I was wondering If there was a way to have an xna game within a windows forms or in vice versa. I have found several examples online, but I couldn't understand what they were doing. I was also wondering if there was a way to make a sprite act like a button on a winforms...is it possible to click on a sprite?
Yes, on all.
Sprite act like a button on winforms:
use the onclick event
Xna Game within Windows Forms:
You would need to add a reference to the Xna.framework.something ... sorry kinda out of touch which class implements it but a lot of examples on the xna forums by the community
It should generate a toolbox control to be able to drag and drop.
Example: Nick Gravelyn's Tile Editor... it's youtube based which take you through it step by step.
Winforms into Xna Game:
I would say not to rely on adding a winform objects to xna games as it would not always work. e.g: running on xbox360 :D
Though, it would be same thing as above for the answer.
Examples: Winforms components into xna
Related
I am just a hobby programmer.. and even tough I know how, I don't want to mix windows forms and XNA for my level editor.
Has anyone done this before? Are there any examples around how to create "Windows like" controls for XNA, including events like mouse over, click and double-click and even accept keyboard input(if possible using language specific keyboard input)?
Below you find the basic layout of my editor but it needs so much more.
Yeah.
I'm now creating something like that.
See my project on Bitbucket.
I'm making own lib and voxel engine for Minecraft-like game. Just for fun.
So, in GameHelper lib you can fing folders Input (keyboard and mouse input) and GUI (forms and controls with events). I will be happy if it helps you, but there is almost no comment :P
Examples of use you can find in the Player class in main project (see ProcessInput method).
If you need I can give you better examples :)
since this is my very first time trying to make yet simple but useable sidescroller I'd like to ask some questions and hopefully gather ideas to make a good engine that can change the position of an Image in the form depending on X position of the drawn game character. I'd basically like to recreate just few seconds of a Mario game.
The starting Idea (correct me if it's wrong / poorly performance / whatever) would be to create a picture long in width and whit fixed height and upon the press of, for example, A or D keys, the drawn character moves till a certain X point, after that, character gets locked in place and if the key is still pressed, the background image starts moving.
But the problem there would be the fix for collisions, would be possible to check for the X position of the drawn background picture and set "collisions" accordingly for the character?
Other questions : why picturebox should be avoided at all costs and use the form itself instead ? Placing the greater part of the classes methods inside a timer_tick event is the wrong approach ? I read somewhere that the best way to do games of this kind would be relying on infinite loops in the forms main method, but I simply cannot even think how this could possibly works, taking in count all the times we may need to get out of the loop and do different code in different places.
Any other different ideas/approach and direct links to further explanations would be greatly liked
Edit : yes i'd like to improve with windows forms before moving to xna/unity
Assumption: You want to make a little game and its your first time working with moving graphics and you're working with WindowsForms. Suggestion: try using a more advanced framework such as MonoGame or XNA and working your way through introductory documentation and tutorials. Also WPF has a more advanced graphics platform for doing things like drawing and 3D, you may want to give that a shot.
To expand on my comment a bit.
Windows Forms and GDI (the tech behind drawing) aren't meant for this kind of use. When GDI was created its purpose was essentially drawing lines and fonts on the screen. XNA is a really good framework for learning the basics up to professional design. Unfortunately the XNA framework is no longer supported by Microsoft and as such MonoGame is the recommended development route for managed .NET 3D and 2D game development.
The WPF provides basic access to Direct3D and Direct2D, and has 2D and 3D shapes and animations built into the framework and is what WPF is based on.
But you also have the choice, if need be, to create an XNA component and embed it in a Windows Form as demonstrated in these two tutorials.
XNA in Windows Forms I
XNA in Windows Forms II
Also using a Windows Forms Timer isn't recommended because they are unreliable. The .Net Framework provides a 'Server Timer' and a 'Threading timer' that can be used as well.
If you are really keen on using GDI for a game may I recommend reading about the basics of game programming (I think there are a few XNA docs on the subject) that should guide you on things like the basic run time loop, getting input, and simple physics.
I'm new to XNA, however I managed to develop a pac man game. Now I'm trying to add some forms to the game to be used as a log in screen,but due to being an XNA project I can't add pictures to the form, any help pls?
Thx for your time
XNA doesn't work like WinForms, it isn't a GUI editor. Like you said, you can't add windows controls to a XNA application (unless you use a workaround, but that's not necessary for a login screen)
You'll need to use Game States to determine what to draw/update based on which menu you're currently in. The APP Hub has an example for that.
Can you use WinForms with XNA? I would like to use the drag and drop of the WinForms, and use XNA for animations and stuff.
I am wasting a lot of time coding the buttons (in XNA), so with this I thought it would speed my time up.
It is possible to create hybrid between Xna and Winform. Check out this project http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/winforms_series_1
Why not use WPF?! It has the same 'function' as WinForms and has the ability to implement animations in a simple way (much more simple than in WinForms anyway).
I will preface this by I am new to XNA and I realize what I am asking for doesn't exist.
However I am curious if I wanted to create something similar to a menustrip from winforms in XNA, how would I do that? Is there a best way? Or even a way?
I appreciate it, thanks!
Well, if you're only targeting windows, you can always render XNA in a winforms project or wpf app. Once you do that, you can use the built-in controls to render the menu.
If however you're looking for something that will work on xbox or windows phone, you will have to do the work of rendering and positioning the menu yourself using whatever rendering techniques you are familiar with (ie. SpriteBatch, etc.)
I found a possible solution, that will need further investigation:
http://neoforce.codeplex.com/
This should give me UI control w/o having to recode everything, unless I can just add an XNA pane to my winforms app
Edit:
neoforce appears to not work well with c# 2010. I did however find this: http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/winforms_series_1 which does work, to do as Joel Martinez mentioned of drawing an XNA form inside of a winform. It is not trivial but this example code should be enough for a jump start.