Answer Questions

• Reaction HOWTO: Get ContentManager from within a GameComponent?

  Happy new year to all! I have a (silly) question here: I constantly finding myself passing ContentManager reference to a GameComponent while I initialize it. Is there a way not to pass this reference and retrieve ContentManager reference from other means (e.g. through game services, etc.) Or do I just create a new ContentManager for each GameComponents that I have Won't that occupies more memories (and also slower) Thanks, Ben.   Ah, my post arrived after more answers came in. Thanks Bill/Jon, both methods work well for me. Cheers! _Ben That changes things a bit. You could have a local ContentManager object definition in your GameComponent and set it to the ContentManager created in Game1 right af ...Show All

• Ranier VertexBuffer.SetData cost

  Which is faster -Add vertices a few at a time to an array, then call VertexBuffer.SetData for all of them at once -Call VertexBuffer.SetData on a few vertices several times The array can be statically allocated, but the data is only relevant for one frame, so there's no benefit to keeping it around. Thanks, Max If you are going to keep the data around for a long time and draw it many times, it may be faster to keep it in a vertex buffer, but not if you're only going to draw it once or twice. The fundamental issue with all this kind of thing is about data copying. The CPU and GPU run in parallel, with the GPU usually straggling a bit behind the CPU, so any data that the GPU is going to need mus ...Show All

• renyx Could C# be the future of gaming?

  Since XNA is using C#, and is is a more intuitive language than C++, is it possible that in the future that C# will dominate, espessially in AAA titles. Could XNA be ushering a new way of programming in the main stream Hi Jeff, As some one who is a partner in a company (and lead developer) that produces enterprise high performance security applications, many of them in C#, I think you will be very surprised what you can do with C#. I develop in C++, C++/CLI (.net C++) and C#. C# is my favorite by far. While it certainly takes a lot of care and research to get the "barn burning" speed you can truly get out of C#. Once you know what to avoid and how to write performance critical apps in C#, you will only go back when yo ...Show All

• redhot2006 Shooting help

  Can anyone post a website, code, or a project they have on making something shoot. I have tried, and it doesn't draw the bullet right, and some other ppl's code meses up Wow, that's a brilliant little example file, cleared up almost all the questions I had on the subject! Thanks! " well it has the code to loade the graphics in the bulletManager class. I tried to call it from the Game1.cs, but it was protected. I called the draw() and update() methods in the Game1.cs, but still nothing happened" I had a similar problem when I attempted to implement the code into my own game, my solution was to just move the contents from the BulletManager.LoadGraphicsContent method over to the main LoadGraph ...Show All

• Murre Draw a Bounding Box

  I have calculated the bounding boxes of all the objects of my scene and now I want to see them, I have all the vertexs of the cubes (bounding box) of all the objects in arrays like this: D3DXVertex3 ObjectBound and I want to draw this boxes to see when they collide. How can I draw this boxes Here my code: const unsigned short index[] = {0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 0, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 4, 3, 7, 2, 6, 0, 4, 1, 5}; m_pd3dDevice->SetFVF(D3DFVF_XYZ); m_pd3dDevice->DrawIndexedPrimitiveUP(D3DPT_LINELIST, 0, 24, 12, (void *)index, D3DFMT_INDEX16, ObjectBound, sizeof(D3DXVECTOR3)); where ObjectBound is declared as follow: D3DXVECTOR3 ObjectBound[ 8 ]; Cheers, AGPX ...Show All

• Vidhan Absolute and relative mouse movement

  Usually when dealing with mouse input you want the data from the mouse in two forms, one is absolute that you might use to draw a cursor or know which part of the window/screen a user has clicked on, and the other is relative where you are only interested in how much the mouse has moved. Currently, the MouseState only seems to report the mouse movement in the absolute form. This means anyone using the mouse to control, for example, a first person camera would find their movement limited by the size of their window/screen. I have tried playing around with the Mouse.IsCaptured property but it doesn't seem to make much difference, quite possibly because I don't know how to use it. Am I correct in thinking that getting relative mouse input dat ...Show All

• Dlloyd Runtime footprint on 360

  How much RAM is left to play with on the 360 once the launcher and runtime has loaded That would only let me know the available managed heap space - I'm assuming there is an unmanaged heap knocking around as well. An official breakdown of memory allocation would be useful as well - for instance, do the managed and unmanaged heaps fight for space, or do they have their space already allocated. And what goes into each heap when stuff is created - for instance with vertex/index buffers, textures, sounds.  One way you could find out for yourself: public static void MeansureMemory() { object[] stuff = new object[512]; int count = 0; try { while ...Show All

• jxl98c training in the UK

  It has been noted that several universities in the U.S. are to promote courses for XNA game studio. Are there any plans for training or seminars in the UK. I know Microsoft are pretty good at providing free seminars on their products ( I had a free day using M.O.M.) and it would be good to see various events in the UK. Any comments What are you looking to learn C#, 3d modelling and structured game programming Couldn't be much further away from me, I'm on the south coast and work full time so I would need a prt time course or the odd day here and there. For anyone that is interested in developing 3d mo ...Show All

• Kapil Aggarwal Any new info on MDX for 64-bit?

  I am in desperate need of MDX 9 for 64-bit development. Any word on the progress Someone mentioned that they were looking into it a while back. I asked at the MVP summit about 64 bit... since MDX 1.1 is not changing you won't see anything there. For XNA and any 'other' MDx type things - "nothing is yet announced but tis always considered as a potential feature - put your request in connect.microsoft.com for XNA" (take that as you will - it means nothing of course!) There is no work being done on MDX for DX9. MDX has been reborn as XNA. Some people have reported getting XNA to work with 64-bit Vista, so you check it out. MDX 1.1 should run on ...Show All

• Kolja the error

  I would like my game to come up to the opening scene, and when i press the spacebar it goes away and my game starts. I have tried something like this in my program: void _startGame; { using (Blank game = new Blank()) { game.Run(); } } But when i press spacebar it gives me an error. Thanks, for the help! InvalidOperationException, Starting a second loop on a single thread is not a valid operation. I did exactly what you are requesting by doing something very similar to what The ZMan stated. I actually maintain a current step, and name my steps something like CURRENT_STEP_SPLASH, CURRENT_STEP_LEVEL1_PLAY, CURRENT_STEP_LEVEL2_SPLASH, e ...Show All

• ReLoad Falling Blocks Demo Game

  I've just uploaded the source to a demo I created over the weekend of a falling blocks game. Feel free to download it and mess around with the source, it might be a good starting point for someone looking to write something similar. Blocks Demo Game Thanks, let me know what you think! -matt Nice job. I only had a chance to quickly play. Maybe I missed it, but is there a way to switch vertically No, in this demo you can only switch horizontally. Thanks for the great demo! ...Show All

• Ned Rise New XNA Game: Warriors of the Shining Star.

  I just wanted to see what people thought of the game I’m working on with XNA. I’ve been posting updates to my blog if you are interested. Right now I only have movies on the site; hopefully I’ll get a demo up in the next couple of weeks. http://www.stressedgamer.blogspot.com/ -tom That's looking really good. Are you planning to share any of the source for this Your 3D Tile editor looks particularly interesting. Yeah spelling not my strong point. The text also has the issue that not all the characters I use are in my font yet, it defaults to the letter a. I forgot to add finishing the font to my asset list. The enemies look like the main charac ...Show All

• Dr.Gigabit Game Components and Design-time support

  Hi, I build a several game components with lots of design-time support, including custom property editors, custom context menus, etc. This is a good aproach This design-time code will run with XBox 360 project Thanks any help, Jose. Mitch did not say 'which version' or 'when' at code camp. Just 'in the future we want to put this sort of thing back in' I don't know what the compiler will do. I beleive MS have said there will be a #define to tell if you are in Windows or Xbox projects. WHEN (wich version) this come back Woa, that sort of throws a wrench in my project. I wonder if the compiler will actually complain, or if the missing support is merely for the XBox compact framework. I can always wrap my ...Show All

• SBorch How long before we see non-game apps for the 360?

  How long do you think it'll be before we see web browsers and RSS readers being written for the 360 Or will the lack of network support kill all of that I'm just as excited about the possibility of writing/sharing/running tool and helper apps on the 360 as I am about games. Derek Woo wrote: As soon as XBox Live support becomes available. I can just imagine a way better download manager. Rather than just 6 downloads to queue up, an unlimited amount to queue. Possibly even multi-part, that is if Microsoft allows it. Some other cool tools/utilities that would be nice Internet Radio client (I know there are ways to get it playing on the 360, but integrated support is always better.) iTunes in ...Show All

• scyle Simple Input (Download)

  We just added a new sample that includes a component for managing input. The component handles all of the work dealing with the keyboard. Future samples will include support for the mouse and controller. Buts its 3:30am J http://www.xnaspot.com/samples/simpleinput.zip Please let us know what you think. Submit@XNASpot.com We just updated the input sample to handle all of the mouse operations. We have also included relative movement. http://www.xnaspot.com/Sample_SimpleInput.aspx Let us know what you think Submit@XNASpot.com We finished off this sample adding support for all of the game pad functions. http://www.xnasp ...Show All