I am assuming you are using the Winforms + XNA classes from Microsoft XNA Community.

What I've done in the past is derive a custom class from GraphicsDeviceControl to display the tiles. You can put that into a UserControl* if you like, and add a status bar/scrolling whatever you need.

You could use a windows form to display the tiles as bitmaps - but since you are already hooking into XNA, it is simpler to just use XNA for rendering the tiles. I've kept all my tile rendering code in a seperate assembly, and then I can use that from either the editor or the game, keeping things nicely seperated.

If you have a more specific question, I can try and answer that.

* Caveat when putting a GraphicsDeviceControl into a UserControl - the standard DesignMode check does not work, so you will have to handle that logic yourself. I've just always made a static IsProgramRunning property in the Program class and set it to True in the constructor.

I was talking about a custom GraphicsDeviceControl class from here: http://create.msdn.c...nforms_series_1

I was assuming you are making an XNA game + editor, in which case the above classes are what you would need.

A GraphicsDeviceControl is just a Windows Form control which has an XNA surface to draw on. Typically you would derive your own special class for your tile selector, override the Draw method (and possibly Initialize), add whatever event handlers you need, and then you can draw/drop it onto a Form just like any other control.

Using straight Winforms without XNA is possible, of course, but if you are already tied into XNA (and in particular, using the same asset workflow etc), then it would be far simpler to use the above control class.

I would recommend using the "official" methods from XNA creators - there are corner cases that these classes handle that others may not.

The 2 biggest things you are going to have to implement yourself (that the Game framework handles for you) are timing (e.g. for animation) and content loading. For timing, I believe there is an example provided with the above link that shows a hook into Idle event for calling Update() & Draw(). Also, you can read here for more detailed analysis: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2010/12/06/when-winforms-met-game-loop.aspx

Content gets a little harder. You can either use the winforms series 2 example to add content pipeline ti winforms, or handle loading resources yourself. The issue with using the pipeline in this manner is that the XNA developer kit (not just the runitmes) must be installed in order to run your application.

For this reason, I've always implemented my own asset loading. For textures only, it isn't difficult - it may get more complicated if you need 3d models, sounds, etc. in your editor.

Is there a specific piece of functionaility that you are unsure how to implement without the Game class? You could try posting some pieces of your code, it may help narrow down what issues you are having.

This is how I did mine. It's in SlimDX, but I used a picturebox to auto-size the tileset. Then I used GDI for the selector that gave me the position, when you mouse-over on the panel (slimDX) I use DX to draw the tile at the cursor position. When you click, it determines the X/Y position and the size of the object and puts it down. Good luck.

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I'll tackle content loading when i get there but can someone really break down what [post='this']http://create.msdn.c...nforms_series_1[/post] is doing and how/why it is working?

Look at "SpriteFontControl.cs" for the most basic use case.

This class overrides the provided "GraphicsDeviceControl", much like you would override the Game class. Then it just provides initialization and drawing code, and you have a (simple) XNA control you can drag & drop onto a form.

I would start by just creating a new Windows Forms application, and copy over GraphicsDeviceControl, GraphicsDeviceContainer, and ServiceContainer to your project. These three classes work together, and are all you should need from the example. Subclass GraphicsDeviceControl, as above, and try just loading an image from disk (using Texture2D.FromStream() or whatever it's called), and SpriteBatch to the window. You will have to create your own SpriteBatch as in the example. After an initial build, you should be able to drag&drop the control over to your form.

If you can get this far without trouble, that's basically all there is to it, the rest is specific to either Winforms or XNA.

EDIT: basically, the GraphicsDeviceControl (and it's two helper classes) is a WForms control that gives you an XNA GraphicsDevice. The rest of the code in those classes is to keep everything working behind the scenes, and isn't really necessary to understand.