Answer Questions

• mortiz2112 what is best way to render scene with great number of textures?

  xna help: To use the Texture3D.GetData or Texture3D.SetData methods, Texture3D.ResourceManagementMode must be ResourceManagementMode.Manual and Texture3D.ResourceUsage must be ResourceUsage.Dynamic . the problem is that texture3d constructor dont have resoursemanagement parameter (while texture2d has)! is this a bug It's correct that Texture3D doesn't let you specify the resource management mode. That's because there is never any reason to make a Texture3D in anything other than the automatic pool: none of the reasons you'd want a manual pool texture apply to 3D data. The docs are incorrect in saying you can only GetData/SetData on manual pool textures. ye, i already figured that out. i created us ...Show All

• averge joe A tutorial would be nice...

  Hello all, I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of a tutorial of a simple game, like tetris, breakout, space wars, asteroids, etc., that goes through, step by step, explains how "we" do this and why "we" did this. A lot of the things I read, I see such things as, "You should start simple, like a tetris style game," yet they never point you in the direction of where you might find out how to make a tetris game. From a complete noobs point of view, we're completely clueless at what we're looking at on screen, just staring at the code, trying to figure out what to do. Anyway, if anyone could help, that would be fan-tastic and much appreciated. Thanks! ...Show All

• Mbauser Official Update

  Now go register!!   Actual contest details to come the week of Feb 5th weird...only 47 states are listed (if I counted right) I'm not speaking for Microsoft, but if you want to enter you can always enter a US State and Zip code and phone number for now until they get that addressed. I'm assuming that you can edit your information later once that's been corrected. Again, I don't speak for Microsoft on that, that's just what I would do in your shoes. Plese, Someone at Microsoft.... the drembuildplay site, even though the competition should be global, does not allow non-US people to register. I don't live in the U.S., so I can't choose any state, the zipcodes ...Show All

• Aaron Oneal mp3 player

  I'm planing to make an mp3 player for the windows version of xna using lame or wmp(or if someone noes better ). just before i start what do you think the best method would be Do you think they will even work You can do it via .dll's or for Windows within your own written project. http://lame.sourceforge.net/license.txt Unfortunately, XNA itself doesnt support any way of playing files other than those prebuilt using xact. You cant directly modify buffers or anything like that so using XNA for sound is probably completely out. You could use some 3rd party sound util (or DirectSound), but your not touching XNA with it. Also youd lose the ability to easily port to the 360 ...Show All

• Fritzenhammer Question: 2D development for both widescreen and standard on 360

  If you want a 2D game to run on 360 for both widescreen and standard TV sets, would the easiest solution be to 'center' your game to fit a standard TV and have verticle bars on either side for people using widescreen What resolution should you develop your game in so it doesn't end up being stretched when running on a 360 Thank You. What if I made a game using a resolution of 1024x720 and compiled it for the 360. On a widescreen TV, would the 360 automatically put vertical bars on either side, or would it stretch the output to fit the screen Thank You. I appreciate your patience. Xbox has a some really nice video scaling hardware, so you can render at any resolution at all and get good results. It has modes for both let ...Show All

• Araki66 Where'd fedit go?

  I've been tasked to mess around with Force Feedback, and fedit is gone in the latest DirectX SDK release. Bring it back, please. You should email this request to directX@microsoft.com for proper consideration. ...Show All

• Simpson474 how to run a directX program in a computer without SDK?

  I built a directX program in Release mode using VS2005 and directX June 2005 SDK.The program is runable on computers with directX SDK environment. but it can't work on computers without directX SDK and it shows "not find d3dx9d_26.dll"(directX9 runtime installed).I guess it still use sth in debug mode. How can i create programs which can run without SDK Please help me... Thanks Well, either you don't have the most up to date runtime ( the one that matches your SDK ), or you have done a debug build. OK.let me try the August 2006 SDK. Install the end user runtimes Do *NOT* ship the DLLS with your game, that is not allowed per the EULA and will onl ...Show All

• CraigC Vibrate the controller for 1 second?

  Hi, I've just starting playing around with XNA for xbox 360 and have a noob question I want to vibrate controller 1 for a single second. I know to set vibration on I can use the code: GamePad .SetVibration( PlayerIndex .One, 1.0f, 1.0f); and to turn it off: GamePad .SetVibration( PlayerIndex .One, 0f, 0f); But how do you set the length of time for it to vibrate I have experience in programming with C++ but have not yet had the chance to fully immerse myself into C#. Thanks Doing it that way measure actual time though, not game elapsed time which you might want to do. Using the gameTime parameter in the Update method allows you to measure actual elapsed game time. ...Show All

• tulip-pcsc Getting started with DirectX and Visual C++ 2005

    Hi,   My setup environment is Windows 2000 SP4 and I'm using Visual Studio 2005.  I'm looking to set environment for using DirectX with Visual C++ 2005.   This morning, I tried but without success to install DirectX SDK using file downloaded from following link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx FamilyId=C72D9F1E-53F3-4747-8490-6801D8E8B4EF&displaylang=en#Requirements   Even if I verified that, under system requirements, Windows 2000 was listed, after downloading, I received the following error while trying to run resulting "dxsdk_aug2006" file:                     &nb ...Show All

• YanickL Converting Midi to wav

  I am working on a small project but would like to add some music to the background, for this I have a midi file to be used. My question is what tools do others use to convert midi to a format used in xact. Just record the audio output of your MIDI synth using your favorite audio editor and save the resulting .wav file. -Brian ...Show All

• Mindcrime XACT - System.TypeInitializationException on start-up

  Anyone else seen this problem starting up XACT It worked in the past but I haven't used it for a few weeks. In the interim, I've installed the Vista SDK, .NET Framework 3.0, WF and WCF extensions for Visual Studio etc. I've uninstalled all these components and reinstalled GSE and Visual Studio Express but still get the same exception on start-up. In the debugger, I see Additional Information: System.Net.Dns threw an exception. I built a quick program to check I could use this class and it worked OK. I'm going to post a duplicate of this question on the XACT forum. Help ! Cheers. Micael Thanks for the response. Yes, I always run as admin. Are you running it as Administrator Afair it's necessary. ...Show All

• MunishGupta Image File Extension .dds

  My problem surface, when I need to add image file, say texture1.dds to my game project. WindowsGame1 Add Existing Item... then from the dialog I select Files of type Image Files (*.gif,*.jpg,*.jpe,*.png,*.bmp,*.dib,*.tif,*.wmf,*.raw) So my problem is missing image file type *.dds . DX Tool creates it and is supported by XNA Texture2D.FromFile(). Is there published solution avaible or should I change with hexeditor for example *.jpe (never seen jpeg files with this extension) to *.dds If I hard code extension, then where lives dialog recource Any comments will do Peca Of course File Name only contains the file name. Check the Full Path property (see link). And the Add New Item does con ...Show All

• Enolan Making 3d Models?

  Can you make 3d models like characters and stuff in XNA or not...Im new to this whole thing but want to pick up on it so bad. No. You need a 3d modeling tool for that. This product contains libraries used for writing the game code not creating content. Wings3D can export to FBX format which will be one of the target model formats for XNA ;-) Does the level design portion use QuArK, aka Quake Army Knife check out blender. www.blender.org Does it reflect the environment lighting the same way QuArK does Wings3d is my favorite, although I don't think it exports into file formats that can dire ...Show All

• raq XACT enumerations

  Several feature request for the XACT API: - Add enumerated values for the possible variable names of the cue instance (GetVariable, SetVariable).  Right now you have to pass a string and a float in.  I think it would be nice if we could pass a well known enumerated value in and a float in. - Add the ability to get all of the cues in a sound bank (enumerate or array) - I haven't been able to find a way to change the pitch, volume, etc. of a cue.  Is this possible   If not can this functionality be exposed (Edit: I saw this is available in the XACT editor, but I'm hoping for a programatic way of doing this) Thanks! -Jeff Add your suggestion to microsoft connect There i ...Show All

• TimothyForde001 Clarification on device creation, resetting, and deletion...

  I come from C/C++ and DirectX 9 where the defacto standard (at least with their early examples) was an InitDeviceObjects()/DeleteDeviceObjects() pair of functions and an InvalidateDeviceObjects()/RestoreDeviceObjects() pair of functions. It all seemed pretty clear cut as to when any of those functions ever got called. The Init/Delete functions where called for device creation and deletion. The Invalidate/Restore functions were/are typically called for device reset etc. Within those functions -- if you had static device assets (i.e. MANAGED memory pool) -- you could create and delete them inside of the Init/Delete functions. For device assets that needed to be recreated due to the fact that they don't persist across a device reset (i.e. DEF ...Show All