Answer Questions

• Michael Tsai Save projects under new filenames?

  XNA Game Studio doesn't have a command to save projects under new filenames or make copies of projects. For example, create a new project while going through a tutorial from a web site. Is it possible to save projects under new filenames or make copies of projects The project's namespace has nothing to do with where its physical location. You don't necessarily need to do that within XNA Game Studio. You can just navigate out to the project on your computer and copy the entire project and paste it into a new folder. Now you can work away on your copy and rename it how you want from within the IDE. There isn't any method that I'm currently aware of saving solutions/projects and all their associated f ...Show All

• IlCapo Function found in samples but not docs

  I have found this function in the samples but not in the docs. Does it not draw color on the mesh Where can I find out more about it DXUT_BeginPerfEvent( DXUT_PERFEVENTCOLOR, L "Draw Code" ); No, it sets a performance event marker only. It doesn't draw anything... Look up D3DPERF_BeginEvent() , D3DPERF_EndEvent() and D3DPERF_SetMarker() in the regular Direct3D documentation. The DXUT code you refer to should just be a wrapper to the aforementioned core API calls. But, as Wessam pointed out, they are for nothing more than monitoring and profiling your D3D applications - an extremely powerful and valuable feature but they don't change the rendering process in the slightest. ...Show All

• Andrew Zhou Starting work on my GUI system

  Well, I've hit a wall with my game's development, and since there was no GUI with XNA 1.0, I've decided to go ahead and make my own GUI system. I implemented a lot of mechanics for my game, but I need greater interaction to proceed development in a sane manner. So far I've just implemented the text drawing stuff from scratch. It uses only monospace fonts generated with BMFontGenerator without using the generated .xml file. It's decidedly minimal to use only monospace fonts, but keep in mind two things - 1) my particular game doesn't require anything more robust than monospace fonts and 2) a game's engine should be designed around the game's specifc requirements. Otherwise you're scope creepin. I remind myself constantly not to let cool ...Show All

• Blueforce Scrolling a 2D Background

  New tutorial on scrolling a 2D background on my site XNADevelopment. This is the quick and dirty approach. It covers creating the project, adding images to the project and scrolling those images horizontally in a continuous loop. I've posted the tutorial and the source code if you're interested. So far, I'm SUPER impressed with XNA development and just how easy it has been. The support from the XNA developers in the forums here has just been outstanding. These guys are really going over and above helping out all of us XNA newbies as we struggle to fly and learn the ropes. I'm also just amazed at the variety and number of tutorials being put up each day by sites in the community. If you haven't been to these sites yet, I highly recommend th ...Show All

• PetrVal GamePadXNA XInput Sample Program

  Greetings! I've just posted my first XNA Game Studio Express program GamePadXNA on my web site: http://www.gnometech.com/products.shtml Click on the Microsoft XNA Game Studio Link and you'll be able to download the ZIP archive. Full source code is included. This program will display all states for up to four XInput controllers. These include all digital buttons, the DPad and thumbstick and trigger analog values. It will also indicate when a controller has been removed and reconnected. I've tested it with two controllers at once and it appears to work as expected. Thanks to Gary Kacmarcik for providing his bitmap font code. It saved oodles of time. If you run across any issues please let me know. Thanks! -Dave www.gnometec ...Show All

• xavito Update frames for 2D animations

  Hi all, In my previous program (C# + MDX), I use the Timer in System.Windows to update the frames by using suitable time interval. Now I would like to change to use XNA. But I don't know whether the Timer class will be supported in XBox360. Therefore, I would like to ask whether there are better ways to show 2D animations. I have read the 2D animation in "HELP". But I would like to know whether there are any other approach. All the animations update the frames in the 'Update" function and therefore all the 2D animations update the frames in the same time. If the fps varies, the timing for refreshing the frames also varies. That's not what I want. Thank you very much By default the game l ...Show All

• BrentB I need to create a mesh from scratch

  Hi Xnacers: I need to create a mesh the from scratch, not load a predefined mesh from an x file using the content manager. I have looked into the ModelMesh and I see that it has Vertex and Index buffers but there is no constructor defined. Is there a way to create a mesh without loading it from a file The code (MDX 2.0) I need to port to Xna is the following. I want to know if this is posible. The steps I used to create a in MDX 2.0 mesh where: //1)we create the mesh mesh = new Mesh (this.device , solidPrimitiveIndexList.Count , solidVertexList.Count , MeshFlags.IndexBufferManaged , PositionNormalTextured.Format); //2) set the vertex buffers using (Graphi ...Show All

• laiseng Elapsed Timer Inconsistant?

  In working on my game I developed a throttler that runs off of elapsed time to handle problems I was having using keyboard input. Basically update and draw were appearing to detect the keyboard keys multiple times for each keypress (I am using the Input code from the spacewars demo). The problem is about every 4-5 seconds or so the elapsed time apears about double the float value it does every other time. Tracing out the data it seems most changes to the elapsed time run around 0.0125 seconds, with the occasional 0.025 second spikes. I know we are talking fractions of a second here, but the reusult is every once and a while I still get multiple key presses detected, and upping the threshold doesn't help until I move up to 0.5 second ...Show All

• BushGates Original textures along side XNB files in bin folder?

  For example, when you build your project, it looks like the textures are converted to XNB format but the original textures are also copied into the bin folder with them. Is that what is supposed to happen If XNA converts the content to it's own proprietary format, why would you ever want to copy the original content to the output directory Only if you've changed "Do not copy" to "Always copy" or "Copy if newer" in the "Copy to Output Directory" drop down for the textures' properties. No problem, it comes up defaulted to "Do not copy" I understand now that the files are left over from Beta 1 as suggested. Thanks for the help. By defa ...Show All

• mahima Minimizing and Maximizing

  I have my application set to use the full screen. If I hit alt tab, go into another app, then alt+tab back into my game, it's solid gray, and then locks up. I wrote some simple code to check the keyboard state, and close the app if I hit escape, but that doesn't even work. I just assumed that this would all be handled for me, out of the box... Do I have to write anything myself to fix this It works fine for me with no special coding. Are you properly handling the LoadGraphicsContent calls e.g. recreating SpriteBatch and reloading textures when loadAllContent is true, etc.   Ok...wait a minute. I just want to get something straight in my head, regarding what yo ...Show All

• eagle123msu How to get a lit sphere colored sphere/cube in XNA

  I've been trying to do this for the past few days asking many questions to get to this seemingly simple goal, but i just run into problems at every step. In MDX I just created a mesh object, then: myMesh = mesh.Box(...) or myMesh = mesh.Sphere(...) In XNA I've had to go through making custom vertex formats, manually drawing all the sides of the box, and now even worse it seems I have to manually input the vertex normals and am STILL unsuccesful...i have no idea if i'm expected to do this for a sphere. This seems too massive a step back for something that is supposed to be superior to MDX, so I clearly have to be missing out on a key point... I realised MDX is being discontinued and i decided to move on to XNA, but I'm considering just goin ...Show All

• VenkatRaghavan C# modulus operator % sucks?

  So in C# when I do -1%something I get -1, which means I can't really use it as an array index without a bunch of stupid error checking.  Is there some way to force the modulo operator to actually give me numbers from my field (e.g 0-5 for modulo 6) Edit: Well, I made this post at 2:00 am and it shows, here is what I have issue with: i = (i+1) % 6 will result in numbers from 0 to 5, which I could use for an array index i = (i-1) % 6 will result in numbers from 0 to -5, which can't be used in an array index Obviously, the absolute value of those results would not conform to any logical value, either (for instance, array[-1] and array[1] would be the same value, even though they should be 2 values apart if I decremented twice ...Show All

• JRQ Do you have to...

  In the faq it said to debug and or play you have to subscribe and pay a fee, Do you have to pay to play a program you completed using XNA but not intending to release it, or is paying the only way to make a completed project and being able to test it and fix it. You have to have a Creator's Club license to debug and play an XNA GSE game on the 360. You won't be able to get a game onto it otherwise. ...Show All

• cronholio ODE.NET2

  Hello, - I've updated ODE.NET2 to work with XNA math. - Bumped it up to the 0.7 version of ODE (ode.org). However, not all functionality has been "wrapped" yet. - No samples yet. I only tested a few primitive collisions but it seems fine so far. Can't test mesh's yet. - I'm also working on ODE Components for XNA. :P For those wondering, ODE is a physics engine. http://www.pepperboy.net/ The problem is that ODE itself is ALL unmanaged code. ODE.Net is a wrapper on top of it. UPDATE: Added a sample: http://www.pepperboy.net/Bin/files/odenet2_samples.zip Note 1: I can't make it pretty until mesh support in XNA is added. 2: Press "space" to add some boxes. (yes, the polling sucks) ...Show All

• Diesel31 Potential DX10 Hardware Problems [and blurb]?

  Alleged info [floating around the internet] about nVidia's up-and-coming DX10 hardware suggests it will not be 100% unified architecture compliant. Now sure I understand the minimum DX10 requirements are steep and harsh when compared to 9.0c. But because of the guarantees of DX10 it has very limited CAPS support. So I was wondering how will anyone programmatically query the limits of DX10 hardware when it fails to be 100% DX10 compliant I was hoping to combine pixels shaders with the new geometry shaders to make a full-fledged raytracer (fully powered by the graphics hardware). Havok isn't the only one with interesting ideas :) ... but it may be a stretch if the first DX10 hardware doesn't meet the requirements. I've been waiting sin ...Show All