GraphicsDeviceManager ( this ) ; gfx.PreferredBackBufferWidth = preferredWindowWidth; gfx.PreferredBackBufferHeight = preferredWindowHeight; gfx.PreferredBackBufferFormat = SurfaceFormat .Bgr32;  //I tried this thinking maybe it wasn't in a well supported mode that the graphics card knows.  This doesn't work. gfx.ToggleFullScreen();   gfx.SynchronizeWithVerticalRetrace = true ;   Even if I reduce my draw code to somethin ...Show All

• EastShores Where is my fragment linker?

  Unless I missed it (I looked as hard as I could) it doesn't look like the D3DX fragment linker (which also had a MDX version, mind you) made it into XNA. This confuses me greatly because anything serious with HLSL and any shader model requires support for run-time linking of shader fragments for performance. The only other options are: 1) Flow control instructions, which come with a very large instruction count and performance hit, especially in pixel shaders, and they aren't available in shader models 1.1 or 2.0. It makes very little sense to waste dozens of instructions on every pixel for something that stays exactly the same for all pixels in the same batch. And no, not even static flow control is available in PS2.0. 2) Co ...Show All

• Saud Akhter ZSX4 -- Pretty Pictures

  Here's some screenies for my new game-- ZSX4: Guitarpocalypse! It's got a weird gameplay mechanic: you use Guitar Fu (Kung Fu with guitars) to knock each other off the ledge a la smash bros, and obtain Orbs this way; then you punch in the right thumbstick to go into Guitar Solo mode, then push the right thumbstick in the appropriate directions as the Solo Cues show up to Monster Guitar Solo, then unleash screen filling Power Chord Attacks. Sounds like a great concept for gameplay which would work very well, but for me the screenies just look too busy to fully make out what is going on. how well does it run on 360 Heh, I thought the top two heads were pez dispensers at first. Looks good. l ...Show All

• dabrosch Where do I buy the whole devkit for XBOX 360

  I am working as a leturer in a University, and my department would like to developing game for XBOX 360 ,it's all for teachings only. So I am asking what do we need to develop a XBOX 360 game, and how much will it cost Is there any beta devkit including the devBox Any clues Thanks  a lot. George Clingerman wrote: If you are just looking to develop games for the XBox360, you can do that at no cost if you use Microsoft's new XNA framework. The XNA framework is free and you develop with it using Microsoft's Visual C# Express Edition, which is also free. Using the XNA framework, you can create games for both the PC and the XBox 360 all at no cost. I also know that they are working with universities in conjunction with ...Show All

• sl333 How hard could it be?

  I mean how hard could it be to make a First person Shooter similar to battlefield 2 What is involved Im sorry Im new at this and still have alot to learn obviously. We'll yeah there's no way he'll make BFII in a year by himself, but he could make a tactical team based FPS that's capable of supporting way more than 4 players in a year or less. The source code to Quake 1-3 is freely available. With that there's no reason why a single person couldn't cobble together a full game with, a couple of maps, characters and character classes in under a year. AOEA wrote: We'll yeah there's no way he'll make BFII in a year by himself, but he could make a tactical team based FP ...Show All

• nsam Bullet Hell Tactics - Shoot'em'up game created with XNA (video and screensots)

  Hey! For the last couple of months (5 to be exact) I have been working on a shoot'em'up (shmup) game with XNA and have now come to point where I can show what it will look like and how it will play. I have screenshots and a gameplay video that can be found at http://shmup.blogspot.com . (Remember that this is work in progress, and a lot of stuff is missing). Here you can also read about the development and progress of the game. I don't yet have a playable demo for download (sorry). Later on I will have a beta for download for those of you that wish to try it. It has been a WHOLE lot of work to get this thing play (I know maybe it doesnt look like much work when you see it but trust me - it is!) Almost all the gameplay element ...Show All

• SHutch Octree - Handling static geometry, primitive splitting

  Hi, I am using XNA to develop my game. I finally have a working octree where I can insert renderable objects based on their AABB, in my book it mentions that static geometry is best inserted into the octree and polygons should be split if they straddle. The thing I cant get my head around is, How do I best manage static geometry that makes it suitable for polygon splitting If I am using directX (.x) models, in XNA I end up with a Model object, I can get access to the vertex and index buffer, but I am confused at how I should manipulate the vertex data in order to split them when I build my octree. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Ok thinking about my second question a bit more, and ...Show All

• Fahd StarRunner ... source included

  Just wanted to "showcase" my first C# as well as first XNA program I've done. It all started from GeorgeClingerman's CreatingA2DSprite and his background tutorial. Got to say thanks to him and also Gregory Wurm from learnXNA.com which pretty much taught me the basics of XNA programming. Now, by all means this is no advanced game as you may easily notice and doesnt include any complex ways of achieving things. It's source can be modified a lot as to look cleaner, etc.... but hell it was my first C# program. The main things I used were If Then Else statements, loops, arrays... The game is pretty much about moving a spaceship around and avoiding the asteroids (I don't know what the name of the classic game is though). No, the astero ...Show All

• Larry Aultman question on half vs float in hlsl

  Hello, I am using r16g16b16a16 render targets for my deferred shader engine. My vertex struct holds float's for all of the information and my vertex shader input struct also uses floats. The vertex shader output structure uses half's because the output render target is using 16-bit floats. I was wondering if there is any associated performance hit with casting a float3/4 to a half3/4 in a shader (or even casting in general) and if so any recommendations on alternatives Example of what i'm doing: Out.m_worldPos = (half4)mul(pos, g_matWorld); Thanks for the reply Ralf. As always it depends and you need to measure. But in the case of the vertex shader you normally don’t need to care about half and float as anything is done wit ...Show All

• Horst Klein Out of video memory when I have plenty (128Mb)

  I've had several computers fail to create the DirectX device in full screen mode because of an "out of video memory" error. In two cases, the cards have 128Mb, and I'm sure it's not using even close to that much video memory (front buffer + 2 back buffers = 3*1440*900*4 = 14.8Mb (not even close to 128Mb). On one computer, I was able to solve the problem by lowering the DirectX quality settings from the control panel. On the other computer, that didn't solve the problem. I'm sure my program isn't requesting high quality settings (MultiSample = none, MultiSampleQuality = 0). Does anyone have any idea of why this would happen, or what I can do to fix the problem Thank you, Jeremy How do I do that ...Show All