Answer Questions

• Tamizhan A tool to help with Sprite Animations: Sprite Strip Composer

  Hi: I have been working on a game written in the XNA Framework. The game has many sprite animations. After researching how other do this in the community I adopted the approach of loading a "Sprite Strip" (PNG) consisting of a row of frames. If there are many frames and the sprite is large, I split them up onto multiple rows. One of the laborious tasks was creating such 'Sprite Strips' from a sequence of PNGs. I have created a very basic Windows Application named Sprite Strip Composer to solve this time consuming problem. Download: Sprite Strip Composer Instructions: Browse to a folder containing your PNG files. Select the files you want included in the strip. Make sure the animation looks correct by looking at the Animated ...Show All

• tantz Combine Vertex Buffers?

  Is it common to sort and combine vertex information for a number of small objects prior to sending to a vertex buffer I am considering re-structuring my engine to sort all my vertex and index data into sizeable chunks before sending to buffers on the card. These would be organized by effect and render states to minimize calls and state changes. Is this standard procedure I can imagine eventually being able to concurently render from a buffer while I traverse my scene graph further untill I fill another buffer of a target size and then draw from it. Are these reasonable Ideas For this to be optimal, you would have to do it when loading the scene. Also, as Inaki said, only static objects should be handl ...Show All

• TadAnderson direct3d retained mode: upgrading to IDirect3DRM3 from IDirect3DRM

  My application uses the old direct3d retained mode system for a 3D GUI and the original interface objects (IDirect3DRM, IDirect3DRMDevice, IDirect3DRMFrame, and the others). I now have a need to use methods in IDirect3DRMMeshBuilder3, but to use the "3" version, the other objects have to be the "3" version. However, to start the process Direct3DRMCreate is used to create a IDirect3DRM object, which used to create other objects. The latest "3" version objects require an IDirect3DRM3 object for thier creation--the problem. Direct3DRMCreate can not create a IDirect3DRM3 object and I don't see a Direct3DRMCreate3 interface. What am I doing wrong This seems to work--t ...Show All

• Neels215375 XNA Starting

  Well, I got XNA yesterday and i have been trying to figure out how to use it all day. I have used the help but i am still completely lost. Can anyone help me start out Thank you very much. That helps a ton. Video tutorials - http://learnxna.com/default.aspx http://www.riemers.net/eng/Tutorials/XNA/Csharp/Series1/Starting_a_project.php http://www.ziggyware.com/articles.php cat_id=6 http://www.xnadevelopment.com http://xna101.spaces.live.com/ http://www.xnatutorial.com/ Many more. If you have specific questions, feel free to post them. Moving to the XNA GSE Groups. The usual stance is 1: Use the XNA Documentation 2: Browse the MS XNA Site 3: Search These forums (for words Like tutorial) Lastly ...Show All

• A.Carter d3dx10d.dll

  I was using the Direct3d9 samples from DirectX and while running i hadn't got any problems, but when i was copying the code from the sample into my own empty project a message occured that i haven't got the d3dx10d.dll. When i create in MSVisualStudio a new projekt I see there just one emptyproject. Not emptyprojekt10. 3Nu, Which Version of Vista and DirectX SDK do you use Bleak-Pear, you are sure that you have used EmptyProject and not EmptyProject10 If your code linked with the DX10 libs, you might be required to run with DX10 dlls. They are in the redistribute package. You can extract them from cab files manaully by using WinRar or similar tools. May t ...Show All

• woon pun Requirements for XNA express?

  Question, it would seem from various coments posted here that c# express wll be required to run XNA express. Issue is that i do most of my work in the full blown studio. So does this mean I will have to install C# express to use the new XNA express studio or will it sit along side my existing installation of Studio C# Rgds Darkside You need to install Visual C# Express separately (which is a prereq for XNA Game Studio Express). Visual Studio and the Express editions work side-by-side. So are there any known problems running the C# and XNA expres editions alongside with the full studio Closest comment on the Faq I can find is: Q: What’s the difference between XNA Game Studio Express, XNA Game Stu ...Show All

• Th3 7ru7h Line class CPU problem

  Hi everyone, When I used Line class to draw lines with different thicknesses in 3D space, everything seems ok until I increase number of lines up to 1000 lines. My CPU is up to 100%. Any hints. Thanks. You can always write your own line drawing code that can beat D3DX's line drawing performance... I do need line thickness and antialias features in my project. Actually I have both in my project. The one with line primitive does not look very good, but it does not have CPU problem. If i use line class, it look the way i want, but CPU is very busy. My project involve with lines and points onpy. However, it needs hundreds of lines and points. Thanks for your suggestions. ...Show All

• tattoo Xbox360 Threads, just interested ...

  I know that the xbox has multi cores and can run several threads concurrently, how do you write for a particular core on the xbox 360, or will the CLR choose when to use another core. Or maybe our code will only run on 1, can someone please enlighten me. Hopefully, it will be as easy as this - Thread myThread = new Thread ( new ThreadStart (myProc)); myThread.SetApartmentState( ApartmentState .MTA) myThread.Start(); and the clr does all the hard work. I am j ust interested thats all ... Dave Thanks guys ! Thread.SetProcessorAffinity(), looks like this doesnt exist in XNA :O( Thread.CurrentThread.SetProcessorAffinity will this be available i ...Show All

• LasseJ End users shouldn't have to rewrite XNA math functions in order to improve performance.

  The overhead of passing a 64 byte Matrix by value is significant. Most especially when you are comparing two matrices for equivalency (==), or performing a Vector*Matrix multiplication (Vector3.Transform(Matrix)). The following matrix comparison function performs 5-10 times better than your built in == comparison. If the matrices are equal, then it is about 5 times faster. If they are unequal then it fails fast, and is about 10 times faster. public static bool Equals(ref Matrix a, ref Matrix b) { // i check the diagonal first for quick fails return a.M11 == b.M11 && a.M22 == b.M22 && a.M33 == b.M33 && a.M44 == b.M44 && a.M12 == b.M12 && a.M13 == b.M13 && a.M1 ...Show All

• ALFKI Invisible Skybox

  Hi i have used some of the code from the SkyBoxDemo tutorial to make a skybox in my game. I adapted the code to run with my game but when i debug the game i cannot see the skybox and my model following camera flips round to face the front of the model insted of the back and The Ship model turns weird colors!   You wouldn't necessarily have to scale the sky box. You could just move it towards the player a bit as you pour on the speed (and maybe move the camera back a bit as it tries to catch up), then move it back in place as you let off the gas. I originally made the sky sphere thinking space is big, really really big, and you won't see much movement. But it's a game, not reality... have to remind ...Show All

• Josh Kinder XNA with 360 Remote

  I have a Xbox 360 wireless remote with the usb adapter I was wondering if I could use it for xna games on PC. If so how would I go about doing it thanks The USB connection _only_ charges the battery. It doesn't create a "wired connection" for your wireless controller. You will need to purchase an Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows , which won't be available until early 2007. Until that time, you must use a wired controller on the Windows platform. The Wireless 360 controller is not currently supported under Windows. There are a few posts about it on the forums with more detail, including that you would need an adapter for it (the plug in part is for charging purposes only and doesn ...Show All

• robinjam Directx SDK (december 2006) viewer crashes on startup

  Well, the title basically describes what is the problem... I've uninstalled my directx sdk (october), rebooted to make sure things were clean. Then I installed the last SDK (december) and my viewer (directx sdk's viewer for .x and .fx files) simply stopped to work. Whenever I start it, it crashes with the 'send report' error. Any ideas what could've caused this " I've uninstalled the DirectX SDK (December 2006) and reinstalled the October SDK. The Dxviewer works as normal in this version and I'll just wait for a fix. I also have this problem. Dxviewer.exe does not even start, never mind load .X and .fx files. I think that the dev guys might need to release a fix - all of my previous DX S ...Show All

• flash.tato XACT files(xgs,xsb,xwb) don't deploy during Publish; getting FileNotFound

  My problem: My game project in XNA uses 2 sounds. I went thru the XACT tutorial(for my uses I found it quite easy to add my .wav files used via XACT), and I now have all code in place, and functioning. When I Start Debugging in XNA, my game runs correctly, and I get the correct audio plays when the proper events cue them up. HOWEVER, once I publish the same project, and install it from the Setup.exe, the installed game crashes. I get the error: system.io.filenotfoundexception. What I have checked already: 1.All 3 XACT files are in my main game directory. 2. All 3 are set to 'always copy' to output directory. 3. All references in the Sound.cs class I created point to the correct XACT files(the build would not run if it did ...Show All

• PrashantAtlanta XNA project hard freezes XBOX360

  A game I have been developing works perfectly fine on windows, however, causes my xbox to hard freeze (all controls stop responding and the device can only be shut off from the power button on the xbox itself), which in turn detaches the debugger. This seems to happen after an arbitrary amount of time, and thus leads me to perhaps memory issues. I haven't been able to find anyone else with a similar problem, but if anyone has experienced similar problems, I'd be interested in knowing how you went about debugging and or solving this issue because I'm having lots of difficulty isolating the problem to any one block of code. At any rate, it seems odd that my managed code (no shaders either) would cause the entire xbox to freeze considering it ...Show All

• Rruna Game Design Question: Multithreading

  My understanding of the game loop in XNA (excluding setup and teardown) is: 1. Update 2. Draw I know there are benefits to multithreading an application but am unsure how to apply that to game design. I'm stuck on the idea that you need to complete all your updates for game state, running scripts, and so on, before you move on to drawing. The only benefit to multithreading during the Update stage that I see would be to get update tasks done faster. But all the threads would have to finish up their work before moving on to drawing. Actually, that's what I do with my Earth Orbit demo: I have a thread that computes the day-night texture on the fly as Earth rotates during its day. This happens as a background task so that it is rea ...Show All