I have created a game using C# and Microsoft XNA 4.0. It works on fine on Windows 8 and 8.1, but my friend tried downloading it for a computer running Windows 10 and found that it wouldn't open. It wouldn't even appear in Task Manager when opening it was attempted. The computer in question has the Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 4.0 installed on it, so it should be working. Is Windows 10 simply not compatible with XNA?
XNA is no longer supported on newer versions of windows, it was discontinued and isn't supported on platforms newer than Windows 7. Luckily there is an open source implementation of XNA which is essentially the exact same thing and that is currently supported on all windows versions. It's called "MonoGame", here's the link to their website:
http://www.monogame.net/
I know this is a older post but just for those looking for an option like I was today (this post is still a top hit in google) its a bit of work to get setup, but XNA will in fact run on windows 10 just fine, and there is a way to actually use Visual Studio 2017 with XNA just fine as well:
http://flatredball.com/visual-studio-2017-xna-setup/
so if you have code for XNA or like the XNA framework (Like I do, I prefer the pure c# way not c# to some other bloated bridge like Unity) for 2D games then this will be your savior.
Enjoy :)
Some updates:
On March 14, 2016, ID#Xbox announced that MonoGame is coming to Xbox One:
* https://mobile.twitter.com/ID_Xbox/status/709402975051980800
In the FB group Xbox One Indie Devs, Tom Spilman from the MonoGame team had some information to add, more info coming soon.
* https://www.facebook.com/groups/XboxOneIndieDevs/permalink/852775944827686/
Stay tuned to the Twitter account and FB group mentioned above, for new info when available.
Hope that helps!
XNA does work on Windows 10 and even Windows 11. In 2021 I released a game using XNA Framework and it works but the user will have to install XNA Redistributable 4.0 for the game to run on their system so that's not ideal.
But then I ported my game to FNA Framework which is an open-source, identical, reimplementation of XNA. My codebase required almost no changes to work under FNA so I highy recommend it to you.
FNA requires no additional library installation. The DLLs need to be in the same directory with your executable and it will work.
You can see my game here if you are curious about the subject: https://cyon4d.itch.io/cozy-days
To add on what x2kpb said, your best bet at this point is to look at MonoGame for certain platforms, and FNA for others.
XNA, in its pure form, will not work as a new Windows 10 application. The platform to bring win32 (XNA) games to Win10 is called Project Centennial
Both Xbox One and Windows 10 will support MonoGame, per this video at last year's BUILD conference.
Related
I am trying to make an application that will be used on an MS Surface tablet and tried to create a Surface project on VS 2015. When I found that a Surface project is not part of the installed templates in VS 2015, I tried to download the SDK only to find out that it requires VS 2010 in order to use it. After noticing this, I'm starting to think that the Surface 2.0 SDK is no longer being used, but I wanted to make sure before I start looking for an alternative. If that is the case, what other types of templates could be used to create apps for MS Surface tablet?
As of now it would make more sense to just write a Windows Universal App if your targeting a Windows 8 tablet. This is available in Visual Studio 2015.
It's very confusing of Microsoft to have done this, but the big multi-user table-top devices that used to be called Surface, are now called PixelSense, and the Surface name now applies to a line of touchscreen-enabled laptop computers. This technote attempts to explain this.
I wasted a LOT of time with this confusion, and hope to spare others.
So I want to learn C# and XNA but after some research is came to my attention that XNA is apparently dead, and there is an alternate library called MonoGame which uses XNA framework.
So, can I use XNA lessons/ tutorials for MonoGame or are the major differences in the way programming is done depending on what you use making XNA tutorials completely useless for MonoGame?
Almost.
MonoGame doesn't use the XNA framework, it is a re-implementation of the XNA framework. The difference is that all of the code inside MonoGame has been re-written to behave identically to the XNA framework.
You're probably wondering why someone would want to re-implement something that already exists. Well, you're correct in saying that XNA is "dead" so to speak. You can in fact still use the XNA framework if you want but it's no longer supported by Microsoft on Windows 8 or above.
However, that's not really the primary reason MonoGame came about. The real reason is that XNA only works on Microsoft platforms (e.g. Windows, XBox, Windows Phone). MonoGame's purpose is to allow existing XNA code to be easily ported to other plaforms (e.g. iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, PlayStation Mobile and the OUYA console)
Yes, you can use XNA lessons / tutorials for MonoGame most of the time. MonoGame's code and behaviour is intended to work exactly like the XNA framework. I say intended, because it's not perfect but it does work very well and there are plenty of games already using MonoGame to prove it.
XNA can still be used on windows 8, despite the being not supported. To do so you have to install a n additional component first. You have to download Windows live Games redistributable, then XNA, and it will work on windows 8.
A 2022 updated answer,
craftworkgames answered best:
Yes, you can use XNA lessons / tutorials for MonoGame most of the time. MonoGame's code and behaviour is intended to work exactly like the XNA framework. I say intended, because it's not perfect but it does work very well and there are plenty of games already using MonoGame to prove it.
The following how-to is an updated expansion/extension of willthiswork89's answer. I do not suggest using it, but it is worthy of a modern answer.
As long as the DirectX9 runtime libraries are installed, XNA programs continue to run as of Windows 11. Do not forget to reboot after the DX9 installation.
The XNA installer will fail to run on modern versions of Windows. Start running the installer and leave the window open at the first prompt (to allow the installer extract the files, but before it deletes them), and find the temporary files in %tmp% or %temp%, Type this in File Explorer then sort by date (the folder name is a GUID and the newest one) and manually execute(double click) each of the .MSI files found.
The templates are a different story(MS VS > 2013). I suggest downloading a complete XNA example .SLN project, and cleaning it up after the update process, to provide a starting point.
You may still have to update the project references(the names match, but the versions may be different).
Note: GamerServices is mostly, if not totally, defunct.
I suggest using MonoGame < 4.0 as a cross-platform drop-in replacement for XNA. Instead of using this answer, since Monogame is feature complete and cross-platform.
If you prefer the old .sln project style, or require .Net framework 4.5, then look to Monogame 3.7.
I learned to program in C# and later on picked up XNA. To my disappointment I found out that XNA isn't supported in Windows 8 anymore. So I guess XNA is dying out. I would love to find something similar to it. I would love to find something that deals with 2D graphics (3D is little too much for me now) kinda like XNA did, because that's something I can't do in bare C#.Just the managing of pictures and audio. Thanks for help.
XNA is supported on windows 8 (in the desktop), just not for windows store apps.
If you want to create windows store apps then MonoGame was built to be a drop-in replacement for XNA. At the time of writing most is implemented, the notable exception being the content pipeline (you need to use XNA Game Studio to create the xnb files).
MonoGame is an Open Source implementation of the Microsoft XNA 4 Framework. Our goal is to allow XNA developers on Xbox 360, Windows & Windows Phone to port their games to the iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux and Windows 8 Metro. Windows Phone 8, OUYA and PlayStation Mobile development is currently in progress.
You can use MonoGame. MonoGame is a cross-platform, drop-in replacement for XNA on Windows, Linux, WinRT, Windows Phone 7/8, iOS and Android.
It is a mature project and many commercial, successful 2D/3D games have been created using this library.
While all of my machines are Macs, I actually really enjoy working in .NET. I thought it would be fun to try my hand at writing a Silverlight application. Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, Silverlight is not a part of Mono that actually works on OS X.
Is it possible to develop Silverlight on OS X, or will I need to use a VM? If it's possible, is Mono the only option, or is there some other way?
Have you heard of Moonlight?
Taken from the project page:
Moonlight is an open source
implementation of Silverlight
(http://silverlight.net), primarily
for Linux and other Unix/X11 based
operating systems. In September of
2007, Microsoft and Novell announced a
technical collaboration that includes
access to Microsoft's test suites for
Silverlight and the distribution of a
Media Pack for Linux users that will
contain licensed media codecs for
video and audio.
According to go-mono.com, you can use MonoDevelop to develop for Silverlight/Moonlight on Mac OS X.
I'd probably stick with a VM - I use VM's on my mac all the time, and Visual Studio is perfectly usable (obviously that does depend on your mac's spec)...
If you want it all for free, you can use VirtualBox, install windows on there (you can always use an evaluation if you don't own it), and then use Visual Studio Express - this SO question tells you how to set Visual Studio Express up for SL dev... Developing Silverlight in Visual Studio Express?
There was a Silverlight development tool that ran in Eclipse called Eclipse tools for Silverlight. It has a Mac version. It looks a bit stagnant though, so I don't know it's current status.
http://www.eclipse4sl.org/
MonoDevelop does have moonlight projects built-in, so there shouldn't be any issue.
Also- while this prob doesn't fit your case, I bootcamped my MBP and while it's freaky running Win7 + vStudio on mac hardware, it works quite well.
Silverlight is comptatible for MAC OSX via a separate project, whose name I forget. Microsoft release the source code for silverlight to some people that are working on implementing on other platforms, including MAC
However, this means that it's always at least one version late, so MAC users can have access to silverlight 3, but not 4.
Old Mac that are not intel processors, only have access to silverlight 1.
Look at this page for a compatiblity list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverlight#Silverlight_4
Will their be a new release of the compact framework with VS2010 and .net 4.0 and if so what new features will it include?
WPF?
linq to SQL?
etc
Visual Studio 2010 only supports developing for windows phone 7. This is a silver light based framework, it does not support win forms or native code.
VS2010 can not be used to develop for Windows Mobile 6.5 or lower.
You can however install VS2008 along side VS2010.
From what I heard from guys in redmond, there will be a mobile silverlight platform for both windows mobile and nokia (symbian, I think).
The "silverlight mobile" platform should be built on top of the compact framework, so it will NOT be a port of the desktop version.
There seems to be an information embargo on Windows Mobile right now, but I think things will be much clearer once Windows Mobile 7 is out.
I'm not sure about 4.0 for compact devices (although it seems likely),
and I don't know about WPF either, but I can tell you they are going to provide Silverlight for mobile devices giving you access to a subset of WPF.
Haven't found any other references yet...
You can go here and vote to have Microsoft add Compact Framework Support for Visual Studio 2010.
UPDATE: MS has more or less abandoned existing feature requests in Connect. Please go to the new User Voice site to vote for this feature.
There's an unofficial release of CF 3.7 kicking around the intertubes:
http://www.google.com/search?q=compact+framework+3.7&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1
It appears that someone ripped it off a ROM image and dropped it in a torrent.