I'm writing a tile editor for a game and would like to be able to select which level file to open. Once open I would load the level into an XNA window and click to add/remove tiles to the level. When the editing is finished I would save the file layout back to the original file.
Currently I don't see a way to integrate windows forms and XNA. Is this even possible?
When I was working on a small, "2.5D" isometric game in XNA, I found it worth while to also have a separate WinForms version that would just render a 2D top-down view using GDI. This was due to my inexperience with XNA and my (relative) comfort using WinForms.
This approach also had the useful side-effect of enforcing separation between logic and rendering code. It made it easier (for me, at least) to test changes without having to worry about how to deal with the XNA rendering aspects.
It may not be exactly what you had in mind, but it might be something to consider.
WinForms and Xna can cooperate, but it's not recommended to use Xna's built in Game class with WinFroms. There are two samples demonstrating it:
http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/winforms_series_1
http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/winforms_series_2
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what would be my options if i would like to create a 2D action game in WPF(for the ease of building UI Layout) without having noticeable performance loss? The game should'nt have heavy physics calculations.
I did create XNA game in the past, and i know about the MonoGame project, but i am still unsure how to use WPF as a host for MonoGame and i didnt find a downloadable example of MonoGame in WPF.
Beside MonoGame, what will be the other options, if any?
Thanks in advance!
Have a look at SlimDX, both 3D and 2D are supported.
The tutorials have examples on integrating with WPF.
You could take a look at Nick Gravelyn's article which renders XNA inside of a WPF application. I believe MonoGame's API is very similar, if not identical, to XNA, so it shouldn't be a huge problem fixing any porting issues.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nicgrave/archive/2010/07/25/rendering-with-xna-framework-4-0-inside-of-a-wpf-application.aspx
or
http://www.jfmajor.com/post/38447851593/monogame-in-wpf
I do remember reading somewhere that a team attempting to render WPF controls over XNA/MonoGame (I forget which) did encounter some perf issues.
I think the approach taken by many (from what I've seen) is not to use WPF for rendering a UI and instead build the UI as part of the game/engine. WPF/WinForms can be used to build an editor, but again I believe the rendering of the game/world is embedded within a WPF/WinForms application using a UserControl similar to the articles mentioned above.
So... I want to make a game, and I want to write it in C#. In the past, I've made a mario clone using C++ and OpenGL. I quite like OpenGL, but I don't know how well it's supported inside C#/WPF. Also, it might be beneficial to use an actual game library? I guess XNA is the game library for C#, so maybe I'll invest a bit of time learning that.
However, I want to use WPF form controls for my level editor... is there any way that I can embed an XNA (DirectX?) window inside a WPF app?
Specifically, I don't need any buttons or things inside the XNA/DirectX widget, just around it, so no mixing required...just need to get a graphics widget in my WPF form.
Nick Gravelyn explains how to do it on his blog.
Although, if it's just for an editor, you may find using WinForms is easier and better supported.
First of all, you should ask this on gamedev.stackexchange.com. But I've seen a tutorial embedding XNA.
You should check this question and this page. They are on Windows Forms, but they'll help.
Also check this and this articles.
Keep in mind one thing. XNA is meant to be used for the whole game, integration would be useful on making level editors like you say, but not for a full game.
WPF uses DirectX, and you can do direct "interop" here is a codeProject article on the subject. Here is an article i dug up where the author is using win-forms and WPF controls in an XNA project. Might be worth a look for you.
I realise there are numerous questions on here asking about choosing between XNA and SlimDX, but these all relate to game programming.
A little background: I have an application that renders scenes from XML descriptions. Currently I am using WPF 3D and this mostly works, except that WPF has no way to render scenes offscreen (i.e. on a server, without displaying them in a window), and also rendering to a bitmap causes WPF to fallback to software rendering.
So I'm faced with having to write my own renderer. Here are the requirements:
Mix of 3D and 2D elements.
Relatively few elements per scene (tens of meshes, tens of 2D elements).
Large scenes (up to 3000px square for print).
Only a single frame will be rendered (i.e. FPS is not an issue).
Opacity masks.
Pixel shaders.
Software fallback (servers may or may not have a decent gfx card).
Possibility of being rendered offscreen.
As you can see it's pretty simple stuff and WPF can manage it quite nicely except for the not-being-able-to-export-the-scene problem.
In particular I don't need many of the things usually needed in game development. So bearing that in mind, would you choose XNA or SlimDX? The non-rendering portion of the code is already written in C#, so want to stick with that.
I haven't used SlimDX, but based on my experience with XNA and reading about SlimDX's objective. I'd suggest SlimDX. XNA while it can be used for other things is primarily a Game Engine, not a Rendering Engine. It's got lots of specific optimizations & methodology geared towards Games.
Also, XNA likes to pre-build it's resources into DirectX Files (.x) if you're working with dynamic files, I think SlimDX is the best choice for you.
XNA and SlimDX are very close in nature, but there are some differences:
XNA requires a GPU with a least pixel/vertex shaders 1.1 while I think SlimDX does not.
SlimDX supports DirectX10 and 11, while XNA only supports DirectX 9.
XNA is a cross platform between Windows, Xbox 360, Zune and Windows Phone 7, while SlimDX is not.
XNA has a strong community (creators.xna.com) with tons of tutorials and help materials.
I would go with XNA.
I am currently developing a 3d game using C#/SlimDX (The target is Direct3D 9). I've been looking for a suitable Game UI toolkit for a while, but I was unable to make up my mind.
The Game UI will be for a roleplaying game, so it'll be fairly complex and will involve quite a few controls (text boxes, inventory grids, list boxes, select boxes, scrollable areas, etc.).
I previously (When i was still using C++/OpenGL) looked at GameSWF and very much liked the idea, but for my current game it's out of the question.
Does anyone know a good GUI toolkit for use with SlimDX?
I would be especially interested in using WPF/Silverlight for this, since there are good IDEs available for both. But a quick google search didn't reveal any information on embedding these.
You can use WPF (but not Silverlight) for this.
The way to go about this is to use SlimDX in conjunction with D3DImage. You then let WPF handle all of your final composition, including overlaying the WPF UI over the top of your SlimDX scene.
SlimDX basically just renders to a brush in this situation, which can be used on any WPF element. (This doesn't work for Silverlight, as Sliverlight doesn't support D3DImage.)
I'm making a turn-based top-down game in C#. The graphics requirements are pretty simple: it's entirely 2D, requires drawing some images taken from graphics files (perhaps rotating them first), line drawing to make a hex grid and the ability to place text at any position on the screen.
I'm wondering what the best API is for doing these graphics. Is XNA overkill for this, is there something more appropriate? Thanks (I have zero experience of graphics or game development in .net so don't be afraid to dumb-down any answers).
I'd recommend XNA for this. If you don't want some of the overhead of XNA, I've found SlimDX to be a very nice little framework. They also provide some basic game classes to make this type of thing easy.
Doing your drawing directly in WPF is also fairly easy, but more difficult to extend later. XNA and SlimDX give you access to shaders, very fine grained control of alpha blending, as well as the potential to easily extend portions into 3D later if needed.
I've used the Farseer Physics engine before which was pretty cool and extremely easy to pickup (I am an enterprise developer, not a game developer). It works for Silverlight so you could actually make your game web based. I would suggest silverlight or WPF for 2D.
http://www.codeplex.com/FarseerPhysics
I would recommend WPF. Loading your graphics and moving them around should be fairly easy. Since WPF also is vector based, your line drawing is straight forward.
XNA would be the next step. Great support for sprite graphics and also gives you access to shaders.
If it is as simple as it sounds, and not even real-time, maybe you don't need any of this stuff. Drawing a hex grid and some images should not be hard even without a game engine. Maybe WPF would be good for this.
Given your requirement you could just use plain C# and the GDI (for 2d rastering). However learning XNA is easy enough, and it'll serve you well once you decide to make a realtime game (2d or 3d) down the road. Either way have fun, and if XNA seems to complicated when your starting out, just drop back to GDI. Making games should be as fun as playing them :)
XNA sounds like a good choise (it will better than using DirectX SDK !! and it is quite easy to learn)
You can do this by just using classes inside the System.Drawing namespace. And XNA is certainly overkill for this type of stuff. Also you would introduse many dependencies for your small game which might be an unwanted thing for your gamers.
Check out Unity 3D - it's based on C# and it can be used for 2D. It might be overkill (including price), but for game development it's in general HUGE help.