J2i.Net

I've uploaded some code I was working on to animate sprites in XNA.

Animating a sprite isn't difficult, but I wanted some way to animate them but reduce the coupling between code and the animation. The Content Pipeline is perfect for this. So I created a component that will handle the animation scenarios that I need along with a content extension so that I could load these animations as content. Right now the animation information is in an XML file. This is a stepping point towards having a graphical tool for handling this.

You can read about the code here or see a brief description of it in the video below

Tags: XNA, Windows Phone, Xbox, Game

I was working on a Windows Phone XNA example earlier and decided to run it on my Xbox. After duplicating the project as an Xbox 360 project I kept running into the same error that seemed to have no explanation. 

<pre>Building content threw InvalidOperationException D3DERR_NOTAVAILABLE</pre>

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It took a bit of time to figure out what was going on here. From doing a search on the Internet I found out that certain Direct3D programs cannot run at the same time as an XNA project. I don't fully understand why. But as it turns out the program that was causing me to experience this problem was the Zune client. Once I closed the Zune client I was able to compile and run my Xbox 360 program. Weird. 

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Tags: Windows Phone 7, Xbox

This is from one of the slides shared at GDC

• Visual Studio 2010
• XNA Game Studio 4.0
  • Silverlight and XNA Framework
  • Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox, and Windows Project Templates
  • Debugging Support
• C# Development
  • .Net Framework (Windows)
  • .Net Compact Framework (Xbox, Windows Phone 7 Series)

I can't help but notice VB.Net is missing (note: that is in no way a complaint, VB.Net was also unsupported in previous XNA versions). To use the Xbox Live APIs you must be partnered with Microsoft and meet additional certification requirements. So I won't talk much about Xbox Live services in the future. Most of us (including myself) won't have access to it.

Tags: XNA, Xbox, Windows Phone

XNA Game Studio will be made public within the next one to two months. Here's a few of the updates

• You'll be able to use the Mouse APIs on Windows Phones. The Mouse API will actually use the Multitouch functionality and return the position of rhte first point.
• There are two XNA Profiles, Reach and HighDef
  • The Reach profile prvide maximum compatibility across the three screens
  • The HighDef profile is for Xbox/PC. While it lacks WP7S Compatibility it lets you take advantage of the device's capabiities
• The Multitouch APIs are now available to Windows targets
• The ZuneHD won't be getting XNA 4.0
• XNA 4.0 isn't designed to be backwards compatibile with XNA 3.1. Compatibility was sacrificed in the interest of progress.
• Windows Phones will have the Same aspect ratio but different screen resolutions
  • To the developer both devices have the same resolution. WP7S contains hardware scaling
  • WP7S also contains hardware functionality for scree rotation
• Custom effects are not available on Windows Phone 7 Series
• Emulator will be available. You don't need to own a Windows 7 Phone.

Tags: Windows Phone, Xna, Xbox, WP7S