Even when I did not post much last week I was very busy converting all the old XNA 1.0 games to XNA 2.0. I did not only convert all projects (8 games in total, see below), but I also tested them extensively on Windows XP, Vista (32 and 64 bit) and the Xbox 360. Additionally a lot of usability improvements have been implemented in the games, for example the XNA Shooter is now much easier (was almost impossible to even reach 50% of the level) and a lot more fun due better balancing. The XNA Racing Game has now a better physic engine and will not longer let the car fly out of the track or leave ground in loopings. Due the better input control and fixed physics the cars drive now much faster and it is more challenging to complete the tracks in shorter time frames.

Games in this article:

• Chapter1Game
• Xna Pong
• Xna Breakout
• Xna Tetris
• Rocket Commander Xna
• Xna Shooter
• Xna Racing Game
• Dungeon Quest GDC

Please read my previous post about Converting XNA 1.0 games to XNA 2.0 for all technical tips. All the games can also be found on http://XnaProjects.net, but I will also make them easier accessible on this blog soon, which has an update overdue (need to clean up the left and right sides) ^^

Thanks to the great VS2005 support of XNA 2.0 all games have now just one single solution file, which works on Windows and the Xbox 360. The projects can be opened in XNA Game Studio 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 without having to convert the files over and over again like in the past. The Icons for all games were also improved. Lets take a look at the Icons (.ico files) on Windows:


For the Xbox 360 game icons the .png files (usually named GameThumbnail.png) are used:


Ok, let's take a look at the games and what has changed for them. Most games are pretty much the same as for XNA 1.0, but a lot of smaller bugs were fixed and they have been tested more.

• Chapter1Game: This application is not really a game, but a test project to check out if XNA 2.0 is properly working on both Windows and the Xbox 360. It is from the first chapter of my book "Professional XNA Game Programming". BTW: The second edition of the book is coming out soon, there are 3 more chapters about Multiplayer game programming and a cool new role playing game.
  
  
  • Game Installer: Chapter1GameSetup.exe (210 KB)
  • Source Code and Game Content: Chapter1GameSourceCode.zip (57 KB)
  • Screenshot:
    
    
    
• Xna Pong: Xna Pong is a simple clone of the favorite pong game from 1978. It is just a few hunderd lines of code and should be very easy to understand.
  
  This game is from the book "Professional XNA Game Programming" by Benjamin Nitschke. For more information read chapter 2. (2008-02-10: Now updated to XNA 2.0)
  
  
  • Game Installer: XnaPongSetup.exe (309 KB)
  • Source Code and Game Content: XnaPongSourceCode.zip (258 KB)
  • Screenshot:
    
    
    
• Xna Breakout: XNA Breakout is a simple Breakout/Arcanoid game based on the XNA Pong game from the previous chapter.
  
  It is fully described and covered in Chapter 3 of my book "Professional XNA Game Programming". The code is quite short and should be easy to understand. (2008-02-10: Now updated to XNA 2.0)
  
  
  • Game Installer: XnaBreakoutSetup.exe (383 KB)
  • Source Code and Game Content: XnaBreakoutSourceCode.zip (316 KB)
  • Screenshot:
    
    
    
• Xna Tetris: This is a simple, but highly addictive Tetris game. You can control the blocks with your cursor keys, aswd or a game pad and the game works both on Windows and the Xbox 360. Reaching levels above 5 is really hard. My highest level was 9, try to reach more :) (2008-02-10: Now updated to XNA 2.0)
  
  This game introduces the helper classes (chapter 4 of my book) and makes more use of unit testing and game components in XNA.
  
  
  • Game Installer: XnaTetrisSetup.exe (310 KB)
  • Source Code and Game Content: XnaTetrisSourceCode.zip (277 KB)
  • Screenshot:
    
    
    
• Rocket Commander Xna: XNA port of the famous Rocket Commander game. The game principle stayed the same, but the controls were a little bit simplified to make it more fun on the Xbox 360.
  
  If you want to learn more about the Rocket Commander game, check out its official website www.RocketCommander.com and check out the Video Tutorials on Coding4Fun by MSDN. (2008-02-10: Now updated to XNA 2.0, also supports very big resolutions now and runs faster on the Xbox 360)
  
  
  • Game Installer: RocketCommanderXnaSetup.exe (16.5 MB)
  • Source Code and Game Content: RocketCommanderXnaSourceCode.zip (52.8 MB)
  • Screenshot:
    
    
    
• Xna Shooter: Shoot'n'up game specifically created for my book "Professional XNA Game Programming". It features full HDTV support, runs on Windows and the Xbox 360, 5 weapon types, 5 enemy types, a powerful ship and some power ups. It is quite fun to play and it gets harder and harder the longer you play. Based partly on the Rocket Commander XNA engine, but also features lots of new effects and shaders. (2008-02-10: Now updated to XNA 2.0, also much easier and balanced)
  
  This game and the racing game are the most improved. The game works now much better in high resolutions and on the Xbox 360. But most importantly the game is now much easier, balanced and more fun. Additionally a level percentage is now visible on the bottom and more EMP bombs can be picked up to make it easier at the end of the level.
  
  • Game Installer: XnaShooterSetup.exe (14.9 MB)
  • Source Code and Game Content: XnaShooterSourceCode.zip (32.2 MB)
  • Screenshot:
    
    
    
• Xna Racing Game: XNA Racing Game Starter Kit I wrote for http://creators.xna.com. More information and more downloads can be found on http://XnaRacingGame.com. It runs best on the Xbox 360 in HDTV (1920x1200), but it also runs fine on the PC. (2008-02-10: Now updated to XNA 2.0, driving also improved a lot, better tested on Xbox 360 and fixed some issues).
  
  Following things were improved: Shadow mapping on very big resolutions works now (crashed before), more options for lower quality settings, fixed physics, car now always stays on the road, fixed loopings, cars are much faster now, winning conditions work better now, and fixed several other bugs.
  
  • Game Installer: XnaRacingGameSetup.exe (40.2 MB)
  • Source Code and Game Content: XnaRacingGameSourceCode.zip (95.4 MB)
  • Screenshot:
    
    
    
• Dungeon Quest GDC: And finally the Dungeon Quest XNA Game, which was developed in just 4 days on the GDC 2007 at the XNA Contest. Dungeon Quest GDC is a relatively complex 3D role playing game (at least for just 4 days of work). An early version even supported coop multiplayer on the Xbox 360 via splitscreen. The game was developed by Benjamin Nitschke (abi.exDream.com) and Christoph Rienaecker (WAII). (2008-02-10: Now updated to XNA 2.0). This is NOT the full Dungeon Quest game (see www.DungeonQuestGame.com for that), this is just the GDC version.
  
  Please note that the level was reduced to allow loading on the Xbox 360 (which otherwise crashes with an OutOfMemoryException), the game is not fully playable, only the first part is implemented. You can also press F2 to toggle the Options menu and some minor bugs were fixed. But this game is no longer supported, I will not improve it anymore! Please check out the new Dungeon Quest game from www.DungeonQuestGame.com, which is coming in a month or so.
  
  • Game Installer: DungeonQuestGDCSetup.exe (25.6 MB)
  • Source Code and Game Content: DungeonQuestGDCSourceCode.zip (67.2 MB)
  • Screenshot:
    
    
    

Have fun with all the games :)

When I wrote this (a little bit each day while working on converting the old XNA projects) I was very aware about the disappointment of my blog readers about the fact that I did not blog much in the last couple of months, especially on XNA. I not only got a lot of emails about that, but also quite a lot of questions, especially since XNA 2.0 was released. I made yet another promise to myself to change that and finally blog more, maybe not only when something very interesting pops up, but instead about the everyday issues I run into.

Some Notes about XNA 2.0: More solid, lots of little new features, networking, while it may not be a very complete solution, at least it is now possible on the Xbox 360 and overall I have the feeling even more people are interested in XNA than a year ago. Plus the guys at the XNA Team doing a great job and are constantly improving the XNA Creators Club website for us game programmers and artists :)


Several people had problems using the old XNA 1.0 code of my games and make them work with XNA 2.0, so here is a little help in case you want to convert XNA 1.0 projects to XNA 2.0. You will also notice this if you go to any XNA community site as most samples will still be in XNA 1.0 and not work out of the box in XNA 2.0, and many of those will probably never be changed since they are not longer actively being developed.

For most games almost all of the code can stay unchanged, you just have to poke at a few things that have changed in the framework or were improved. More information about converting projects can be found here (read this first, this article is based on the stuff there). You can also use the Cross-Platform Game Project Converter from XNA 2.0 to add a Xbox 360 project to your existing Windows XNA project without having to create a separate project (it is helpful, but I used pretty much the same trick for all of my XNA 1.0 games anyway).

Let's go through the steps:

1. Either use the XNA project conversion utility (can be found on the XNA Creators Club website) or just create a new XNA 2.0 project in VS 2005.
   
   
2. If you created a new project, drag all source code files into the project and seperate the content files out and put them all in the existing Content directory (only there the content pipeline is activated). If you just converted a project and the content files did not move, move them yourself to the content directory. Gladly all my projects with more than 5 content files had a special content directory anyway, so no need to change anything content-wise for them. If you don't want some of the files to be compiled to .xnb files, you have to change the build action from "compile" to "content" (and then use the "copy to output directory" switch) or to "none" if you want them to be ignored like for .wav files, which are automatically processed by the .xct (XACT) file for you.
   
   
3. Find the line content = new ContentManager(Services); and replace it with Content.RootDirectory = "Content";. If you do that, get rid of the content manager in your game class since you can now use the build-in Content property to access the underlying Game content manager. In case you don't want to do that or if you need an extra variable, replace the above line with content = new ContentManager(Services, "Content");. Both ways will make sure all the content is now loaded from the content directory instead from the main directory of the application. In more complex XNA games you can also change the BaseGameDirectory to the content directory, but then you would also have to move all other resource files to this directory (config files, save games, levels, etc.). It is usually a good idea to separate the compiled (.xnb) content from the content the user can change (config, levels, etc.), so I suggest just redirecting the content directory of the content manager.
   
   
4. Replace the LoadGraphicsContent(bool) method with LoadContent, remove all the if (loadAllContent) commands (was never false anyway, just let the content of the if loop stay) and also remove the call to base.LoadGraphicsContent(bool) (does not do anything like all the Load or Unload methods in the XNA Game class, they are just empty virtual methods). You can also ignore this and the next step since it will only generate depreciated warnings, but I suggest cleaning up your source code whenever an opportunity like this presents itself. I also added some missing region blocks to the code and some comments here and there were they were missing.
   
   
5. Finally delete the UnloadGraphicsContent method unless it did anything beside base.Unload and base.UnloadGraphicsContent. In my XNA games the UnloadGraphicsContent usually looked like this and can be safely removed now (at least if nothing else is in there):

/// <summary>
/// Unload graphic content if the device gets lost.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="unloadAllContent">Unload everything?</param>
protected override void UnloadGraphicsContent(bool unloadAllContent)
{
  if (unloadAllContent == true)
    content.Unload();

  base.UnloadGraphicsContent(unloadAllContent);
} // UnloadGraphicsContent(loadAllContent)



6. In case you load sound and music via the AudioEngine, you have to change the directory to the content directory too, which will not be done automatically for you since you load the .xct file directly in the AudioEngine constructor. Basically just exchange the following code:
   
   

   audioEngine = new AudioEngine("YourSound.xgs");
   waveBank = new WaveBank(audioEngine, "Wave Bank.xwb");
   soundBank = new SoundBank(audioEngine, "Sound Bank.xsb");
   

   with:
   

   audioEngine = new AudioEngine("Content\\YourSound.xgs");
   waveBank = new WaveBank(audioEngine, "Content\\Wave Bank.xwb");
   soundBank = new SoundBank(audioEngine, "Content\\Sound Bank.xsb");

      
   
7. In case you have used the StorageDevice and specifically the ShowStorageDeviceGuide helper method, it is gone now in XNA 2.0. I had it in some helper classes, but never actually used it. In case you want to show a save game dialog (or some network game select dialog for example), please follow the XNA 2.0 help instructions to do this asynchronously now.
   
   
8. In case you use any ResourceUsage enum, replace it with TextureUsage instead or remove it if the issue is not texture related. You can also safely remove any ResourceManagementMode.Automatic parameters, which are not longer supported. Everything is now automatic anyway. Just if you have been using ResourceUsage.RenderTarget you will need to change the Texture2D class to a ResolveTexture2D class in order to archive the same behaviour as before. Some calls to the device (e.g. ResolveBackBuffer) have also changed and require a ResolveTexture2D now. You may also want to check if you have any manual texture management or disposing, which you can remove or simplify.
   
   
9. For simpler games (2D) games you should be done now. More complex games using render targets and other features that have changed in XNA 2.0 will require some more changes, but after you have done them once (or know where to change what) this is also a quick process.

The following only applies to the RocketCommanderXna, XnaShooter and XnaRacingGame engines, but you might find similarities with other XNA games and the converting process:

1. First of all make sure the old XNA 1.1 code gets compileable by going though the changes mentioned above (e.g. replacing ResourceUsage with TextureUsage or BufferUsage) and removing everything that does not exist anymore (like ResourceManagementMode.Automatic). If a method is non-existent in XNA 2.0 like ResolveRenderTarget, comment it out and remember where it happened.
   
   
2. You might go through other issues, but you have to come back to the RenderTarget issue. This took the most time in the converting process for me (probably half of all my issues come by something related to changes with RenderTargets in XNA 2.0). For that reason always make sure that rendering to textures still works while you make changing. I always used the TestCreateRenderToTexture unit test inside the RenderToTexture class to figure things out.
   
   
3. Additionally to making some changes in the BaseGame class (loading content via LoadContent, using the base.Content instead of creating a new content manager, etc.) I also removed all the RenderTarget helper methods and fields from the BaseGame class (SetRenderTarget, ResetRenderTarget, etc.) and moved them into the RenderToTexture class. While this makes the code more clean and restructured by making a few more fields private, if you do not call the new InitializeDepthBufferFormatAndMultisampling of the RenderToTexture class the calls to SetRenderTarget and ResetRenderTarget will not work correctly and will not restore the default depth buffer (which has to be remembered first). If you get the following exception it means the DepthBuffer Device.DepthStencilBuffer was set to null, but is obviously still used. In order to fix that make sure the remDepthBuffer variable is set to a correct value in the InitializeDepthBufferFormatAndMultisampling method!
   


An error has occurred during the Clear operation while trying to clear the depth or stencil buffer, no DepthStencilBuffer surface exists.
System.InvalidOperationException: An error has occurred during the Clear operation while trying to clear the depth or stencil buffer, no DepthStencilBuffer surface exists.
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.GraphicsDevice.Clear(ClearOptions options, Color color, Single depth, Int32 stencil, Rectangle[] regions)
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color color)

   

4. 4. Even if you have now done everything, the app may still crash when you are trying to clear a render target (which usually happens at the start of each pre or post screen shader). The reason for the following error is the multi sampling format, which might be set to the background buffer, but not to the render targets:
   

   
   The active render target and depth stencil surface must have the same pixel size and multisampling type.
   System.InvalidOperationException: The active render target and depth stencil surface must have the same pixel size and multisampling type.
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.GraphicsDevice.VerifyDepthRenderTargetCompat()
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.GraphicsDevice.Clear(ClearOptions options, Color color, Single depth, Int32 stencil, Rectangle[] regions)

      
   In order to get rid of this error without changing the RenderToTexture class a lot, you can just comment out the line where multi sampling is activated in BaseGame:
   

   //this.graphics.PreferMultiSampling = true;

There are probably even more things that I forgot while converting the projects (converted 8 games and about 15 projects in total now), but the above list should be helpful. Especially for me because I always forget some of those little things and having this checklist is very helpful.

Tomorrow I will probably test all the XNA 2.0 games on my Xbox 360 and make some final adjustments and then post them all on http://XnaProjects.net (and here).

Hi everyone,

I prepared some new exciting blog posts, especially about XNA and I will post them shortly and also quite a few things will change at this blog. Stay tuned.

Recently one of my companies (namely realis) moved to Hamburg and I have a new PC at the new office, where I installed Visual Studio 2008 and everything else I needed. After I downloaded the latest source code files from Team System, I ran into some problems. BTW: The Team System trial will end next month and I will probably not switch back to SubVersion, but instead go back to Visual SourceSafe since the integration is the best in Visual Studio. Team System is nice to have but absolutely not something important for me as I'm most of the time the only guy using it anyways.

Back to the Problem. After I loaded the main solution the 2 web applications in it were unable to be loaded. The rest of the projects did load fine and worked after a while until I had all the missing Assemblies installed (xunit, Ajax stuff, Silverlight, IronPython, EntitySpaces, etc.). But even after making sure Silverlight and the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio Alpha was installed and working (checked it by creating a new Silverlight project, which worked fine), I was still unable to load those projects. I thought at first maybe something went wrong when I checked in or out all the files, but after testing it on my laptop this was not the issue, all files are intact. Everything worked just fine on my laptop, where I had done most of my work during the move and first weeks until everything was finally working here.

After digging around a bit I went back to the IIS were those 2 websites should run on and they did not run yet (not compiled yet, no wonder). But even after I pointed to some dummy website the IIS did throw out some errors (first some dlls were missing, they were quickly replaced, then some security issues with Vista, also easy). Then I pointed back to the location of the projects and made sure IIS was working this time. Now I could go back to Visual Studio and finally load the web projects.

If you have such a InteropServices.COMException, try to see if you have missed something like the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio Alpha and then figure out if your IIS is working. You can also edit the .csproj file and remove the references to IIS at the very end of the file to see if the project can then be loaded (using IIS again is not hard through the project properties).

Hope this helps (phase stolen from ScottGu, btw: really cool stuff going on over there, the ASP.NET MVC framework is nice and the .NET Framework SourceCode is very helpful!)

As mentioned here in the official press message from Microsoft XNA 2.0 was released today after a very short beta phase which did only run for a few weeks.

You can download XNA 2.0 from Creators.Xna.Com, but for now it just says "XNA Game Studio 2.0 will be available early morning, Thursday Dec 13th, 2007 PST.". This will hopefully change soon ^^

http://creators.xna.com/Education/GettingStarted.aspx

Since XNA 2.0 is now out I will talk about some of its new features shortly and comment a little bit about the new networking API and Xbox LIVE features. Stay tuned.

The long awaited XNA Game Studio 2.0 beta is now available and can be downloaded from the XNA Creators Club website: http://creators.xna.com/beta/betahome.aspx

My first impression of the new multiplayer API is not that good. While it is very nice to have the ability to use networking on the Xbox 360, it is not only too hard to make it work on just a Windows PC and secondly you cannot expect that your gamers will both have a Xbox LIVE Gold membership AND a XNA Creators Club membership (both cost money). This means if you really want to do networking on a Windows XNA 2.0 game, you have to use System.Net and write it all yourself or no one will ever play your game on Windows except some XNA developers maybe.

Other than that XNA 2.0 is a great improvement, but it does only work with VS2005 yet, maybe they missed the VS2008 release earlier yesterday ^^ But it will probably be possible to modify the .csproj files again to make it work in VS2008 (without the extra XNA features and content pipeline).

Ziggyware has a good overview of the XNA 2.0 announcements and GameFest conference sessions in the following post. Check it out if you are interested in the new XNA 2.0 features (mainly networking, which is really a big step forward). It is also nice to see so many new XNA games and development efforts :)

http://www.ziggyware.com/news.php?readmore=407

Microsoft XNA: Ready for Prime Time?

is the name of the Article of the CoDe Magazine. It is very well written and a really long (9 pages) read with tons of information in it.
Together with 6 other guys I was interviewed about my experiences with XNA and the development process of the
XNA Racing Game and Dungeon Quest, which are 2 of the best looking XNA games so far :)

Check it out, good work Nick Landry.

Hey! Finally some News about Game Development again. All this Silverlight and VS2008 stuff is nice, but XNA has become pretty popular recently (lots of posts in blogs, more articles everywhere and a lot more news).

Anyway, I wanted to release the Dungeon Quest Source Code for several months now, but I never found the time to package everything up, do some cleanup and release it. Recently some people have requested the source code and emails keep coming in. To finally make everyone happy, here is the new Dungeon Quest version with some nice additions, much cleaner code with quite a lot of refactoring and some nice unit tests (see below). This version also does not require PS3.0 anymore, you can now run Dungeon Quest on a PS2.0 graphic card!

First of all: The downloads, all of them can be found on XnaProjects.net too:

• DungeonQuestSetup.exe (40 MB): Game installer for Windows with everything you need to play.
  
  
• DungeonQuestSourceCodeAndContent.zip (103 MB): Full Dungeon Quest source code with all content files.
  Please note that the collada files (xml text format) and the sound/music are very big (extracted ~200 MB).
  This download also contains the full game in the bin/debug/ directory, you only need to download this file
  for development and testing.
  Contains solution and project files for VS2005, VC# Express (XNA Express) and Xbox 360!
  
  
• DungeonQuest.wmv (21 MB): Higher quality version of the YouTube video below
  
  

Here is the good old YouTube video from the game to give you a first view if you don't know about Dungeon Quest yet.



If you want to drive into the source code I highly recommend starting all the unit tests in Program.cs after checking out the directory structure of the project:

• UIManager.TestUI();
  Show the graphical user interface of the game (boxes for health, player values, rpg levels, etc.)
  
  

• ShaderTests.TestNormalMappingShader();
  Test the normal mapping shader, for more shader tests check out the XNA Rocket Commander and XNA Racing Game projects.
  
  

• ColladaModel.TestCaveColladaModelScene();
  This tests the big cave collada file (80 MB) and renders it with the cave shader. Looks very nice.
  
  

• ColladaModel.TestLoadStaticModel();
  This is straight from the SkiningColladaModelsWithXNA project from February. This test show shows a static collada model.
  
  

• AnimatedColladaModel.TestPlayerColladaModelScene();
  Also from the SkinningColladaModelsWithXNA project. This shows the player or the goblins running, dying, staying, etc.
  This is a useful unit test to test animations for skinned collada models.
  
  

• PostScreenGlow.TestPostScreenGlow();
  Test post screen glow, more details can be found in the Rocket Commander tutorials and most of my XNA projects.
  
  

• PlaneRenderer.TestRenderingPlaneXY();
  Test to render a plane on the ground, which is also used in some other tests. Also good for testing shaders.
  
  

• ShadowMapShader.TestShadowMapping();
  Test Shadow Mapping unit test, pretty complex stuff, but kinda nice for this game. More details can be found in my book, this is a complex topic and involves a lot of finetuning to get it right.
  
  

• EffectManager.TestEffects();
  Since DungeonQuest uses some effects for fire, smoke, blood, etc. it has a simple effect system build in. Use this test to see whats possible and to extend the effect system.
  
  

• StringHelper.TestConvertStringToFloatArray();
  An example of a dynamic unit test, which can also be started from NUnit or TestDriven.Net (right click if you have the addin installed).
  
  

• Sound.TestPlaySounds();
  And another test to play the sound effects used in the game, just press A, B, 1, 2, 3, etc. to play sounds.
  
  

• ColladaModel.TestCaveColladaModelSceneSplitScreen();
  This test shows how the engine supports split screen support, but it was never fully implemented into the game itself yet.
  To finish this the game logic + handling input from 2nd player has to be implemented.

Some Screenshots from the last post on my blog about Dungeon Quest:

Ok, let's get started. What is this guy doing there. He doesn't look very friendly, maybe it is better to hit him in the head!

First quest completed. This key is important to open the door to the second level.

Nonstop fighting action. Well, at least if you don't lose your way.

This is how it looks like after I got angry. I told those guys, don't start any fights!

Ohh no. I did not use all my skills (see right side) and this Ogre killed me too quickly. I guess I have to start over.

The credit screen when the game ends. Notice my book :)

No reason to stop, let's start over and try again. The fight is continuing. The game is not that hard, you just have to use all skills and avoid being hit by fireballs or big enemies when you have low hit points.

I hope you like Dungeon Quest and that the source code can be useful for your XNA projects. Enjoy!

I wrote a little tool almost a year ago to help me coding XNA directly in VS 2005 instead of using XNA Game Studio Express, which does not support addins. I wrote a little bit about that back then, but for some strange reason I never published my tool. I also wrote about it in my book "Professional XNA Game Programming" in chapter 1 at the end.

Recently I got some emails requesting this tool and I still had to test it for the final XNA version and I also want to add support for VS 2008 (also called orcas; vs 2008 beta 2 comes next week hopefully, yay!).

This tool does not do much, but it is still very useful like the AnnoyingFilesRemover. I use it almost daily when developing and testing XNA projects. It converts projects from VS Express to VS 2005 and VS 2008 and back, you can also use it for VS 2008 (Orcas) projects, which can be openend in VS 2005 again (and compile if you don't use .NET 3.5, but even that works to a certain degree with the LINQ May 2006 CTP). I will try to update this tool when newer versions of XNA (like the XNA Game Studio 2.0) and VS 2008 (like the beta 2 next week) come out, exciting times are ahead :)

The tool looks like this, the most useful button is "Save and Open Project", which convert and then starts the selected VS version:

And here is the installer plus source code:

• XnaProjectChangerSetup.zip (79.76 KB)

• XnaProjectChanger.zip (34.95 KB)

PS: VS2005 and VS2008 both do NOT support the XNA Content Pipeline. I suggest just starting to write XNA games in VS2005/VS2008 and then switch to XNA Game Studio Express when you need and want to use the content pipeline (or use a library in VS2005 and write the game with XNA Game Studio Express).

You can also use the also use the XNA Content Builder to create .xnb files yourself:
http://www.codeplex.com/xnadevru/Wiki/View.aspx?title=XNA%20Content%20Builder%20(XCB)

Today I got the Wired Magazine in my mail and on site 80 there is a nice article about the development process of the XNA Challenge game Dungeon Quest from the GDC 2007. It was written by Mary Jane Irwin from the Wired Games Blog, thanks :). There is also a nice picture gallery with 21 images from the 4 days, which nicely shows the advancements we made each day. Enjoy!

PS: There is probably more information on this and other XNA projects on the huge Wired.com website, but every time I search for XNA or my name, I just find too many articles. Test for yourself.