Answer Questions

• Brian86 ModelMesh in regards to Effects and renderstates

  I just want to put this suggested change up for discussion, since I'm not entirely sure if it even is a potential preformance booster. As it is now Effects used by ModelMesh are cloned from the one loaded from the ContentManager. This is so that they can hold unique effect parameters set in, say, an .x file. In practice that means that even though a ModelMesh has two parts which use the same Effect they will not be the same instance of the Effect. As a consequence you can't make your own draw routine which draws all objects using the same FX file in a batch inside an Effect.Begin / End clause with just changing of EffectParameters and doing CommitChanges. I assume that approach would be much faster than calling them one by one in som ...Show All

• TommieJ Texture diffusing...

  Hi all - my question is how can I get textures when drawn not to diffuse. This happens when the destination rectangle is bigger than the source rectangle - instead I just wnat to "magnify" the image...stretching the texture out horizontlaly, vertically, or both. With everything I try I either get diffusion (i.e. the image fades as it is stretched, making it semi-transparent), or I get pure black. :S Please tell me what I need to do if possible - thanks very much. Alex Sorry for being noobish, but how do I disable mipmapping Or does your (Shawn's ) code already do that Thanks very much - I'll be testing it ASAP. You may also ...Show All

• nik.martin Single letter prefix before a variable

  I was wondering if anyone can point me towards some information on having a single letter prefix before AND after a variable name. Is that a standard practice I have come across this in a number of different programs, yet still a bit unclear why they are used. Any info would be appreciated. Some examples of what I have seen: aFireball.Value.Source mWizard = new Sprite.... rotation_angle += .03M; This is a touchy topic, I suggest you read the .NET Framework Class Design guidelines on MSDN, and then do whatever you feel like. This is one of those religious-debate style topics that has no perfect answer. Here's a link: http://g.msn.com/9SE/1 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/lib ...Show All

• RalfCJ XML TOOL KIT HELP

  hey there was wondering if any one is able to give me a few pointers on XNA. trying to create a toolkit using xna that will allow me to design levels, but also want to export the created level to an xml file and also reloaded it into my main game engine from the the xml file, any pointers cheers, thanks for there help XmlSerializer is included. I like my 3 lines of code to save better.   "[Edit: I see Jim has beet me to the punch yet again. His way is another option as well. Nice job yet again Jim!]" At least I didn't rutabaga you to the punch.   This and this should get you started. As for exporting the created level, create a Level class that's serializable: [ Serializable ()] class ...Show All

• Ted. GameTime

  Is there a reason that gameTime.ElapsedRealTime.TotalSeconds and gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds is never greater than 0.5 This appears to be the case no matter how long I wait between updates during debug. This is because in the internal workings of the XNA Framework, there's a private internal variable for the maximum elapsed time that can happen between updates. If the ElapsedGameTime or the ElapsedRealTime is greater than 500 milliseconds, then those variables are just set to 500 milliseconds. This is pretty common so that when you are debugging code in your game, when you resume your time based movement hasn't moved the character beyond the realms of your screen. Hope that clears up the mys ...Show All

• Philippe Cand Cross-platform development question

  Hi guys! I intend to make an application and deploy it on PC and XBOX. I want to know how do you want me to do it I see some ways: I can copy my code in other directory and change references to Compact Framework. As a result I'll have two copies of my code. It's the worst alternative, isn't it I can use only Compact Framework even on PC (if it's possible); Something else What is the best way to do it Develop the code base that will exist in both projects in a 360 project, create the Windows Game project and link that code in then add whatever PC specific code you need (networking, WinForms, etc). Everything that the other posters have said is correct. In my game library, I had the ...Show All

• Dhondtie Custom communication with the 360

  I intend to use IronPython to speed up my game development a bit. This would give me some more control at run-time to create and manipulate objects for the sake of debugging. If possible, I would also like to support this on the Xbox 360. I don't have a spare USB keyboard lying around and I'm not even sure if IronPython will run on the 360. Preferably, I would like to show some sort of separate Python console form on the Windows side, but I am not sure if there is any way to implement this without networking. Console.WriteLine seems to do nothing, so I don't even think I can use Visual Studio's output window. Will there be anyway for me to do this, or will I just need to implement a slide down console like all the Quake engine games ...Show All

• JoelBennett Best way to learn

  What is going to be the best way to learn XNA I have to say I am not used to "new" technologies. My experience comes from looking up tutorials and then following them and expanding off of them. However, with XNA this is brand new and I hope to be create the tools. Here in lies(sp ) problem I have no idea how to learn something without an abundance of tutorials. XNA has gotten me real excited and I can't wait to get my hands on it and maybe become one of the first people to really adobt and get into the XNA community. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Buddy Lindsey Since there won't be a lot of tutorials out there this soon -- the best way to learn will probabily be via the demos like Space Wars that are go ...Show All

• Nikola Atanasov PNG Alpha Channel

  I've imported a semi-transparent PNG to use for a sprite but the alpha channel isn't taken into account. It just renders as a fully opaque texture. How can I enable alpha channel support If you're saving from Photoshop or Flash I can probably tell you how it needs to be setup. nobodyman wrote: Are you seeing this behaviour with all types of images, or just the PNG files I haven't tried any other types of images. I'll give it a try and see if I get the same problem. nobodyman wrote: Also, what image editing tool do you use Perhaps it's using a flavor of the PNG spec that xna doesn't grok. I created the image in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Is that suppo ...Show All

• Pablo Jord Using XNA Game Studio Express to develop solitaire game

  I am an experienced developer but a newcomer when it comes to developing games. I recently downloaded XNA Game Studio Express and have been studying the space war game. I am developing a solitaire-type card game where the player can drag and drop cards from one pile to another. I have much of the domain logic written, and now I am tackling the user interface. Most of the XNA tutorials I have seen use arcade-type games for their examples, and I have not seen any that use a solitaire-type card game. This brings up several questions: 1) Is the XNA framework suitable for developing a solitaire-type card game 2) Does any know of any XNA tutorials that use a solitaire-type card game (preferably with draggin ...Show All

• akshah XNA with other languages

  Hello, my name is Brian i am an Indie developer looking into the XNA. My question is, will XNA ever be able to be used with VB.net and will microsoft allow it as a language to be used whilst creating Xbox 360 and Windows games than you. This is the site I ended up using the most. Anytime that site didn't have what I was looking for, typically I could find it pretty quick just Googling for it. Hope that helps and like I said. Once you know a .NET language like VB, it's not too hard picking up another one like C#, I'm sure you'll be up and running working on an XNA game in C# in no time at all...although when you start adding curly braces to your VB code you might feel a little silly... If ...Show All

• Bigmo How to get Angle from Thumbstick?

  Is there a way to get the angle from the thumbsticks of a XBOX360 controller If up return 0, right 90, down 180, left 270. this is how I crudely did it: if (currentGamePadState.ThumbSticks.Right.X != 0 || currentGamePadState.ThumbSticks.Right.Y != 0) { if (projectileTime == 0) { Vector2 vel = new Vector2(400, 0); float rad = 0; if (currentGamePadState.ThumbSticks.Right.Y == 0) { if (currentGamePadState.ThumbSticks.Right.X > 0) { vel = new Vector2(400, 0); } else { vel = new Vector2(-400, 0); } } else if (currentGamePadState.ThumbSticks.Right.X == 0) ...Show All

• flypp3r DreamBuildPlay is up!!!

  Now go register!!   Actual contest details to come the week of Feb 5th Hmm... State location and phone number seem to be USA specific. An oversight, or is the rest of the world excluded I guess NEW JERSEY isn't in the United States, I swear to god it isn't in the list of states... :( weird...only 47 states are listed (if I counted right) Yup, sorry. In fact, it will only allow you to enter if your name is XNA Rockstar. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news guys Count me as registered!!! Whoo Hoo! The site is live and yes we realize there are a few things that haven't quite p ...Show All

• Rakam 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. 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 Okay, I've been trying out Bounding Box collision, and I got it to work for one of the bats, but not the other. Here's my situation: | <- bat1 - the ball goes right through this one. no problem with bat2 ->| I have bat1 and bat2 ...Show All

• maryz Setting Global Matrices for Models

  I am in the process of transitioning from my existing OpenGL kit, and I am a little miffed about the way transformation matrices are specified in XNA. In every example I have seen, the world, view, and projection matrices must be assigned to each effect of each mesh of each model, each frame. For a scene with say, 100 models, this could easily result in tens or hundreds of thousands of completely redundant floating point assignments, as these matrices (esp the view and projection matrices) tend not to change during render. Apart from taxing the processor unnecessarily, this adds significant bulk to the code. It also makes impossible the notion of a camera class that is isolated from and independant of the models, since the models must be ...Show All