Render Target Changes in XNA Game Studio 4.0
The Shawn of Hargreaves details the changes to the render target API in XNA Framework 4.0. The high level summary of these changes are:
RenderTarget2Dinherits fromTexture2DandRenderTargetCubefromTextureCubeto properly denote the Is-a in the API (no moreRenderTarget*.GetTexture())- Multiple render targets are set at once without explicitly specifying its index and all previous set render targets are unset automatically
- An optional depth buffer for a render target is now a property of the render target itself, which might be shared across multiple render targets if certain conditions are met
For the motivation and details of these changes see Rendertarget changes in XNA Game Studio 4.0.
RIP Point Sprites, We Hardly Knew Thou
The Shawn posted an obituary to (for?) the point sprites, explaining the reasoning behind their removal from the XNA Framework 4.0. Also, he shares 360 performance details of the alternatives, indicating that there is no real penalty to be paid.
XNA Game Studio and Windows Phone Emulator Compatibility
Michael Klucher puts some more details onto the sparse information in the CTP readme about XNA Game Studio and Windows Phone Emulator Compatibility, outlining the requirements to get the emulator running on Vista SP2 and the demands on the GPU.
Windows Phone Developer Tools and XNA Game Studio 4.0 Available Now
While we are waiting for the MIX10 coverage of the Sergeant here’s the Windows Phone Developer Tools + XNA Game Studio 4.0 Available Now! post by Michael Klucher. To add some more content to this post:
In the Windows Phone Developer Tools Preview you’ll find:
- Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
- Windows Phone 7 Series Add-in for Visual Studio, for developers already working with Visual Studio 2010 RC1
- Windows Phone 7 Series emulator
- XNA Game Studio 4.0
More on XNA Game Studio 4.0 and Windows Phone Support
Says the Klucher through the tweets of The Shawn:
Demo [Harvest, developed by Luma Arcade] looks awesome, full 3D, animating characters. More will be shown at MIX next week.
The game loop on the phone is similar to existing platforms, but tweaked for power efficiency.
The phone graphics is an evolution of the existing immediate mode rendering API, 2D and 3D:
- New configurable effects: BasicEffect, SkinnedEffect, EnvironmentMapEffect, DualTextureEffect, AlphaTestEffect
- Custom programmable shaders are not supported on the phone
- Image scaler:
- lets you render to any size backbuffer, and have this automatically scaled to fill the screen
- lets the same game run on both 800x480 and 480x320 display sizes without special coding
- provides automatic rotation to support portrait, landscape left, and landscape right modes
- the image scaler is free: it uses dedicated hardware so does not consume any GPU
Portability: the ability to target three screens. Portability lets you target more sockets with a smaller time investment. Portability is not just about the same game running on different platforms, it is also valuable to share infrastructure, knowledge, etc.
Framework feature profiles:
- Reach: broad base of devices including phones
- HiDef: Windows and Xbox only
“Focus on being a game developer, not plumbing the underlying technology”
“Michael Klucher plugs forums.xna.com, says our MVP's are awesome and do a great job answering questions.”
“Michael Klucher gets applause!”
The will be more talk about the Marketplace and the Windows Phone emulator at the MIX next week.
XACT is part of the HiDef feature profile, so not on the phone: use SoundEffect (+ 4.0 enhancements) on the phone.
Ozymandias has an article about how to get in touch with Microsoft to get access to Xbox LIVE on the phone.
Update (2010-03-11 02:31 GMT): The Shawn has another blog post up, high-level-detailing some Windows Phone support related work done.