Making Game Dev Tools - Need to Choose SDKs
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I am trying to develop a multimedia (audio and video) application with an interactive graphics window and just can't figure out what Windows development technologies I need. My current understanding is that:
1) XNA is too games oriented for application use. Good for games, not game dev tools.
2) Managed DirectX is deprecated so a C#/managed C++ app is out.
3) Win32 application with DirectX and MFC is not the direction MS development is going.
4) .NET is oriented too much toward business applications for the multimedia tasks I have, and again Managed DirectX was discontinued years ago.
What's left? I figured it would be pretty simple to do application development with Windows but I can't seem to find the right combination of technologies that are still actually supported by Microsoft. Please advise.
Thanks
There is a Managed DirectX alternative called SlimDX which is maintained by a few members from this site. I've yet to use it extensively, but from what I tried it works very well. They are working on getting better documentation on the project, but at it's current state it is very usable for game development tools.
Quote:Original post by impulsionaudio
1) XNA is too games oriented for application use. Good for games, not game dev tools.
What about the XNA Framework makes you think it's not suitable for tools development? I've made my game dev tools with it, and haven't felt limited.
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Quote:Original post by MJPQuote:Original post by impulsionaudio
1) XNA is too games oriented for application use. Good for games, not game dev tools.
What about the XNA Framework makes you think it's not suitable for tools development? I've made my game dev tools with it, and haven't felt limited.
That's good to know. I didn't doubt that one could make tools with XNA. It just seems that it's not really supported by Microsoft since they offer no templates for XNA applications in VS, only game templates and library templates. If you're making tools, I'm assuming XNA has controls and the ability to nest your DirectX window in a child window, no?
XNA is ideal to make tools. Check the XNA / WinForms tutorials. You can have any number of DirectX windows in windows app and WinForms is very easy to use.
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/catalog/
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/catalog/
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Quote:Original post by FippyDarkpaw
XNA is ideal to make tools. Check the XNA / WinForms tutorials. You can have any number of DirectX windows in windows app and WinForms is very easy to use.
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/catalog/
Wow! Thanks
Indeed like FippyDarkpaw mentions, it's certainly possible to have the XNA GraphicsDevice render to a form. There's no explicit support for this in the Framework, instead the Framework is made generic enough that you can simply render to any window of which you can obtain its handle (this means you don't need to even use a Form, if you don't want). Plus there's that official MS sample, so that's about as good an endorsement as any. AFAIK there's no built in support for Forms/Controls in any of the other options mentioned, so you wouldn't be at a disadvantage in that regard.
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