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Yes, tricky is the right word. A GUI and a typical DirectX (or XNA) application do not have too much in common. The GUI application tries to use the CPU sparingly by handling events and idling most of the time. A DirectX application tries to get all the CPU time it can and make the best of it.
My approach to bringing XNA and WPF together resembles the second one you mentioned. The main difference is, that my control tries to replace XNA's game class and does not try to tweak it into accepting the control as render target.
The game originally was supposed to be a web application and still retains the behavior of a website because the client connects to the server over a webservice. This way it will certainly not be a hot action game. Most of the time there will still be some kind of forms and while we want a good design, we also value such things as data binding or our MVP libraries to keep the code short and orderly. A DirectX application will make those things more awkward and NeoForce still misses some controls we would certainly need.
The game is going to be something like the good old Master of Orion. The players will be exploring unknown planets and build colonies, research new technology. There will be trade, espionage, politcs and some strategic and tactical combat. But at no point will the player be shooting himself. Instead he will mashall his fleets, troops and commanders. In the end we need a GUI more than DirectX.
Let's say the player is looking at his colony. On a website we could display a grid with all buildings he has. Efficient, but not very appealing. Puzzling together some kind of image would be possible, but a little awkward. Rendering a dynamic image would be a little hard on the server and Microsoft does not recommend it because GDI+ is officially not safe to use in a web application.
Sending the information of the player's colony to a client is a more logical choice. We can then leave the work of visualizing the colony and its buildings to the client and also eliminate the need to send a large bitmap at every page request. Under WinForms we have to deal with some ugly flickering and sometimes a hard time when trying to get rid of the typical WinForms look, but GDI+ at least can efficiently compose a custom image. A static image may not be state of the art, but at least it is a custom image generated in no noticable time.
WPF was mage to allow rich means of designing and animating your GUI and there is no ugly updating and flickering, making the whole thing look much less old fashioned. We could also easily visualize things with custom images. So far, so good. But with XNA we can put together a scene of the planet's landscape and the player's buildings plus some little animations like drifting clouds or a landing ship.
The same goes for visualizing the star systems. The player will have quite a few controls to navigate and get information about the objects he sees. Again we could simply display a grid with all the boring facts. Or we could put together an image and let the player scroll through the system. With WPF we could also render and animate some spheres and put some textures on them. XNA will add full support of shaders and multi texturing and make the whole thing look far more interesting.
And, even more important, we are a bit tired of tearing everything apart and putting it back together in yet another way. We finally want to get down to business 
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Hello,
I have a full application suite of software (multiple dlls) that is launched from a single exe acting as a main menu. The applications within this suite can be launched from the main menu or from IE that tells the exe to launch a specific application. I want to change the way that IE is currently launching the apps (current method is embed a dll in an html page) to using create object. So have a com wrapped dll that will tell the exe to launch a specific app using mutex. This dll not only tells the exe to launch an app, it also will start the exe if it's not running already. My problem is when it has to start the exe, I'm not sure when the exe is fully loaded to start excepting launch requests(they go unheard or cause errors). I have tried to use flags that in my mutex i'm checking but with the complexity of mutex it's giving me false positives that the exe is ready. I'm tried loops but that results in a not responding of IE or the exe itself - the not responding goes away but I can't have that coming up each time it starts.
The main purpose for using mutex is to control multiple instances of the exe starting. If it's started via IE, it becomes a tray icon with the mainmenu being hidden only accepting launch requests from the browser. If the user then double-clicks on the desktop short cut, the 2nd instances tells the 1st instance to launch the main menu then it will accepting launch requests from both the mainmenu and the browser. So i'm trying to use the 2nd instance to tell the 1st instance to launch an application when the com wrapped dlls does a loadassemblyfrom but the 1st instance isn't fully loaded yet whenn the 2nd instance tries to tell it to launch an app.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to "poll" the exe to make sure its ready before I tell it to launch an app so that I don't run into these not responding messages? I've used setTimeout javascript code to poll but that either doesn't work or also causes the not responding.
thanks for your time
Nathan'Never argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.' ~ anonymous
'Life's real failure is when you do not realize how close you were to success when you gave up.' ~ anonymous
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Hi all,
My boss asked me to research some kind of FTP component that can be dropped into our .NET project. I know .NET has native FTP functionality and he'd know that too so I can only assume he wants something "beefier". It needs to be able to download files from FTP based on a masked filename and possibly a masked path too (i.e., check all paths that match the mask). Of course, the more robust and the more it can do the better. Looking for something that doesn't have royalties attached either. Any suggestions? Thanks!Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
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| Thanks y'all... I'll be checking them out. Appreciate the quick responses! Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
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Hello list, this is my very first question about .NET as I've started studying it only recently.
I've installed VS C# 2008 Express Edition and I wonder where to find .NET Configuration Tools (caspol.exe). It's generally mentioned to be reachable through Administration Tools, but it isn't there.
Someone says that the tool is shipped with .NET 2.0 SDK. Should I install it? How would this hurt my actual installations (VS 2008, .NET 3.5, etc.)?
thanks very much,
giovanni
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Hello every one
I am having a hard time here
i am trying to find some info on how to make a fule gauge type control
can anyone point me in the right direction I am pretty good with corel draw so i can make a nice pictuer and a nice needle
and i am a little new at vb.net 2008
But i am having a hard time to find some info
Thanks in advance
 modified on Friday, February 12, 2010 10:43 AM
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| Take a look here[^] for some potential samples. txtspeak is the realm of 9 year old children, not developers. Christian Graus
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Hi Richard
Thanks i tryed that
That is nuts thare is every thing and you can do anyting but i fix it a little to complex for me hehe
Thanks
bob
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Want to Update .Net Framework 3.5 to .Net Framework 3.5 SP1................please
send me link .............I just want to
update .Net Framework 3.5 to .Net Framework 3.5 SP1..........Not Complete installation of .Net Framework 3.5 SP1
Thankz in AdvanceDre@m is not th@t wh@t u see in sleep.Dre@m is the thing which does not allow u to sleep
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| Use Windows update, or go to the Microsoft .NET web site. txtspeak is the realm of 9 year old children, not developers. Christian Graus
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| There's not a separate SP1 if that's what you mean. You'll have to download the whole lot. It will get downloaded in Windows Update btw. Kevin
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Hi,
I am getting an error while opning the project in visual studio 2005.The project is created in Visual Studio 2008.
I don't have Visual Studio 2008 right now.Please let me know that is there any Service Pack or any other way to do it.
Following is the error:
"This project cannot be opened form source control because it was created by a version of Microsoft Visual Studio that is incomplete with this one.
If this is the case, you may be able to open it from source control using that version of Microsoft Visual Studio, and then use Microsoft Visual Studio to open the local copy."
Thanks,
Abbas
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Visual source safe issue, may be your server(network) machine is in OFF which contains the projectmodified on Friday, February 12, 2010 4:56 AM
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Found this here[^].
How can I disable the integration between VSS and Visual Studio?
Under the registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DevStudio\6.0\Source Control (for Visual Studio 6.0) or HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DevStudio\5.0\Source Control (for Visual Studio 5.0) , change or created the entry:
Name: Disabled
Type: REG_DWORD
Data: 0x1Me, I'm dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest.
Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for...
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Hi,
I am developing a project in which i need to find the size of image and convert it into inches/cms/mts.
Can anybody help me to convert the pixels size to other units in VB.net
Thanks in advance
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dileep2009 wrote: in which i need to find the size of image and convert it into inches/cms/mts
You'd need to determine the DPI[^] of the medium that this image is going to. Then you'd count the pixels; you could determine the size in inches with those two values - and convert it to centimeters or meters if required I are Troll 
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Hi
I have 10 Objects of different types, each object interacts with every other object, but depending on which object is interacting with which, it performs different functions.
For example
if i have objA, ObjB and ObjC then they could interact as follows
ObjA + ObjB performs function x
ObjA + ObjC performs function y
ObjB + ObjC performs function z
and so forth.
My question though is: From a true object orientated way, what is the best way to deal with this problem? Is there a particular design pattern i could have a look at? Doing this the wrong way would include several nested Select Case statements, but would cause a major maintenance hassle especially if the number of objects increased
I'm using VB.net
Thank you
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thesoulfyguy wrote: Is there a particular design pattern i could have a look at?
Looks like a good fit for the Decorator[^] pattern.I are Troll
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Hi
I have to create a windows service. While browsing the internet I found a few articles which are taking about classes which should not be used in the windows service. So far I found the following.
System.Timers.Timer
System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherTimer
System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker
Is that correct? Are there any aditional classes which should not be used in a windows service?
Thanks in advance.
Uroš
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It depends more on what and how your service is going to be used.
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
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