~360 Homebrew: XNA Game Studio Express

Coders forum. Discuss techniques, swap code snippets, ask for help etc. relating to all forms of software development.
Post Reply
User avatar
RageMatrix
Baaaaaaa!
Baaaaaaa!
Posts: 5515
Joined: Fri May 10, 2002 12:52 pm 0
XBL Gamertag: Jon256
Location: East Sussex

Post by RageMatrix »

moobaa wrote:
teamonkey wrote:
Absolute_Zero wrote:I think it rather depends on what you are already familiar with... this is a servicable general-purpose intro.
http://www.softsteel.co.uk/tutorials/cSharp/cIndex.html
Ah, cool. So it's Java without the annoying bits then? :)
Exactly :D
Oi! :D
XBox Gamertag: Jon256
Wii Code: 4849 1090 9042 6725
"Wrapped in metal, wrapped in ivy"
The Official UNIX/Linux Thread
User avatar
Snakey
Baaaaaaa!
Baaaaaaa!
Posts: 8938
Joined: Thu May 09, 2002 4:17 pm 0
Location: Hell on Earth

Post by Snakey »

News to me - has anyone seen a survey that backs this up ?
No survey, but from what I've heard from a lot of people, I'd say its true.
Nothing is worth the effort you put into it.
User avatar
PaulCunningham
Baaaaa!
Baaaaa!
Posts: 1218
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2004 11:47 pm 0
Location: Walsall, England
Contact:

Post by PaulCunningham »

Looks like I may have to get a 360 through my company - I'm sure I'd be able to justify it to the tax man :)
Cheers,
Paul Cunningham
Pumpkin Games
User avatar
the2bears
Baaaaaa!
Baaaaaa!
Posts: 3686
Joined: Wed Oct 27, 2004 9:30 pm 0
Location: The City by the Bay
Contact:

Post by the2bears »

PaulCunningham wrote:Looks like I may have to get a 360 through my company - I'm sure I'd be able to justify it to the tax man :)
They're easy compared to proving it to the wife :lol:

That's who I'm trying to convince at the moment, somehow she doesn't see a need for a 7th console in the house :P

Bill
the2bears - the indie shmup blog
User avatar
teamonkey
Sheepie Whore
Sheepie Whore
Posts: 12082
Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2002 1:07 am 0
XBL Gamertag: itsthetaste
PSN: teamonkey_ca
Contact:

Post by teamonkey »

moobaa wrote:
teamonkey wrote:
Absolute_Zero wrote:I think it rather depends on what you are already familiar with... this is a servicable general-purpose intro.
http://www.softsteel.co.uk/tutorials/cSharp/cIndex.html
Ah, cool. So it's Java without the annoying bits then? :)
Exactly :D
Ooof. .Net is much nicer than the Windows API but it's still fucking horrible. Crikey. What a pile of crap to wade through. :(
User avatar
moobaa
Sheepie Whore
Sheepie Whore
Posts: 16118
Joined: Sun Sep 29, 2002 8:08 am 0
XBL Gamertag: petee moobaa
PSN: moobaa
Location: Sydney, Australia

Post by moobaa »

teamonkey wrote:
moobaa wrote:
teamonkey wrote:
Absolute_Zero wrote:I think it rather depends on what you are already familiar with... this is a servicable general-purpose intro.
http://www.softsteel.co.uk/tutorials/cSharp/cIndex.html
Ah, cool. So it's Java without the annoying bits then? :)
Exactly :D
Ooof. .Net is much nicer than the Windows API but it's still fucking horrible. Crikey. What a pile of crap to wade through. :(
That's what I thought of AWT and Swing ;)
User avatar
teamonkey
Sheepie Whore
Sheepie Whore
Posts: 12082
Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2002 1:07 am 0
XBL Gamertag: itsthetaste
PSN: teamonkey_ca
Contact:

Post by teamonkey »

Hmmm. Bored of .Net now; that didn't take long :(

It's great right up until the bit where you finish designing your forms and want to start putting useful functionality in. Then it all starts being hideously complex, stuff that Python or PHP make simple are make horrible by hideous convolution. RAD my arse. Now I remember why I gave up on ASP. Gah.

This XNA framework better be something special. :)
random
Baaaa!
Baaaa!
Posts: 725
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2003 4:48 pm 0

Post by random »

teamonkey wrote:It's great right up until the bit where you finish designing your forms and want to start putting useful functionality in. Then it all starts being hideously complex, stuff that Python or PHP make simple are make horrible by hideous convolution.
Can you give an example teamonkey? :)
User avatar
teamonkey
Sheepie Whore
Sheepie Whore
Posts: 12082
Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2002 1:07 am 0
XBL Gamertag: itsthetaste
PSN: teamonkey_ca
Contact:

Post by teamonkey »

random wrote:Can you give an example teamonkey? :)
Oh, I'm just struggling with datasets. I'm trying to parse a CSV file and store the data in some sort of structure, not too heavy, no relationships, some very basic querying involved. I figured that a DataSet would be best, under the circumstances, and there's a designer page for you to quickly set up a schema, so I thought actually using it must be dead easy? But there's a whole load of hassle that goes around it, things you need to set up, objects you need to initialise, links you need to assign and it's taken me ages wandering though unhelpful MSDN pages to sort it all out.

I think I'm more frustrated that it's completely unintuitive, and seemingly convoluted by design, when .Net is supposed considerably reduce development time (from what?). There are a handful of other platforms you can use where to do the same thing would be more or less transparent and obvious, even to a n00b user. I had the same problem with VB6, where the language was fairly simple and it was stupidly easy to get a pretty complex GUI going, but as soon as you touched the library functions and Windows API things got frustratingly hard.

Oh well. :)
User avatar
PaulCunningham
Baaaaa!
Baaaaa!
Posts: 1218
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2004 11:47 pm 0
Location: Walsall, England
Contact:

Post by PaulCunningham »

ADO.NET is a bit different from ADO and does take a little getting used to. You could use the Microsoft Text Driver and a DataAdapter to fill your DataSet quite easily (probably about 4 lines of code).

But you ain't going to be using any of this for games so stop faffing around and get some triangle on the screen :)
Cheers,
Paul Cunningham
Pumpkin Games
User avatar
teamonkey
Sheepie Whore
Sheepie Whore
Posts: 12082
Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2002 1:07 am 0
XBL Gamertag: itsthetaste
PSN: teamonkey_ca
Contact:

Post by teamonkey »

PaulCunningham wrote:But you ain't going to be using any of this for games so stop faffing around and get some triangle on the screen :)
I don't think I'll be using it quite in the spirit of how it was intended. :)

By the way, in lieu of an official MS XNA update, I've just found some interesting stuff on Shawn Hargreaves's blog.
random
Baaaa!
Baaaa!
Posts: 725
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2003 4:48 pm 0

Post by random »

http://www.windowsforms.net/FAQs/defaul ... tabindex=3 seems to show a reasonable method. Although that can be shrunk down a little bit :wink:

Using a DataSource and GridView with the wizards you should be able to do it without any code. Including things like filtering by making use of parameters, which you could fill from another control or the querystring without any code.

One recommendation would be to check out the File Helpers library, its very handy for flat file stuff: http://filehelpers.sourceforge.net/. I use it for exporting some information to CSV and its great.
User avatar
20thCenturyBoy
Baaaaa!
Baaaaa!
Posts: 1093
Joined: Fri Oct 01, 2004 8:16 am 0
Location: Perth, Australia

Post by 20thCenturyBoy »

I think Shawn Hargreaves has hit the nail on the head about the content pipeline. Getting assets into a game in an efficient format is a major hassle for a time-strapped indie. If XNA can streamline this I think it would be a major step forward for hobbyist programmers. The more I hear about XNA the more I like it. I even bought a C# book the other day (glad to see it's mostly Java inspired...)
User avatar
teamonkey
Sheepie Whore
Sheepie Whore
Posts: 12082
Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2002 1:07 am 0
XBL Gamertag: itsthetaste
PSN: teamonkey_ca
Contact:

Post by teamonkey »

New XNA Blog entry.
You won’t need to enumerate graphic adapters and display modes. You won’t have to create a Direct3D 9 device and manage it when the window is resized or the game is minimized. The XNA Framework takes care of all those things for you.
Yay!
One big change from MDX is that we’ve decided to remove support for the fixed-function pipeline in favor of an all shader-driven programmable pipeline.
...
Direct3D 10 does not offer support for fixed function. Neither does the Xbox 360.
Yay!
Sound authors use the XACT tool to create “packages” of sound effects and configure things like volume, looping, channel mixing (including 5.1), etc. The developer then takes the package, loads it, and can easily play sounds by name, not having to worry about initializing buffers, streaming data in, or other management.
Yay!

One thing to note is that our math libraries are right-handed by default.
...
I say “by default” because there is nothing that requires a right-handed system. So if you absolutely need to be left-handed (or something else) you can do so, you’ll just need to do some of the calculations yourself.
Yay!

Code: Select all

public class SampleGame : Game
{
    private GraphicsComponent graphics;
  
    public SampleGame()
    {
        this.graphics = new GraphicsComponent();
        this.GameComponents.Add(graphics);
    }
  
    protected override void Update()
    {
    }
  
    protected override void Draw()
    {
        this.graphics.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Blue);
        this.graphics.GraphicsDevice.Present();
    }
  
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        using (SampleGame game = new SampleGame())
        {
            game.Run();
        }
    }
}
Yay!

:D
User avatar
[Feeblez]
Baaaa!
Baaaa!
Posts: 961
Joined: Mon Dec 02, 2002 2:03 pm 0
Location: neither here nor there, UK

Post by [Feeblez] »

Can i join in?

Yay! :oops:
Post Reply