Over the past week I was writing an article about a simple way of managing XNA-based apps with VS2008 (Windows only). A couple of examples are attached and one of them has to do with WPF.

The article also shows how to embed a XNA-game into a WinForm control with ease.

Yesterday, after a long editing session, I finally uploaded it to "The Code Project" site. You can find it here:

http://www.thecodeproject.com/KB/game/XNA_And_Beyond.aspx

This is the first time I write for the TCP, so comments and suggestions are welcome.

Cheers!

As a side-note to advanced users who like to do msbuild customization -- our content pipeline cannot be used in VS 2008 at the moment. There is a compatibility bug in VS 2008 that affects our content pipeline, but it will be fixed in VS 2008 SP1.

Thanks guys for your notes :)

swisscheese:

The content pipeline is the only thing that will not work. It's the same story when GSE 1.0 only worked on express versions and not 2005. You can create an empty dll project in 2k5 which is used only for content processing and do the rest in 2k8 (it's a regular project with refrences). You can also move the templates around to get the wizard to work as well.

XNA Game Studio is a set of tools to facilitate programming against the XNA Framework. You cannot use XNA Game Studio 2.0 in VS 2008, because it doesn't install into VS 2008, and parts of it are incompatible with VS 2008. You can reference the XNA Framework assemblies from any managed project, in or any development environment (not just Visual Studio), but that isn't using XNA Game Studio -- it's just programming against the XNA Framework without XNA Game Studio!

Any development environment (including an "environment" made up of notepad.exe and csc.exe) can build managed assemblies that reference the XNA Framework. Not every development environment can host the Content Pipeline, provide an integrated way to configure the content builds, provide the ability to deploy and debug assemblies on an Xbox 360, support cross-platform development, or provide integrated help.

XNA Game Studio 3.0 will support VS 2008. The real path to using XNA Game Studio in VS 2008 begins with version 3.0. :-)

"The real path to using XNA Game Studio in VS 2008 begins with version 3.0."

lol

Stephen Styrchak:

There is a compatibility bug in VS 2008 that affects our content pipeline, but it will be fixed in VS 2008 SP1.

Obsurveyor:

Are you stating that XNA support for Visual Studio 2008 is going to be *dependent* on a Service Pack for VS2008?

Obsurveyor:

I want C# 3.0 support already.

For the PC platform I don't see a problem, but honestly I cannot answer whether you will be able to use it for the 360. Guys?

Brandon Bloom:

Obsurveyor:

Are you stating that XNA support for Visual Studio 2008 is going to be *dependent* on a Service Pack for VS2008?

No, he is stating that XNA Content Pipeline 2.0 under VS2008 is dependent on a service pack for VS2008. This means you will not be able to duct tape together a solution to use 2.0 under 2008.

Brandon is right. XNA Game Studo 3.0 will support VS 2008, and so far we have no reason to require VS 2008 SP1. The compatibility problem that prevents the 2.0 version of the Content Pipeline will be fixed in VS 2008 SP1, but we have no plans at all to update XGS 2.0 to get it to work with VS 2008. The backwards-compatibility problem affecting v2.0 will not be a problem for v3.0.

Ultrahead:

Obsurveyor:

I want C# 3.0 support already.

For the PC platform I don't see a problem, but honestly I cannot answer whether you will be able to use it for the 360. Guys?

Ultrahead:

Obsurveyor:

I want C# 3.0 support already.

For the PC platform I don't see a problem, but honestly I cannot answer whether you will be able to use it for the 360. Guys?

Hypothetically speaking, if there were no compatibility issues with VS 2008 and you could install XGS 2.0 into VS 2008, you still would not be able to use all of C# 3.0 for Xbox 360 games. The new features of C# 3.0 depend on new libraries that are only in the .NET Framework 3.5. These libraries don't have equivalents in the Xbox 360 framework.

Actually, anonymous types would work, but LINQ would not. I guess it depends on what feature of C# 3.0 you want to use.

We are expecting to have support for C# 3.0 on Xbox 360 in XGS 3.0. And on Zune, too. And of course on Windows.

Stephen Styrchak:

swisscheese:

The content pipeline is the only thing that will not work. It's the same story when GSE 1.0 only worked on express versions and not 2005. You can create an empty dll project in 2k5 which is used only for content processing and do the rest in 2k8 (it's a regular project with refrences). You can also move the templates around to get the wizard to work as well.

XNA Game Studio is a set of tools to facilitate programming against the XNA Framework. You cannot use XNA Game Studio 2.0 in VS 2008, because it doesn't install into VS 2008, and parts of it are incompatible with VS 2008. You can reference the XNA Framework assemblies from any managed project, in or any development environment (not just Visual Studio), but that isn't using XNA Game Studio -- it's just programming against the XNA Framework without XNA Game Studio!

Any development environment (including an "environment" made up of notepad.exe and csc.exe) can build managed assemblies that reference the XNA Framework. Not every development environment can host the Content Pipeline, provide an integrated way to configure the content builds, provide the ability to deploy and debug assemblies on an Xbox 360, support cross-platform development, or provide integrated help.

XNA Game Studio 3.0 will support VS 2008. The real path to using XNA Game Studio in VS 2008 begins with version 3.0. :-)

As I stated previously, the content pipeline will not work. That is a given. Deploying and debugging on the 360 won't either but if you are doing most of your work targetting windows then it's not a loss. You are right that anything can be used to develop against the framework, no argument there. I simply wanted to point out a coule of things since you really do "not" have to wait for GSE 3.0 to work on vs2008. When GSE 1.0 only worked on express it was a pain since these products did not support vss out of the box. The content processing/compiling is what you make of it. I personally do not change/edit my sprites, sound, etc on a daily/hourly basis. I care about the final output so having a separate project works for me. I treat it as a "resource only" project and compile it when I need it.

I simply wanted to say that you "can" use vs2008 if you really want to. It's not painless but certainly doable.

Stephen Styrchak:

... We are expecting to have support for C# 3.0 on Xbox 360 in XGS 3.0. And on Zune, too. And of course on Windows.

swisscheese:

... so having a separate project works for me. I treat it as a "resource only" project and compile it when I need it.

BTW, if my article generated all this discussion (sorry about that), then have a look at this guy's article from EA BioWare about XNA an VS2008:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/game/xna2.0vs2k8.aspx

On Sunday we put the clocks backward one hour :D

swisscheese:

I simply wanted to say that you "can" use vs2008 if you really want to. It's not painless but certainly doable.

You seem to have missed my point that XNA Framework and XNA Game Studio are two different things. You can use VS 2008 to program against the XNA Framework, no problem. I am not saying you can't. However, your claim was that you can get XNA Game Studio to work in VS 2008. That is false, because the tools don't work in VS 2008. I realize that you are saying "XNA Game Studio" in place of "XNA Framework," but it's the wrong name.

I'm trying to explain that what you said is wrong; but what you meant to say is correct.

Agree. Next topic, please :)

GG we both win   ;)   It's a matter of semantics but we're both correct.

For those that can't wait here's a usefull link http://xna-uk.net/files/folders/templates/entry985.aspx

swisscheese:

For those that can't wait here's a usefull link http://xna-uk.net/files/folders/templates/entry985.aspx]

Thanks for the link but I should point out that that project template has not been updated for XNA GS 2.0 and is unlikely to be, given what Stephen has said about a bug in VS 2008. When I need VS 2008 features I build the content seperately, either in 2005 or from the cmd line, using msbuild.