Answer Questions

• josu udaondo How do I know if a resource is managed or not?

  I'm following the recommended pattern on Loading Resources in the XNA Framework . I know that if I do something like the following: vertexBuffer = new VertexBuffer(device, typeof(VertexPositionTexture), vpt.Length, ResourceUsage.WriteOnly, ResourcePool.Managed ); Then that is a managed resource. But what about the following resources Are they managed or not How do I tell for resources where you don't specify a ResourcePool effect = new Effect(device, compiledEffect.GetShaderCode(), CompilerOptions.None, null); texture = Texture.FromFile(device, "mytex.png"); vertexDeclaration = new VertexDeclaration(Device, VertexPositionTexture.VertexElements); Also, just to make sure, I never have to call .Dispose() on a managed resour ...Show All

• Daikoku Contain the mouse inside the game window

  Hey Everyone, The subject pretty much says it all. Is there a way to keep the mouse contained inside the game window so the gamer can't scroll outside its bounds thanks Jim Perry wrote: If you want to do that, just make the game full screen, otherwise you're going to tick of the player. This is not entirely true, if you want to take mouse deltas, you have to do this regardless of fullscreen or not fullscreen, once your mouse has hit max X or max Y, you will not be able to take accurate deltas. Implementing a way to loose focus of the game screen and then disabling the mouse center locking will solve this issue until focus is regained. An improvement on my last suggestion ...Show All

• Mitch Walker - MSFT Question regarding making landscape in 2D

  My question is rather simple. I have a texture and a landscape map to apply it to. It is possible to make a rectangular sprite in XNA, but is it possible to cut a part from it Here's an example for better understanding of what I'm aiming for: http://img335.imageshack.us/img335/9972/examplent7.jpg The only way I can think of is to make a different texture for every sprite, changing its shape every time. But that really it not the easiest and smartest way... >> Landscapes typically involve only rectangles and triangles. Will you be able to use triangles to represent the shape you want Yes, basically, each part of my landscape would consist of rectangle in the bottom and a triangle on top. The ...Show All

• Nagarajan S d3d9.h error

  I'm trying to compile my 3d engine but I get compiler errors in d3d9.h. What's wrong d3d9.h(369) : error C4430: missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int d3d9.h(369) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ',' before '*' d3d9.h(805) : error C4430: missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int d3d9.h(805) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ',' before '*' Errors like these usually indicate that you've failed to close a set of quotes, brackets, parentheses, etc. somewhere in your code. Take a quick look through your source code and make sure things are in order. I'm using Visual Studio 8 Pro, DirectX SDK June 2006 (I a ...Show All

• Krutika Custom effects on content pipeline loaded Mesh??

  Hi :)! I'm in trouble with what the thread is about. If i create a vertex buffer to build a cube for exemple and draw it inside my pass.begin() and pass.end() code i can see my shader on it. But if i load a model and draw it (modelmesh.draw()) in the same place nothing appears :s. If the model is drawn before the vertexbuffered made mesh nothing appears on screen, and if i do the opposite only the cube appears. I've read Shawn's Hargreaves explanation about modelmeshparts but i'm still unable to get my shader illuminate my models, so please if someone can help me it would be very unfrustrating (don't know if this word exist but you've got the idea :p). If i use the BasicEffect class my mesh appears though. By the way i've done anothe ...Show All

• Renis Cerga Need assistant in volume texture

  I'm still new in directx programming and quite dont understand with the volume texture. I've been learning directx programming with the example given by microsoft itself. it does quite a lot of things but lack of documentation. Straight to the point, i dont understand this chunk of code: { D3DLOCKED_BOX LockedBox; hr = m_pVolumeTexture->LockBox( 0, &LockedBox, 0, 0 ); if( FAILED(hr) ) return hr; for( UINT w=0; w<16; w++ ) { BYTE* pSliceStart = (BYTE*)LockedBox.pBits; for( UINT v=0; v<16; v++ ) { for( UINT u=0; u<16; u++ ) { FLOAT du = (u-7.5f)/7.5f; FLOAT dv = (v-7.5f)/7.5f; FLOAT dw = (w-7.5f)/7.5f; FLOAT fScale ...Show All

• Jehan Badshah Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D.NotAvailableException was unhandled

  While coding Microsofts/digipen's webcast class: http://www.digipen.edu/main/Webcast/Introduction_to_2-D_Video_Game_Development Session 5 I get the error below. Yet in session 4 the error does not occur. The only difference between the two is adding more sprites, moving them, and mirroring them depending on which side of the shooter they will appear on. I do not know enough about either the code or c# to figure it out. So I hope others have done this tutorial and found the answer. Also regarding this tutorial, all the sprites show a black box even though they are set to be transparent: Picture trooper01 = new Picture ( "trooper01.bmp" , Color .FromArgb(0, 255, 0)); 255 meaning grn will be/is the transparent c ...Show All

• PK2000 General strategy question about XNA

  What is MSFT's strategy with GSE I mean, is it a stripped-down version of GS Pro meant to spark interest in GS Pro Is it actually going the core of GS Pro, and the hobbyist/student community is acting as both first adopters and beta (or even alpha) testers of the product Is it a way for MSFT to foster some kind of indie/small game shop Xbox360 game development (The latter would seem to be slightly odd: the actual dev kits, I gather, are not a minor expense, in addition to what I'm assuming are certification and any other testing expenses; I would think that releasing an alternate path for Xbox game development might cannibalize an existing revenue stream...) It would seem to me to be just simpler to wait for GS Pro to come out, and l ...Show All

• Alex Farber Why use shaders?

  This is probably a stupid question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. I've been programming computers for almost 20 years, so I'm not new to this, but I am new to 3d game programming. I downloaded RenderMonkey, and Nvidia FX Composer, and I see that really cool effects can be made with shaders...but the gap in my knowledge is...why, and when. I see that ATI has a shader demo where they take a flat disc and mod it into a speaker shape and then make it pulse like a real speaker using shaders. So...here's the question...is it more processor-friendly to make a flat disc and then shader it to the shape I need than to make model in the right shape in the first place In their demo, they take a flat disc and "shader" it to a speaker shape ...Show All

• Barthi Computing tangents on a skinned mesh

  Hi all, I'm trying to find a way to compute tangents on a skinned mesh, but I'm out of ideas. I've used D3DXComputeTangentFrameEx() to successfully compute tangents on static meshes, but this won't work on a skinned mesh, as the function splits vertices as needed to generate the tangents. This causes skinning-related problems later on, in my particular case it causes ConvertToIndexedBlendedMesh() to fail, since the new mesh with tangents no longer matches the skinInfo. The output window specifically says: D3DX: ID3DXSkinInfo::ConvertToIndexedBlendedMesh: The input mesh, pMesh, does not have the same number of vertices as the skin info class So then, how exactly does one go about computing tangents on a skinned mesh I know its po ...Show All

• Michael.Young 1.) Lock/Unlock vs. SetData/GetData and 2.) predefined vertex formats

  Two points spring currently to my mind. Is there any reason besides simplicity not to use the common Lock/Unlock mechanics I would prefer the addition of this to the API. GetData/SetData canthe simply be mapped onto this. I have a large terrain, that I tesselate into the locked buffer directly... With this new scheme I have to build a temporary array and then copy over via SetData, same with textures. On the other hand, if we have to live with this, why do we have the managed pool anymore, kind of pointless! The other thing are the predefined vertex formats... Any reason to not expose the members directly and use setters and getters instead I don't see the point here too, this just forces us to create one intermediate result and copy oper ...Show All

• ckob Anti-Piracy Security

  I have this scary feeling that people are going to eventually figure out how to use XNA Game Studio Express to right code that will take advantage of the 360 hardware and allow booting of pirated(non-stamped and signed) games. What steps has MS taken to avoid this And if or when this happens will the "rights" and options open to the amauter devs be limited(Limited library uses or such) I really am looking foward to developing for my beloved 360 but I don't want anyone to ruin the fun. Only allowing managed code will help in security, by paying and signing up they may be able to tell who compiled any binaries so if you did put out something bad they can shut you down. But this is just my guess or how I would do it. Bo ...Show All

• Zakamon Collision detection - Howto

  Hi all, I'm trying to make two objects collide in GSE, actually in a Pong game - between the bat and the ball. I have motion for both, but no collision, the ball just leaves the stage so to speak. Any help would be appreciated. I have looked in the Help, but to no avail. Yeah, I tried that, but I didn't get the point of bounding boxes, how to use them so to speak. You maybe want to go further and do a google search for " pixel perfect collision" so the question remains if you have a sprite on the screen how do you assign the Bounding Box do it Do you need to do a vector that moves with the sprite LIke masked over it in a sense Thank you so much I like totally didn't think to put the x y ...Show All

• Andrew Stanford using DXUTTextHelper to output a string

  I'm extremly new to Directx programming, and i've tried everything to get a std::string to output onto the frame. Hopefully you guys can help. I have it so std::string GetDetails() {...} returns a string (constructed with ostringstream, if that really matters) and returns oss.str() at the end. but I can;t figure out the conversion between std::string and wchar_t or WCHAR*. any help would be amazingly (thats right) helpful. Thanks. Use wstring instead or convert the string to a wide character array using a wchar_t array that can hold the data MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0, wideString, -1, charString, stringLengthPlusNULL); wideString[stringLengthPlusNULL-1] = 0;   ...Show All

• JavaBoy Problem installing XNA Game Studio Beta 2

  I previously had XNAGSE beta 1 installed, however I am unable to install beta 2. I read around on the forums a bit, and this is what I tried: 1. Uninstalled beta 1 2. Ran Visual C# then closed it 3. Tried to install beta 2 However when I try to install beta 2, it gets through most of the install, but after it does "installing DirectX redist" it goes to "rolling back action" and tells me that the install ended prematurely due to an error. Anyone have any ideas what could be going wrong Should I try reinstalling Visual C# as well I do not recommend going back to beta 1. There have been a lot of changes and you will just make it harder on yourself converting in the futu ...Show All