Answer Questions

• vahdam_mn No news about XNA 2?

  It has been a long time (feeling instead of real time) since XNA 1 released. I've been waiting for news about the next big thing. But it seems it's rather quite; no early info is out. What will be the next exciting things I can only guess... 1) Maybe it's an XNA Game Studio Professional which works with VS Pro version. But I'd rather like an XNA SDK to work with any IDE. 2) Maybe it's great enhancement to the framework. Many more D3DX stuff come into XNA, lifting XNA to the same level as MDX/native DX in functionality. Hmm...I hope the functionalities are not dropped just because they're not supported on XBox. Fear not, when we're ready to make an announcement about the next version, that announcement wi ...Show All

• Thomas LEBRUN Should shaders be getting disposed on device reset?

  Under MDX 1.1, once a vertex/pixel shader was compiled, the resulting compiled shader was good for the life of the application, and was still valid even after a device reset. However, under XNA, compiled shaders seem to go into an invalid state when the device is reset - attempting to set GraphicsDevice.VertexShader to a shader compiled before the device reset results in an AccessViolationException. Has the requirement on needing to compile shaders after a device reset changed between MDX 1.1 and XNA, or am I looking at a potential XNA bug OK, I will create a minimal example that reproduces the issue and post it as a bug. Thank you for the fast response. I expect you kn ...Show All

• JBartz February 2007 SDK is available

  SDK Symbol Files Redist Web Installer Have you tried to download them It still doesn't work for me. Waiting... ...Show All

• Rod Yager Vista install problems

  XNA won't install on Vista RC 1 5736. I'll try on a daily build tomorrow in the office. Are you going to support Vista in December Bummer about the 1.0, but understandable. How did you run the installer with elevated permissions Running msiexec manually I didn't think you could do it the same way as regular programs, with a right-click > Run as administrator. I did try disabling UAC and installing, but that still didn't work, it needed the VC# SP1 patch. FWIW my config consists of Vista 5744 x86, VS2003 and 2005, and VC# Express (natch). Again, I'd like to reiterate my lack of actual bitching. I think MS is doing a bang-up job of getting the tools into everybody's hands. ...Show All

• igorbaITALY Short video of Gamefest Keynote found

  Hello everyone, Found a highlight video from the Gamefest keynote, it is posted on Paul Mooney ’s blog direct links can also be found on my blog . Space Wars really looks good, nice work for 3 weeks.   I am hoping we can find video of some of the presentations or reports about them.   Update: The whole video is now up and is found here , thanks to Gamescore Blog  low bandwith here The Gamefest presentation audio should be made available in a few weeks on MSDN. I will let you know as soon as it comes online! Thanks! Thank God they don't though. Watched the video last night and listened to the interview. All I can say is "Wow!" It made me even more impatient fo ...Show All

• rwbogosian The Unofficial "Hooray I'm Done With my DBP Game" Thread

  When you get done with you game and sumbit it, crow about it here. A little over 24 hours left until the deadline and I'm so amazed I'm done, so much better than college Thanks to ZMan for his help, good luck all. I'll post the source code for my submission once the deadline hits. Bill Yup. She was born at 00:12 on the 27th, which meant a few features were dropped, but that's ok. Can't wait to see what people turned in - I hope MS displays more than just the winners. Dan. soooo close a couple things to do after work today then its off. im soooooo nervous. Hello everyone! We've submitting our game right now and we hope our upload will be ok! ...Show All

• Eric van Feggelen avoid tearing

  Just running throught the basic "How To"s in the help pages and adding sprites. I'm getting tearing as it's rendering. Anyone find how to get a swap chain working so I don't get as much tearing This sounds like you have a specify problem with your configuration. Do you mind give us some details about your graphics adapter and how you have hooked the display, etc Ok finally figured out what was the problem. spent a whille killing processes messing with windows settings, etc. Turns out it was a small windows floating toolbar that is used for changing Language Input settings that was stealing away updates so that XNA wasn't calling Draw very often. Getting great performance now. THank ...Show All

• Sergey Jmacov XNA with C# Professional version

  I can find any of this in the FAQ so I'll ask: Is there a way to get/install and use the XNA framework with the professional version of C# My Visual Studio Professional already as C# installed. I'd like to be able to play with XNA without playing to many installation games Thanks, Gary Not yet. I tried already a week ago (when trying to get XNA working on my x64 platform) to get it to work in VS 2005 Pro, but it is not that easy. Yes, it is quite annoying, especially since my beloved Code Rush doesn't work in Express But maybe it is possible to copy some files over and get it to work, will try again in a few days when I get annoyed Code Rush is still missing. In the future Ms will make bigger vers ...Show All

• LouisVanAlphen By the numbers - why so big?

  My content, using JPG's, is roughly 14.4 MB. However, the XNB version is roughly 515 MB. About 38 times bigger than the original. Is this normal What steps do I need to take to reduce the size of this I'm just begining with my development but if I can't augment this behavior of the Framework I'll have to serverly strip down my game. Maybe, I'll have to replace Content<T> altogether ( ) I would suggest doing a batch convert on all of your textures to DDS and use Dxt compression on them. Then you can use the passthru processor (At least thats what i've heard) and your file sizes should be nice and tidy. The content processing time will also be cut down to nothing. Lima Beans is right -> and if your conten ...Show All

• Claudeb1965 Is there a mthod to draw text on 2D screen?

  Hi, I try to draw some text on 2d screen for debug purpose. is there some method I can use to draw a String on the screen like DrawText(x,y,"Some text.."); Thanks alot for the answer. There's no way to draw actual text on the screen currently in the XNA framework, but you can use a method like this to draw text on the screen for debug purposes. http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx PostID=684864&SiteID=1 I know it seems like a bit of overkill just to get some debug text to see what's going on in your game, but once you've created the classes to work with text one, it's something that should be relatively simple to do for every project in the future. Hope ...Show All

• Richard Vaughan Shader support when running on the 360

  When your app is running on the 360 will it be possible to use the extended HLSL that is available that platform Will the tools that come under "Content Pipeline" include anything for the visual creation of shaders to ease the learning curve of shader development While this is still up in the air and subject to change, as it is currently shaders (.FX) will be available on the Xbox 360 however they will need to be compiled at build time and not duing runtime on the Xbox 360. Okay I understand, I'll watch out for more information as it becomes available. best wishes ...Show All

• satya999 Value cannot be null.

  Can anyone explain why I get the error : Value cannot be null. Parameter name: value My program was ok, I added a new component to it nd this error started appearing.. I removed the new component and it still appears. I get it ~5 times as soon as I run the game even before I get into the code, even if its already stopped on 1 error. Also I get it when changing between source files when the debugger is stopped. Any explanations Btw, why is the box to type a message in on the forums 2x6 pixels big I can't see a thing I type. Edit: Seems the small text entry box is a problem with Opera, it works fine with Firefox. You are trying to pass some parameter to a function which is null. Try t ...Show All

• RyanJ how do i learn how to do this

  ok. im really really new to this. i want to learn how to write games and software and be able to use a computer really good. but right now i dont know anything about writing a program. i just got xna express and am trying to figure it out. can anyone help me find where i can learn to use this and eventually design my own games Okay first, here's the big question. Do you want to learn to program or design You can design and build games without writing much code, if you use automated software (like Torque Gamebuilder). If you want to learn to write code to make games, then first you need to learn the programming language and make a few non-game applications to learn how to write code in that language. Onc ...Show All

• nextpaco DirectX Texture Tool (PLEASE NEED HELP)

  When im trying to lunch this utilitie in directx 9.0 sdk , it says Unable to create Direct3d Device . Please make sure your desktop color depth is 16 or 32 bit. my desktop color is at 32 bit and it still dont work , I really need some help . Do you have a video card in the machine that supports DX9 manders wrote: DxTex requires the "ref" software device to be installed. Did you install the full DXSDK Make sure you have a "d3dref9.dll" in your windows\system32 folder. -Mike Thank you so much my problem is solved , ive noticed that my d3dref9.dll was corrupt , so ive ask to a friend to give me his file and now its working . ...Show All

• kennm Dream Build Play Contest Question - Using languages other than C#

  I've managed to use Chrome ( www.remobjects.com ) to create some small XNA demos that use the content from SpaceWars. The rules do not mention whether non C# langauges are allowed to enter the contest. Since there are several .NET 2.0 compatible compilers out there shouldn't this contest allow these entries as well as they can use both the Windows and XBox 360 XNA assemblies. Just to clarify, I have Visual C# Express and Game Studio Express installed on my machine, but am using Chrome via Visual Studion 2005 to write and compile my XNA demos and the plan is to use that combination to write future XNA games and contest entries. Could someone from the XNA contest team please clarify your position on the use of non C# languages for the Dream ...Show All