Answer Questions

• Carl Daniel Recommended Managed DirectPlay Book?

  Hi All, I've done some trauling through the web for some DirectPlay material and this subject is neither here nor there. Can anyone recommend a good book or reference for this API as I cannot find a thing. If there is not a Managed book about a C++ based book would be acceptable. TIA NozFx From memory I think it was oct 2003 that it was dropped... I will have to check that, but I know it was a while ago :) Hi Guys, Thank you very much for your replies. Hmm, didn't look into this enough obviously. I did hear mixed views about DirectPlay, I was hoping it was more than just a networking API and more of a set of framework classes specifically for network gaming models. Oh well, I'm ...Show All

• Peter Richard Component Question

  After I add a component to the project, how do I get it to apper in the toolbox You need to right-click on the Toolbox and select "Choose Items..." then navigate to the assembly with the component and add it. It should now appear in the Toolbox. The edit function doesn't seem to want to work, so I'll use reply... I know it automatically adds it when you add a new component. When I add a pre existing component, it does not. How do I get it to display, so I can use my components across multiple projects. ...Show All

• NegaScout Skinned Animation Tutorial

  I have released a tutorial set that covers the following topics: creating a file tokenizer, creating a content importer, creating a content processor, creating a content writer, creating a content reader, creating your own vertex format, creating a bone pose table, creating a skinned animation controller, and using the controller to view a skinned animation. It is available here: http://dastle.spaces.live.com/ NP. Post on the tutorial site if you have any problems or if it is too unclear/complex/etc. Seems like the space is private. Hi - thanks for posting your tutorials! Only problem is the link above doesn't seem to work. Is there an update or something I'm doing ...Show All

• Leandro Rodrigues Model Exporting From Maya (.fbx)

  I have a question and concern regarding the .fbx model exporting from Maya. Problem: Whenever I load a model into my game that has been exported using the latest .fbx exporter plugin from Maya the model is arranged such that some of the pieces of the model are lined up along its x axis. I did some research on the .fbx file format and found out that while it was designed to be an open document 3D model format, it has been grossly revised by just about all modeling programs which have edited it to suit. Which is why you can't export a model in Maya and then import it into Max and expect it to be the same. My question is this, being that the .fbx file format is flaky at best; what make and version of the .fbx exporter/importer is XNA designed ...Show All

• adorer Okay, the make your first game....

  It tells me: Make sure the call to ContentManager.Load is using the "Asset Name" ....Where the heck is that I kno the asset name, but i cant find ContentManager.load in the code or anything ANYWER. And what does it mean by 'the call to' do i keep the " The quotation marks define the path to the asset, so if you were to create a folder called Content in your project, you would use "Content/myAsset" as the path name. TheDevilsJoker wrote: do i keep the " Yes I go over a bit of the basic knowledge you need in a few video tutorials. They are very visual, so you can easily see where ...Show All

• AnthonyHunter Using ContentManager without Xna.FrameWork.Game

  How do I use the ContentManager when not using the FrameWork.Game In all samples we can find " ContentManager aLoader = new ContentManager (Service); " Since I dont use Game as a baseclass I don't have "Service". So I create a service like this " GameServiceContainer Service = new GameServiceContainer () " Now, every thing I try to load, textures, models I get FileNotFound Any idees Well, if you implement your own IGraphicsDeviceService and use the correct path and correct path format, it works. But writing a tool that works with the ContentPipeline is kind of a pain. There are some other threads in the forum discussing what would be neccessary to ...Show All

• RayCan XNA has it's own GamePad DeadZone?

  I've been looking at the output of the thumbsticks, and it appears a value less than 24% (0.24) is ever returned. I know it's very important to implement deadzone in your programs, but why has it been done for us Someone may want to write a game that needs a smaller deadzone, but as far as I can tell it would be impossible given we don't have full access to the output right the way from 0 to 1. Is this behaviour intentional Many thanks, Adam Miles Hmm my mistake. I wasn't registered for connect. The generic "Page not Found" they serve when you click one of those links and aren't already registered is pretty horrible from a user confusion perspective. Anyway, I'm aware of what the deadzone i ...Show All

• DQM Beginning Game Development: Part III - DirectX II - Problem with the "Using..."

  Just started the Direct X Part II (Part III) tutorial, and I seem to have an odd problem. I get one error whenever I try to build the solution, Error 1 The type or namespace name 'Device' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference ) C:\Documents and Settings\Doug Ross\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\BattleTank2005\BattleTank2005\GameEngine.cs 68 17 BattleTank2005 Now, I put at the very top of the GameEngine.cs class, right below all the other "using" directives... using Microsoft.Samples.DirectX.UtilityToolkit; So now the "Using" section at the top of the GameEngine.cs looks like... using System; using System.Collections.Generic; us ...Show All

• furmangg Possible bug? - Textures and Source Areas

  Hi, I've been experimenting and trying to draw a 2D texture (using a sprite batch) to the screen. Now I've specified a source rectangle for the texture - which is at (x, y) and of width & height 1x1. So essentially a single pixel from the source texture, which is RGBA (0, 0, 0, 255) i.e. solid black. When I render this and specify a destination rectangle, what's rendered seems to take into account the pixels either side of the source rectangle - which are RGBA (0, 0, 0, 0) i.e. transparent black. Now this seems to me slightly illogical or at the least counterintuitive - that pixels *outside* the source rectangle should affect what's being drawn! Well, if someone could explain this to me I'd appreciate it very much, or perhaps confir ...Show All

• Shadi Mari Audio hoax

  I was just wondering whether the XNA framework somewhat more than using its internal icky audio engine based on prefabbed XACT packages, like writing PCM data directly to a buffer I'm not very far into game programming as of yet, but to me the use of XACT seems like a superfluous step in the work flow of a creating a game, or just an additional level to a game. Correct if I'm wrong, I've just read the documentation. First of all, wave banks, cues etc. can only be created within the XACT authoring tool, hence no possibility for integration other than using what's created in the tool. Second, apparently no reflection or discovery can be made on XACT packages in your client code to discover cues. Scenario: A level editor in which you ...Show All

• miran_mmc How to draw a Rectangle in XNA

  Guess the subject covers it.. how do you draw a rectangle in XNA I just started using XNA about 2 weeks ago so i still haven't get used to it yet. any help would be really appreciated.. How about something like this To do that in 2D I use a one pixel (white) sprite and stretch it with the normal Draw command, using a Vector2 for the stretch factor and with the origin set as 0,0. Fluxtah wrote: you can always use orthographic projection matrix projectionMatrix = Matrix .CreateOrthographic(ScreenWidth, ScreenHeight, 1.0f, 100.0f); lol, whenever I get stuck and post something I find the answer straight away ! I'm using CreateOrthographicOffCenter as the CreateOrthographic still gave me an upside down ...Show All

• Duane Douglas Game Math 101: Lerp() vs SmoothStep() ?

  For all practicle purposes, what's the difference between VectorN.Lerp() and VectorN.SmoothStep() Is one more efficient (speedy) than the other Will I get radically different results at given percentages Under what circumstances would you want to use one rather than the other Yes, the SDK docs tells me one uses linear interpolation and the other uses a cubic equation, but let's assume that doesn't mean anything to me :) (I believe I understand linear interpolation from the docs... looks like what I probably would've come up with on my own. Hoever, the docs really don't shed any light on SmoothStep.) Matt Lerp is the simple method that interpolates along a straight line, according to the distanc ...Show All

• Oliwa Calculating new point from starting point and polar coordinate

  A beginner game programming question... say I have a sprite located at a point 100, 100 which is meant to "travel" at a speed of 6 units/update and an angle of .8 radians. What is the recommended way in XNA to calculate what the next position point will be Is there some convenience method somewhere to help with this or do I have to take care of the trig myself ~ Kris This will give you a normalized direction vector. Vector2 direction = new Vector2 (( float ) Math .Sin(angleRadians), -( float ) Math .Cos(angleRadians)); You can then do something like position += direction * 32.0f; ...Show All

• Drew Marsh how to use getcursorpos()? any example?

  I wish to use getcursorpos to get the coordinate of the screen, the game i want to develop is a fullscreen game. Some error happened because i didn't pass any argument to this function, what argument shld i pass to this function, how to get the argument Why need to pass argument. Thanks POINT ptCursorPos; GetCursorPos(&ptCursorPos); // Now ptCursorPos has the mouse coordinates (screen coordinates) The function needs to return two values (x and y) so it can't do that -effeciently- through the return value. You pass it the address of a POINT struct and it will fill it for you... It's because the location of my button is base on the screen resolution, at first i use GetSystemMetric ...Show All

• Israel Brewster xna racer, how and when can i get it

  i saw this thing on something called xna racer, and it amazed me that we could do this with xna http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/xna/clips-xna-racer-preview-213594.php does anyone know anything about getting this Also note that Dave Weller says ", we cap it with the big surprise, the "XNA Racer" starter kit, coming with the 1.0 release to Creators Club subscribers.". So looks like some of the stsarterk kits will only be available as part of the creators club. http://letskilldave.com/archive/2006/11/08/XNA-Video-Montage-_2300_1-is-ready-for-you_2100_.aspx Clicky . Read the book description. Actually, it is called XNA Racer. It's another starter kit, like the Spacewar starte ...Show All