Answer Questions

• Tim Dallmann Whats the deal with DirectX being owned by XNA?

  How come when I go here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/ I get redirected here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/xna/aa937781.aspx Is XNA making a move on owning DirectX It seems after reading some basic information on microsoft.com regarding recent statements about XNA and its current goals I'm led to believe that perhaps the whole of DirectX is being cut up and fed to XNA. First DirectShow goes. Now I realize even basic support I had in DirectX 9.0c is not even supported in DirectX 10. Basically I'm gonna have to port a graphics app engine from DX9 to DX10 and have to include DX10, at least some DX9 headers/libs, the seperate DirectShow files, and if I want rumble support for my Wireless XBox360 controller for Windows I ne ...Show All

• anydobbo Can we take advantage of 360 hardware using XNA?

  Are there portions of the XNA framework that get benefit from the VMX instructions available on the Xenon processor The quaternion discussion got me researching it, but I can't find any discussions at that low level. The current answer is that the VM will not generate VMX instructions. It may be that some of the system libraries do, but also, many of the system libraries are themselves written in CLR and thus not that efficient. (This is sadness for things like matrix, quaternion and vector) So, right now, I think the general answer is "VMX is not used a lot when using XNA 1.0 on Xbox". Thanks. Maybe in version 2.0. ...Show All

• BrianXXX 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 I agree with a lot of what is said here. A collegue and I dabbled in producing "cottage industry" type games using C# and DirectX 9. The Z-Buffer web site (www.thezbuffer.com) shows the groundswell of movement towards managed languages and game writing. Excuse this ... (Under the "games" link, the game "d-Rez" was our first attempt at a C# DirectX game) . Personally, I think managed environments are the way forward in creating some much needed layers to game industry. I love C#. I don't write games as a day job. Ho ...Show All

• Dudley FragmentLinker

  Hello. I would like to know if there is any planned support for the FragmentLinker in XNA. From what I can tell this currently is not supported (correct me if I'm wrong). I feel these are very useful, especially in a shader-only environment. Thanks. I don't think the fragment linker is really needed. I would go for offline shader permutation and compilation. There is a nice article on ATi devloper about how this is done in Half-Life 2. Shaun, http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx PostID=682921 if you've not already done it. Put as much detail as you can into connect. Paul, It's helpful to us to have the capability to combine shader fragments at run-time so that a model m ...Show All

• IceAngel89 Equivialents to Mesh.Sphere etc in DX9?

  Hi all, im new to 3d programming and XNA, and i am about to make a simple solar system explorer to get the feeling of it. I started out with DirectX9 sdk when i stumbled across XNA which seemed as a more friendly framework than DirectX. In DX, the Mesh class has a number of methods that returns a Box, Sphere, Cylinder and so on. I cannot find these methods or equivalents in the XNA framework. Is there an easy way to render such primitive objects without loading a model or providing vertices /Telle build a sphere in your favourite 3d modelling package and load it in. You can start with this sample for boxes and spheres: http://www.threesixbox.com/project/ id=942a ...Show All

• A.Russell Weird backface glitch

  I'm not sure what's going on here; I wouldn't be surprised if it's just my video card. But has anyone seen this before cellphone_rendering_bugs.jpg That's a series of screenshots I took as the model rotated... the original model in Maya has all its normals facing the right way. I exported it as an FBX200611 model. I'm (unfortunately) using a Compaq Presario with an NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE video card. I thought it might have been a matter of the near/far draw limits being too far apart and the Z buffer lacking the precision to draw this relatively small area properly, but I turned it down to 1.0 -> 100.0 and it still happens. Any thoughts Hahah, success! :) That was it, B1narySh0t! I had to tweak the ...Show All

• itsplayed Lost Textures in Vista ??

  In vista os rc1 i cannot get textures with hardware accelaration enabled, whereas same textures work with emulation. The application works well in xp for both hardware and emulation modes. ...Show All

• A kid So obvious, but can't find it in the FAQ

  OK, just got back from vacation and finally got to start playing with the much anticipated XNA beta. Somebody please tell me the previous posts were wrong and I'm just missing this in the FAQ -- they wouldn't really release a game development kit that can't import 3D models, would they I mean, this is such an obvious thing... I'm just missing it in the FAQ, right Somebody, please.... The Spacewar sample has a .svm format loader, which has been documented in a couple of posts previously. Someone (sorry, I can't remember their name ATM) has released an .X to .svm converter you could use to convert models into something that can be called with that code. In addition, you can write your o ...Show All

• CamPeck z-buffer sorting?

  In experimenting with drawing multiple objects on the screen, I've found an interesting situation. I the picture below, the larger craft is closer to the camera, the smaller craft away from the camera. But if you look at it, the larger craft cuts into the shape of the smaller one, even though it is far enough away not to do that. In my drawing code, I know I'm drawing my smaller craft after the first, so there is clearly some kind of z-buffer problem. What I don't know is how to decide which object to draw first reglardless of camera positioning, or even if XNA has any help with that. Any ideas http://www.spellflight.com/images/zbuffer.PNG Both of those states default to TRUE. So I'm wondering did you ...Show All

• Daffodils Drawing

  Hello, I am new to XNA (and game dev in general), but I was wondering if there was anyway to draw directly to the screen in XNA Kind of like GDI+ in .Net. Thanks A red rectangle does not need a texture but it does need 2 triangles. Find a 'draw a triangle' tutorial and add a 2nd triangle. If its just a 2d triangle then make a texture which is a single white pixel, then render it to whatever size you want using the SpriteBatch class. Change the color by passing in a different color to the spritebatch.draw overload You can do something like this without accessing a disk: Construct the DrawGeometry passing a Game-Object and insert in your game.Draw() between BeginScene() and EndScene() the following lines to try it ou ...Show All

• zenzai Collision Detection in 2D Games

  Hi, So far I have figured out how to get object moving on the screen. I have also figured out how to detect colissions at the edges of the screen. However, I am having trouble figuring out how to detect the collision between two objects. Say for example, two bouncing balls in a 2D game. How can I detect the collision of this two objects I imagine it has something to do with sine and cosine Thanks, Oblivion. There's also this article . Don't forget about using the built in objects BoundingSphere and BoundingBox. .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre {font-size:small;color:black;font-family:Consolas, "Courier New", Courier, Monospace;background-color:#ffffff;} .csharpcode pre {margin: ...Show All

• Australian Sewing Machine Co. Please Add Non-Generic DrawUserPrimitives and DrawIndexedUserPrimitives methods.

  I posted this request in the Suggestion tool as well. Btw- where is the link to actually view the contents of the Bug reports, and Suggestions You'd think that would be handy from the connect.microsoft.com site, but I can't find it. Add the method: Device.DrawUserPrimitives(Type vertexType, PrimitiveType type, int count, Array vertexData); and a similar non-generic method for Indexed primitives. I have a rendering system that captures rendering calls, and retains the call information. Later on, it sorts all of the calls in order to minimize state changes before execution. This is a very commen scenario. IT IS VERY DIFFICULT to call generic methods (in a generic fashion) when you only know the vertex type, and have a un-typed array. For ...Show All

• Aknght Direct3D - how to render a simple bitmap ( Draw2D ) transparently ?

  Hello all! I'm using Direct3D 9 (windowed) @ C# 2005. I load the bitmap file to my Texture object like that: tB = TextureLoader .FromFile(devD3D, @"b.bmp" ); I tried all kind of combinations with my Sprite object (who's associated to the DevD3D Device object) to render this Texture transparently, with the Draw2D function. Why Because this program is very simple and I don't want to mess around with 3D stuff. So, what am I missing here How can I render it transparently Can I tell what color to be rendered as "transparent" Thanks in advance ! This is pretty well covered in the "Simple2D" sample in the DirectX SDK Don't know why I didn't check this one before.. Took a few minutes ...Show All

• msdobrescu2 How do i edit and XNB file

  Please can someone let me know how i can edit an xnb file..... is there a particular program i can use Can I ask why you wanted to edit the XNB file directly .XNB files are binary files of data that has been processed by the build system so are not editable. Is there a particular reason you wanted to edit them directly Just edit the source file you imported and it will be recompiled when you build the game. As I understand it, the only time you would need to edit an xnb file is if you didn't have access to the source code anymore (or ever ). So maybe you are hacking someone elses game Or trying to figure out how to build a tool to crack open xnb files to "mod" games Either of these are questionable ...Show All

• Ranmal Starter Kit suggestion: RST Game Starter Kit

  I would be very interested in an RTS Game Starter Kit for XNA. Here's your RPG starter kit... using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; namespace MyRolePlayingGame1 {     class Program     {         static void Main( string[] args )         {             // add your game code here         }     } } Does that work ! ;) You should add your request into Microsoft Connect (see http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx PostID=682921& ...Show All