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!

Remember that the VS 2008 system is not supported, you my be able to get it to work but if support is needed you should really drop back to 2005.

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 :)

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.

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.

Are you stating that XNA support for Visual Studio 2008 is going to be *dependent* on a Service Pack for VS2008?  So if the Service Pack takes longer to come out(almost certain) than the next drop of XNA, Visual Studio 2008 support is out?  That is pretty lame.

I want C# 3.0 support already.  I am sooo tired of typing every class name twice in XNA development after developing with VS2008 for awhile.

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.

Although it is still a possibility that XNA GS 3 could depend on VS2008SP1, I'd assume the XNA team would prefer not to take the dependency if it is a schedule risk (much like why VS 2008 support was not included in 2.0). So don't worry, it outlook looks quite good for 3.0 & 2008.

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?

Depending on the feature it will work. For instance, using the 'var' keyword, extension methods, and using the shorthand property features are compiler features, so it won't matter once you compile it down. The MSIL will look like you typed in the whole type, used the static method, or wrote the whole property, so the Xbox CLR won't need any updating for that. As for things like LINQ I'm really not sure how they work yet, so I can't comment on whether those require updates to the CLR.