Answer Questions

• IXOYE333 Tool for auto HLSL Generation?

  Are there any tools out there to enable the graphical building of a shader network, such as in Autodesk Maya's Hypershade tool or Softimage XSI's RenderTree tool, which can enable you to use a GUI to set up an object's basic material properties and then automatically generate the appropriate HLSL shader fragments needed to reproduce the material effect in your game without having to manually write HLSL files Certainly, if you want to create complex shader effects, you would need to be able to edit the HLSL or manually create new custom HLSL files, but for creating HLSL files to render basic, standard material properties, there really should be a graphical tool to take some of the work and difficulty out of it. Such a tool should allo ...Show All

• sticky Begginers and XNA

  How hard is it for a begginger with no experience in programing and low math skills to make a working game on XNA Is it even possible How much does it take to learn C#, and how intuitive is it My first choice of program to use would be the Torque Engine, because it was implemented well in Marble Blast Ultra on Xbox Live Arcade. I would really like to be able to create games, even if simple, I also want to get in the video game industry, though not currently in programming, but I mainly want to do it as a hobby. Thanks for any help you guys can give me. I have put together a small post for XNA Beginners . Nigh Impossible. XNA is designed specifically as a .NET extension of DirectX. XNA is, and likely always will be, specif ...Show All

• Thaddeus 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. SamuraiDan wrote: As per the FAQ you will need to wait for XNA Game STudio Professional or become a licensed xbox developer. The XBox developer program is not trivial to get into and cost prohibitive for most small independant developers. You best chance is to wait for XNA Game STudio Professional. AndyL, I don't get it. This message seems telling me if I am independent developer I just need to buy XNA Game Studio ...Show All

• doug.taylor DirectX and Remote Desktop

  Hi All, why a DirectX application fails in Remote Desktop Mode Hi, another possibility for DirectX failing in remote desktop is when you don't handle the loss of device. Check if you're handling this right. Tip: if this is the case then the error should also happen in your computer when, for example, the screen saver becomes active. Because DirectX wasn't designed to work in a Remote Desktop scenario. I suspect that remote desktop, like virtual PC, does not emulate a powerful enough graphics card to run your application. However, I though that a windowed DirectX app should run just very very slowly as it will have to transfer the entire windows content as bitmap every time. FullScreen I doubt you will see anythi ...Show All

• mombolpf Rendering a screen aligned quad - how?

  This is probably going to seem like a very noob question, but I've been struggling with this for a little while now and haven't found anything through search that directly helps me. I'm trying to render a screen aligned textured quad. The size of the quad is 352x240, the size of the window is the same, and the size of the texture is the same (the texture is a video frame). My problem is I don't know how I should set the vertex positions and the perspective projection matrix and view matrix to achieve the alignment. I basically want to render the texture to the screen, so that each texel maps to the corresponding pixel. Can anyone help It'd be much appreciated! Thanks. There are two other ways of going ab ...Show All

• -SuMit- Asset processor in Visual Studio 2005

  Hi, can i do my asset builder or asset processor content, with Visual Studio 2005 (in c#, of curse) instead Visual Express C# What you'll probably want to do is manually create an msbuild .proj file to handle the content builds. That way you can work with any version of VS for the code, and still get the content build functionality. Shawn Hargreaves explains how to do so here: http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnhar/archive/2006/11/07/build-it-ahead-of-time.aspx Proper support for using another version of VS doesn't exist yet ... will probably be available sometime next year when they release XNA Game Studio. That's not a problem. Your pipeline processor assembly is just a regular .NET assembly that happens to reference Microsoft.X ...Show All

• oscarg102941 Dream Build Play today?

  Well it's just gone 9am UK time and as it's the last day of January I assume that the Dream Build Play website will go live today They said January. They never said anything about 2007. :) hey, hey ... i'm holding my breath too. i've got a game lib already put together, but i want to see the contest info before i figure out how much time to sink into an actual game using the lib. Cheers, casey At least they already said there will be enough time for anyone. Who's excited This guy is yeah im interested to see all the details and stuffs. The longer that web ...Show All

• AndyPham Texturing problem

  Hello, I'm writing my own content importer for my maps. At the moment, I'm able to load all triangles and draw the map but i have a problem with textures. In my importer i load texture like this (it's just a test) : BasicMaterialContent material = new BasicMaterialContent(); String texturePath = Path.GetDirectoryName(filename) + "\\Textures\\wall.jpg"; if (!System.IO.File.Exists(texturePath)) throw new Exception("Texture not found !"); material.Texture = new ExternalReference<TextureContent>(texturePath); Then I apply my texture to a mesh : builder.SetMaterial(material); When I deploy it on xbox360 or run it on my pc, my mesh have a color similar to my texture but it's just a color! I ca ...Show All

• ClydeFrog Is there anyway to get the XNA framework without having to mess with XNA Studio Express?

  I just want to the framework, and I keep seeing links that say that the XNA framework and XNA Studio Express are available for download, but when I follow the links they go to an area to download the Game Studio Express. I use Visual Studio Professional, and I have no desire to mess with Visual C# express (which apparently is required for GSE). Is there any way to just get the XNA framework so it can be used in Visual Studio Not at this time, no. If this is an important scenario for you, please submit it via Connect. Thanks! Visual C#Express does not seem to get in the way of Visual Studios 2005 the only problem I have had was one file I double clicked opened in Express when I wanted it to open in VS2005 ...Show All

• KitGreen Fast creation of random numbers?

  Hi! Is there already an easy way to get random numbers like in the old sample framework of DX or should i use the dxmutmisc.cs for that best regards The .Net framework contains a Random class for this. I was looking for a random number generator with a better resolution so i could take the random number generator as a member of my game object. but i have found a nice workaround for my problem: i added a class with a static Random-object which i use from all my objects to get fresh randomness :) best regards Have you looked at the default constructor in IL public Random () : this ( Environment . TickCount ) { } But anyway, since Random uses virtual ...Show All

• tipCSharpy UV Coordinates of a mouse click

  Is there any way to find out the UV coordinates of a ray's intersection with a model (i.e., to read the position of a mouse click on the "screen" of a model of a TV in a scene ) Hopefully a method to do all of this for you will be included in the next release of the XNA Framework, since you could do it very easily in Managed DirectX (MDX) 2.0 using the Mesh.Intersect method, considering that XNA is supposed to replace MDX and make things easier. :) Mesh processing is moved into the content pipeline in XNA. The Model class does not actually give you access to the mesh data at all, in the default implementation, so there could not be a Model.IntersectRay() function. G ...Show All

• chakravarthy_b Where is the download?

  It is 12:48 pm here (GMT + 1)... in Nuku'alofa (GMT + 13) it is tomorrow... So where the hell is my download link :-D Hmmm... the holy grail is here on my desk. Btw... it's "tomorrow" now... Then move there and check the Internet. :'( Its like 1am in the states so i guess we are waiting for them :(. This is like xmas and Bill Gates is our dad, wake up Billy so I can open my XNA! EvilOneSD wrote: Hmmm... the holy grail is here on my desk. Btw... it's "tomorrow" now... What, you have one too :p It's been "tomorrow" here all day... heck, it's almost the day after here! Probably the same place you ...Show All

• moorelg simple projectile motion physics??

  im pretty new to gamedev, so simulating physics is new to me too. i know the projectile motion formulas, im just having trouble applying them. is there any "tutorial" on projectile motion physics for XNA basically, someone suggested to do "scorched earth". im trying to get the hang of just some simple projectile before i apply it to a game. i know i should basically have to just enter the initial velocity vector and the angle. then have it passed to a function that gets the initial x velocity, and initial y velocity. also, im assuming that whatever i get for y-velocity should be negative as "up" is negative in the XNA graphics. then, after each update, it should find the current change in position for x and ...Show All

• MNJ&amp;#40;m-studio&amp;#41; Render transparency with shaders

  Hi All! I'm in the beginning of shaders programming. I've two shaders that renders two meshes with some nice textures effects This is my great render queue: setEffect1 drawindexedprimitive setEffect2 drawindexedprimitive Cool. Now, i want the second drawindexedprimitive to draw the mesh at the half of opacity, over the first mesh rendered with Effect1. Have i to modify Effect2 so that it supports some kind of alpha blending transparency Or is there some magic setrenderstate bunch of commands that do the trick Thanks in advance well, in the past, I've used the following code to render a mesh that had transparent regions in the textures: graphics.GraphicsDevice.RenderState.SourceBlend = Blend.SourceAl ...Show All

• Trashey Is it possible to group all .xbn files in a single data file?

  Is it possible to group all .xnb files in a single data file When Jim says "write your own content manager", thats not as difficult as it sounds. To create a content manager that reads files from a different source only requires you to override ContentManager.OpenStream(). The slightly harder part would be to create a packed file and some code that could seek in the pack file stream to the correct position for whatever asset is requested. If you used a library to do that such as one of the zip file libraries then this would be really easy. On Windows you could very easily expand that to handle remote file downloads so that new content could be automatically downloaded. Or make a ContentManager ...Show All