Answer Questions

• Terry Montgomery Moving raw data through the content pipeline...

  I'm probably just not looking hard enough, but... How do I get raw data through the content pipe and onto the 360 in a format I can just do a File.Open on All of the data processing I need is already being done offline so I don't need the content pipeline to do anything other than copying the file across - yet, because it's not a registered content pipeline format, it just sits there and gets ignored when I add it to my project... Help Thanks for the reply. I somehow got mixed up thinking the content pipeline was the only way to get data up to the xbox. One more quick question: I added a test file and it went up OK but when I deleted it from the output directory on my PC and hit deploy I didn't see it ...Show All

• HL8476 3d games 101

  Ok, once one has mastered the art of 2d games, what are the best tutorials out there to jump into the 3d world Honestly I am staying away from 3D until the content pipeline is released. I know I am not the only one that is waiting. I have seen many XNA projects and I think we as a community have not yet mastered the art of 2D games. As said it is probably, or most likely, definately the best to wait for the content pipeline to be fixed. If you cannot wait though you can have a look in example at Kukyona's work, which has created a basic 3D terrain engine. No fancy stuff going on, but it does show what you can do with XNA already. To see his work in action: http://kukyona.blogspot.com/ An ...Show All

• Avi_harush Possible bug? - Textures and Source Areas

  Hi, I've been experimenting and trying to draw a 2D texture (using a sprite batch) to the screen. Now I've specified a source rectangle for the texture - which is at (x, y) and of width & height 1x1. So essentially a single pixel from the source texture, which is RGBA (0, 0, 0, 255) i.e. solid black. When I render this and specify a destination rectangle, what's rendered seems to take into account the pixels either side of the source rectangle - which are RGBA (0, 0, 0, 0) i.e. transparent black. Now this seems to me slightly illogical or at the least counterintuitive - that pixels *outside* the source rectangle should affect what's being drawn! Well, if someone could explain this to me I'd appreciate it very much, or perhaps confir ...Show All

• Puntor HLSL Grammar ... Tokens?

  Hi, I am currently working on a HLSL parser, and while the HLSL grammar can be found in the online reference I've got a few questions about the tokens to be used. Especially, I couldn't figure out how T_TYPE_ID and T_NON_TYPE_ID should be defined.. I've got a few ideas that seem to work but would rather use the 'official' definition and not have mine break at some random point in the future. Also, the assignment operator tokens aren't quite clear. The grammar lists quite a few possible assignment operators (<<=, >>=, *=, /=, +=, -=, %=, &=, |=, ^=) but i'm not quite clear how I should map these to the five tokens used in AssignmentExpr (T_OP_ME, T_OP_DE, T_OP_RE, T_OP_AE and T_OP_SE). Right now it doesn't really matter, but ...Show All

• Cindy Meister XNA/Xbox 360 memory management heads-up...

  I was just browsing through some docs on the 360's heap manager, and it turns out it is a compacting mark and sweep collector rather than the generational model used on the desktop... So... what's the deal regarding: Large block allocation (will it have a large object heap like the desktop version ) GC pauses times (do all threads halt during GC) Rico Mariani recommends a heap size equivalent to the Gen 0 size on the desktop, i.e. ~cache size. That seems way too small unless we are dumping lots of game data into unmanaged memory! Andy. Rico Mariani's last blog entry . Ross, I fully understand what you are saying, but why on earth implement a compacting GC on a device with 6 hardware threads and 5 ...Show All

• randomblink Are there any known x64 issues...?

  I've followed everyones instructions on getting everything installed. Installed latest DX9 (Aug SDK - already had it ) - Installed C# express, and installed XNA Express.. I try to run the any XNA Game and I get the following: "Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Xna.Framework, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=f48fa5f25d27e8ff' or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format." Everything compiles fine, only when I try to run it. I've tried to decode this myself as it would seem that it can't find the Xna.Framework dll or something, but i've even tried removing and re-adding them to the resources, with no luck. I've also made sure a copy was in the run directory ( ...Show All

• Michael Dyrnaes Link to MC2 not working again

  Microsoft XNA Build March 2006 Community Technology Preview featured at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx FamilyID=868fe562-5ded-4bb1-8648-708d3481bda3&DisplayLang=en has a link to the MechCommander 2 Shared Source Release download. The link is http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx na=40&p=2&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=868fe562-5ded-4bb1-8648-708d3481bda3&u=http%3a%2f%2fgo.microsoft.com%2ffwlink%2f%3flinkid%3d63428 but it is broken leaving one at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx FamilyId=6D790CDE-C3E5-46BE-B3A5-729581269A9C&displaylang=en Is it possible that someone knows the correct link or can have this fixed Thx, David ...Show All

• NozFx Making XNA/Managed code secure

  What is being done to make managed code more secure for commercial applications. I can't see how any companies would be willing to switch to managed code for prime time games as long as MSIL can be easily reverse engineered. I love XNA and Managed code and pray that eventually commercial industry will as well (so I can put my C# skills towards gaming instead of business apps). Our company is already hesitant to make WinForm applications due to the ease in which these applications can be decompiled and reversed. On windows, I have no doubt that it would work ... haven't tried it on 360, but my guess is that it will. Obfuscating doesn't change the functionality of the code, it merely changes the names and structure of the code. That wa ...Show All

• Duncan Woods What the H&^^ is going on here?

  I try clicking on the installer package and it says "This installation package could not be opened. Contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer package." ANSWERS PLEASE! That would be because that's what Game Studio Express is - an add-on to C# Express. I just needed SP2. New problem: Whenever i click on the XNA program, it comes up as Visual C# Thank You! yea, that seems odd. can you try to redownload and see if you get the same error V Sounds like a bad download or possibly you don't have the version of Windows Installer needed. ...Show All

• we3dyz Suggestion for stock Vertex structs

  I notice that the framework provides a few stock vertex structures like VertexPositionColor etc. This is cool but it would be great if these could inherit from an interface which provides a mechanism to get the SizeInBytes and Element information abstractly. These structs currently provide this information as static properties but this is no good if you are are trying to write a generic function that can deal with a number of different types of vertex structures seamlessly. My suggestion is that in future something like an IVertexInfo is provided that lets you deal with these concrete vertex structures abstractly.  Perhaps something like this. interface IVertexInfo {     VertexElement [] Elemen ...Show All

• christian bitter Skin weight Transforms and Model Importer

  Hey, where do you guys store the transform matrices for skin weights in the content pipeline It seems that they are merged with the bone matrices before they are passed to the processor. Also, is there any way to extend the .X file importer class There are a lot of situations in which this can be useful. In a .X file joint skin weights are described as: SkinWeights { "joint2"; 12; 8, ... (indices) TRANSFORM MATRIX } And the transform Matrix is concatenated to the referenced bone matrix after the bone transforms are combined.  I'd like to know what happened to this piece of data in the content processor :(  I wrote my own skinned mesh animator for XNA beta 1, but without this, I'm havi ...Show All

• script GraphicsAdapter.SupportedDisplayModes;

  I'm using the code below to check the supported display modes of my adapter. DisplayModeCollection modes1 = new DisplayModeCollection(); modes1 = GraphicsAdapter.DefaultAdapter.SupportedDisplayModes; I've tried this code at work on a laptop and at home on a desktop (2 different vid cards) and each time the DisplayModeCollection is empty (count = -1). All the other members of the GraphicsAdapter class are showing up (driver version, name, deviceID etc. etc.). I'm trying to make a config panel template so therefore need to know what resolutions the user's vid card can handle. TIA, lushdog I click this link https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/CreateFeedback.aspx SiteID=226 and get sent to Account Servic ...Show All

• Fasha Undefined errorcode from D3DXGetImageInfoFromFile

  At the moment i'm programming a 2d graphical engine with directX9, but when i try to run the function D3DXGetImageInfoFromFile((LPCWSTR) filename, &imginfo); it gives back an undefined error code, i'm using the directx october 2005 sdk with the latest version of the directx runtimes. Full engine GraphEngine.h: #pragma once class GraphEngine; #include <D3d9.h> #include <Windows.h> #include "GraphResource.h" class GraphEngine { public : IDirect3D9 *D3D; IDirect3DDevice9 *D3DDevice; IDirect3DSurface9 *D3DScreen; GraphEngine(HWND hWnd); ~GraphEngine( void ); void drawImage(GraphResource *img, int X, int Y); void RefreshScreen(); }; GraphEngine.cpp: ...Show All

• sally_de 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 Yes, you must be signed-in to Live the entire time that you ...Show All

• MichaelLatta Setting the Fullscreen Resolution

  Hello all, I have a very simple question that I can't seem to find a direct answer to. My Game's GraphicsComponent's backfuffer is set to 320 x 240. The game window is also 320 x 240. When I swtich to fullscreen by setting the GraphicsComponent's IsFullscreen property to true the fullscreen resolution seems to be 640 x 480. My graphics appear up in the top-left corner. How can I set the fullscreen resolution to 320 x 240 I tackled something like this a little differently. I created a ScaledSpriteBatch class which inherits from SpriteBatch and given a base resolution (in your case 320x240) it calculates the actual destination rect or vector from the one supplied in the Draw() method. So I implemented my ...Show All