C#/XNA: Change the render context to render on a control
Author
Hi,
I've just made the switch to using C#/XNA for my projects. So far everything is going great, but there's one thing I can't really find any documentation on, even though it probably should be quite simple to achieve.
By default XNA creates a form for me which is used as a render context, but since I'm working on a map editor in which I want to use the C# form tools to add controls and such, I want to be able to create my own forms, display them, and let XNA render to a control on one of these forms (could be a form, could be a picture box, or whatever).
I'm used to having to initialize the render context myself so I could always pass in a control, but with XNA it's all behind the screen.
So I have to achieve 2 things:
1. Pick my own render context for XNA rendering.
2. Find a way to display my own form(s) instead of the default one that XNA creates (and update them, respond to user actions, just like you would expect).
The first thing is where the problem currenty is. I haven't really thought about the second problem yet, but it's probably not going to be very straightforward now that I think of it, so I just included it in this post just in case you have any thoughts/advice/pointers about this.
Google and XNA Creators Club didn't seem to offer the solution to me. Thanks in advance for any help.
Unfortunately do this you have to ditch the Game class (as this is what sets up the window for you using the GameWindow class), which also means you have to ditch the GraphicsDeviceManager class.
The good news is XNA is made to be flexible enough to do this with no problems, and just a little work on your part to take care of things the Game and GraphicsDeviceManager normally take care of for you. It's not really a big deal...you've just gotta create the graphics device, handle device resets, handle the lost device scenario, and also provide a few events so you can implement the IGraphicsDeviceService interface. Then you just need to put that in a container that implements IServiceProvider, so that you can hand it off to your ContentManager (assuming you're using the Content Pipeline, of course). Definitely nothing you'll have a problem with if you're used Direct3D before...plus you have the added bonus that you don't need to worry about recreating resources when the device is lost (XNA handles that for you).
The other good news is that you missed a sample on the Creator's club website that shows you exactly what you need to do: the WinForms GraphicsDevice sample. It shows you how to get by without the Game class, and shows you how to use XNA to render to a Control or any other kind of Form. I found that very very helpful when I made my own map editor for my current project. I ended up changing things around a bit so it would fit into my framework (the GraphicsDeviceService in the sample uses a Singleton, yuck!) but now everything is integrated very nicely between my map editor, model viewer, and actual game.
Anyway that sample should definitely get you started. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask here or PM me.
The good news is XNA is made to be flexible enough to do this with no problems, and just a little work on your part to take care of things the Game and GraphicsDeviceManager normally take care of for you. It's not really a big deal...you've just gotta create the graphics device, handle device resets, handle the lost device scenario, and also provide a few events so you can implement the IGraphicsDeviceService interface. Then you just need to put that in a container that implements IServiceProvider, so that you can hand it off to your ContentManager (assuming you're using the Content Pipeline, of course). Definitely nothing you'll have a problem with if you're used Direct3D before...plus you have the added bonus that you don't need to worry about recreating resources when the device is lost (XNA handles that for you).
The other good news is that you missed a sample on the Creator's club website that shows you exactly what you need to do: the WinForms GraphicsDevice sample. It shows you how to get by without the Game class, and shows you how to use XNA to render to a Control or any other kind of Form. I found that very very helpful when I made my own map editor for my current project. I ended up changing things around a bit so it would fit into my framework (the GraphicsDeviceService in the sample uses a Singleton, yuck!) but now everything is integrated very nicely between my map editor, model viewer, and actual game.
Anyway that sample should definitely get you started. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask here or PM me.
Author
Thank you for your reply. I should've looked a bit harder, because quite fast after I posted this topic I saw the example on XNA Creators you linked here. Thanks anyway for linking it. It does seem to do exactly what I need, but I'm currently having issues importing this Visual Studio 2005 project, since I use 2008. The converting seems to go wrong at some important parts of the project so I started a thread about this on the XNA CC forums.
On the other hand, 'replacing' the functionality of the classes shouldn't be too much of a problem indeed, but from what I've seen so far I kind of like the content system XNA uses, and afaik I will have to ditch that too if I don't use their Winforms example, and I'm not sure I'm ready to do that. So for now I'll try to get the XNA Winforms example working.
On the other hand, 'replacing' the functionality of the classes shouldn't be too much of a problem indeed, but from what I've seen so far I kind of like the content system XNA uses, and afaik I will have to ditch that too if I don't use their Winforms example, and I'm not sure I'm ready to do that. So for now I'll try to get the XNA Winforms example working.
Well it's really note very hard to get the ContentManager going...all it needs is to be able to find your GraphicsDevice. It just happens to do that through the IServiceProvider and IGraphicsDeviceService interfaces, which the sample shows you one way of implementing. You could do things completely differently if you want...provided you've implemented both of those so you can hand them to the constructor of ContentManager.
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