XNA

Greater Charleston .NET User Group Meeting - March 2007

Lou Vega — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 00:56:00 GMT

Well I mentioned in an earlier post that Microsoft was hosting an MSDN Event here in Charleston on March 15...and after talking with Glen earlier today he's informed me that he'll be in town the previous night - so we're changing our regularly scheduled meeting to be on Wednesday, March 14th...it'll be a 2-day geekfest here in Charleston :)

Even better - Glen's going to be talking about XNA - sweet! Head over to GC.NUG's website for more info in the coming days including directions, times, etc.

XNA with VB.NET?

Lou Vega — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 01:53:00 GMT

Saw this tonight - thought it was pretty interesting reading. Now to go apply it and see what happens.

Hello XNA World!

Lou Vega — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 22:24:00 GMT

So after a week-long delay (too many things came up at work and home to play), I've finally installed everything needed for XNA on a spare laptop. Ran into a minor glitch trying to run the Spacewar! demo that's included, and found an MSDN Forum entry which squared me away :)

So now I'm off to play!

Stumbling block – XNA: VPC doesn’t support Direct3D

Lou Vega — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 08:48:00 GMT

Well after spending a bit of time installing and configuring my virtual PC to run XNA, I run into a glitch where the VPC doesn’t support Direct3D. My first clue was when I went to run the SpaceWar project that’s included, I got the following exception:

"Could not find a Direct3D device compatible with the current device preferences."

I thought to myself, “Self – that’s odd because your graphics card does have Direct3D, dxdiag says so (and passed all tests as well!). But I suppose the problem here is that Direct3D drivers somehow don’t carry over in the VPC because when I run dxdiag in the VPC, I only show a DirectDraw, but no Direct3D.

To further add to the confusion a quick check of Microsoft’s Virtualization FAQ states that although Direct3D is not supported in Virtual Server 2005, it makes no specific mention of Virtual PC.

Another Blog mentions that you need to install Virtual Machine additions in order to support Direct3D but I already have that added.

After further digging I find out that VPC actually emulates an S3 Trio video card so I’m totally outta luck, eh?

Kinda makes me wish I didn’t blow over that whole “XNA requires a Direct3D capable video card…” Sure my physical box has one, so let me at it…not realizing until now that the VPC emulates something completely different.

So I'm off to install everything on the laptop I used at Code Camp last week!

Starting with XNA

Lou Vega — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 23:02:00 GMT

OK - so I've spent the last couple hours downloading XNA Game Studio Express, Visual C# Express, and a boatload of other stuff from Microsoft so I can take the plunge and start learning game development with XNA. Basically after talking with the guys at PodcastStudio.NET during Code Camp last weekend about old school games, and game development in general I got more interested in XNA.The thing that really drove me was a tiny little comment in the FAQ which stated:

Q: Does the XNA Framework support Windows and Pocket PC devices?
A: The XNA Framework currently does not support Windows Mobile or Pocket PC devices, but based on customer feedback this may be a direction we expand the XNA Framework in the future. We know that developing games for is a hot area of growth and one we would like to support in the future.

If there's a chance this will be available for Pocket PC's of the future, I want to get started now so I can take full advantage if (hope!) it does happen down the road!

Now that I've got all my stuff downloaded I'm in the process of setting up a Virtual PC for my XNA adventures. Hopefully I'll have better luck with this than I did when I got the bright idea to try installing Vista on a VPC....(yeah I know there are workarounds *now* but they sure were lacking back when I tried in the first place!)

Oh.....Theo - we might have to do a “Theo and Lou“ show on XNA in the future so let me know when you're ready ;)