XNA Game Studio and the XNA Framework are designed for cross-platform gaming scenarios with support for Windows Phone, Xbox 360, and Windows-based PCs. This allows you to target more platforms from the same code base. It also allows developers to focus game design for each platform on real device differences such as capabilities and experience, as opposed to writing with different frameworks for each targeted device.

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When you develop games for Windows Phone, you can leverage platform-specific features such as location, accelerometer, and vibration interfaces that are provided through Silverlight 4.0. Similarly, most of the XNA Framework can be accessed from Silverlight applications.

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On Windows Phone, writable user storage is handled by Silverlight, not by XNA Game Studio. You can use the XNA Game Studio content pipeline to preprocess read-only game assets that are accessed by the content manager at run time.

Concepts

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XNA Game Studio 4.0 introduces the concept of XNA Framework profiles. These profiles (Reach and HiDef) allow you to create a clear development environment while targeting broadly or for specific platform releases. The Reach profile is designed for compatibility across the largest possible range of devices, including Windows Phone, Windows-based PCs, and Xbox 360 consoles. Choosing the HiDef platform in your development environment allows you to use platform showcase features.

Both the Reach and HiDef profiles are hardware accelerated.

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Game Studio 4.0 introduces new and updated configurable effects that will add more variety to your rendering options. These configurable effects are available for both Reach and HiDef profiles and for all platforms, including Windows Phone, Windows-based PCs, and Xbox 360 consoles.

• Basic Effects—A basic effect includes transforms and basic lighting for Blinn-Phong shading. You have the option of adding up to three more directional lights, fog, and a texture. Use one light for the fastest performance, and use three lights for more interesting 3D lighting.
• Dual-Texture Effects—A dual-texture effect uses two textures with two independent sets of texture coordinates. When you blend the two textures, you generate a lot more visual complexity if the first texture contains the basic color or detail, and the second texture contains complex lighting.
• Alpha-Test Effects—An alpha-test effect uses a reference alpha and an alpha function to implement alpha testing. This can greatly improve rendering performance by only updating pixels where objects are being drawn in a scene. Alpha testing is common when depth/stencil buffers are not used.
• Skinned Effects—A skinned effect uses bones and weights to influence vertex positions, that is, to move or deform an object. This works very well for character animation and instancing. The effect supports up to 72 bones, with up to 4 weights per bone.
• Environment-Map Effects—An environment-map effect uses a diffuse texture to color or detail an object, and a cube map texture containing an environment map to shade the object as a result of the environment. Because the object reflects the scene, this makes the object look more like it is in a real scene. Also, you can use the fresnel parameter to tune the amount of light reflected (shininess) based on the geometry of the surface.

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Reference

Many of the individual state properties have been replaced with a more organized set of immutable state objects. There are fewer states to manage.

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ConceptsReference

With new system support for scalars and orientation, you can write your game without worrying about native resolution or orientation. Scalars can significantly improve game performance. This support comes automatically when you use the XNA Framework.

Reference

While the design of an input strategy for your game is likely to be highly specific to a particular game or device experience, the XNA Framework provides a cross-platform input interface where an input capability is likely to be available across multiple platforms. In this release, multitouch support has been added for Windows and Windows Phone-based applications that use the XNA Framework. The XNA Framework input classes are orientation-aware and resolution-aware, allowing for greater portability of code and fewer #ifdefs in your game design.

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The XNA Framework Audio namespace now allows for audio capture and playback through the Microphone and DynamicSoundEffect classes. You now have the ability to play back synthesized or buffered audio, to capture audio through a microphone or Bluetooth headset, and to play it through a headset or speakers.

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You can now do the following:

• Use a uniform resource location to play songs.

• Select, edit, and publish photos.

• Play back video by using an interface that allows you to show or hide the video controls.

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Color has moved from the Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics namespace to Microsoft.Xna.Framework.

Storage device selection has moved from the GamerServices namespace to the Storage namespace.

Effect compilation from the Framework to the Content Pipeline.

In This Section

• New overloads to SpriteBatch.Begin provide an explicit way to draw sprites with a custom pixel shader.
• VertexBuffers are now strongly typed. VertexDeclaration usage has changed in XNA Game Studio 4.0. Each VertexBuffer now has an associated VertexDeclaration, which becomes immutable after the buffer is created, allowing for the XNA Framework to automatically adjust the bit layout of vertex data as required for different platforms.

Media

Storage and Content Pipeline

Graphics