~360 Homebrew: XNA Game Studio Express

beerman · Post by **beerman** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:21 am 0

Anyone know if "Only supported on MicrosoftÂ® WindowsÂ® XP SP2" means "fuck off and get a real operating system you 2000-using pleb", or "well, it might work but we can't be bothered testing it"?

sty · Post by **sty** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 4:55 am 0

just to annouce that I have got myFirstXNAGame running, just a bouncing avatar but so far it looks nice and promising, I'll be experimenting with joypad control and multiple sprites this weekend.

the coding structure looks nice and straightforward.

This will prove a really useful tool to motivate myself to learn C# and get some real hands on with .Net - useful since I pretend to architect C# .Net solutions for a living

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 6:59 pm 0

http://xnateam.members.winisp.net/Video ... tsdemo.wmv

A nice watch this.

From http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2006/ ... 34204.aspx

Orangy Tang · Post by **Orangy Tang** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 1:41 pm 0

Can anyone recommend a good C# book for someone who already knows C++/Java? So far I'm eyeing up this book, as reviews seem to be largely positive.

20thCenturyBoy · Post by **20thCenturyBoy** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:13 pm 0

Orangy Tang wrote:Can anyone recommend a good C# book for someone who already knows C++/Java? So far I'm eyeing up this book, as reviews seem to be largely positive.

I'm using this one which is pretty good. Less about .Net and more about the language itself. To be honest you could probably pick it up just by reading the programming guide on MSDN.

sty · Post by **sty** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 8:59 pm 0

Orangy Tang wrote:Can anyone recommend a good C# book for someone who already knows C++/Java? So far I'm eyeing up this book, as reviews seem to be largely positive.

I've got that one and it seems pretty good, it gave me enough C# info to be able to blag my way through understanding C# compared to other OO without being able to code it just from a quick read through.

It covers of the language pretty concisely and then gets into the various aspects of .Net as they relate to C# (various containers first then later into the windows and system stuff).

I like the look of the book mentioned just above by 20thCenturyBoy though as well

MattV · Post by **MattV** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 5:13 pm 0

Sir_LANs-a-lot wrote: Runs FrenZe OK

Hah, fren-ze more stable than XNA apps!

Poo · Post by **Poo** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 7:30 am 0

Here's a screenie of my first little XNA experiment, a 2D looking 3D version of space invaders that I knocked up over the weekend (took about 5 hours).

I've been learning c# at work for about a year and even managed to squeeze a little managed direct X into one of the work projects to render bin levels independent of screen resolution.

My biggest problem with the whole thing is shaders.... man I can't get my head around them, I'm obviously using the wrong tool because nothing comes with the XNA beta to compile and debug the FX files. Anyone got a good online reference for getting started with them within the managed enviroment?

here's my blog post with the exe and the solution source, should be a nice simple example for people to follow through.

chub · Post by **chub** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:39 am 0

Poo wrote:My biggest problem with the whole thing is shaders.... man I can't get my head around them, I'm obviously using the wrong tool because nothing comes with the XNA beta to compile and debug the FX files. Anyone got a good online reference for getting started with them within the managed enviroment?

To create shaders I use ATI RenderMonkey, since you can write HLSL in it, compile it and test it using the built-in preview window. It can export FX files too which you can then load into MDX. Another shader tool you could try is the rival NVIDIA FX Composer which works on FX files directly, but I find trickier to use (I might just be used to RenderMonkey though).

As for using shaders in MDX, there's not much to it really. Load the FX file, set the technique and any variables, then render in-between various begin and end statements. I used the documentation from the DirectX SDK to learn what to do. You could start by looking up the Effect class (there is an older online version here).

I haven't tried XNA yet, so this might have a different way of using the FX files, but I think the main thing is writing the shaders themselves. To learn about HLSL I bought the ShaderX2 book, but there are online sites too with examples. You could check out the ATI ShaderX page since they have put PDF versions of their contributions to the book on the site, including the Introduction to HLSL and Shader Development using RenderMonkey. At least these got me started!

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 12:42 pm 0

Hopefully (and I think I remember it mentioned somewhere) that the more final version will have verious defualts, built in or loadable I'm not sure but I'm sure either will do.

WiredWorm · Post by **WiredWorm** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 12:52 pm 0

chub wrote:ATI RenderMonkey

A simian-based name means this product must be good!!

Not tried XNA as yet because to be quite honest my PC's graphics card ain't up to the job and as yet they aren't allowing code generation for the 360.

When they DO start doing that 360 thang then i'm sure i'll be having a little tinker around.......

Sir_LANs-a-lot · Post by **Sir_LANs-a-lot** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:15 pm 0

Have just noticed that nVidia provide a Photoshop plugin on their web site that will allow you to read/write .dds files which some people may find of use (rather than having to download the DirectX SDK).

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/phot ... ugins.html

I'm sure there's a few folk on here that use Photoshop.

Poo · Post by **Poo** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 3:03 am 0

Here's an updated version of XNA invaders with a CGA styled shader that I made up! (my first one)

Thanks a million Chub for pointing me in the right direction, the ATI docs were just what I needed, I found Render Monkey much easier than FX composer also.

I'll post up the code once I've cleaned it up.

Oaf · Post by **Oaf** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:13 pm 0

Started tinkering with XNA today

Working on porting Blobbit Push to it, and only a few hours in I've got an animating, transparent Blobbit bodding round the screen

C# and Studio Express seem nice, certainly a lot cleaner than stuff I've used before (Win32, MFC/ATL, GameSDK/DirectX/ActiveX), although most of my time was spent wondering why the example code wouldn't run - I had the AllowMultisampling = false problem.

Hmmm XNA GR++...

...it's probably already been done

Neon360 · Post by **Neon360** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 1:31 pm 0

Yay for XNA - (Xbox-Non-Authorzied)-Launchpad.

This means I'll be playing Tempest 2000 by end of next year, right?