I was wondering how is DLC created in XNA for a store like STEAM? Would I make a Windows game Library? Is there a Example online to see?

I never used XNA but the method is probably the same for everything of this sort. You will need a connection to the server holding DLC to download it to you client computer. You need to program your game to know where to look for DLC's - this is probably the same as mods folder in quake 3 arena and later games. There are some basic networking tutorials on the internet but i don't know is there some on how to download file from internet. Hope this helps.

If you're talking about an XNA publishing on Xbox Live Indie Games... then someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought DLC was not allowed in XBLIG. I was under the impression that, to update your XNA game, you needed to resubmit it for evaluation. Things may have changed since I last checked, though.

http://xboxforums.cr...553.aspx#644553

http://xboxforums.cr...716/102917.aspx

http://xboxforums.cr...914.aspx#280914


EDIT: I misread your post originally, but the links might be useful for someone wanting to submit to XBLIG

okay so do I just make more class files for the DLC Levels instead of making a Windows Library? and we are trying to target STEAM so would we only have to make a separate XNA project for DLC Packs?

DLC can be fairly tricky:

Each publisher (at least for consoles) has a fairly exhaustive checklist that you have to pass for DLC. Things like "Make sure the game still runs if you install and then uninstall the DLC".


If you have multiplayer, do you let people with DLC play with friends who don't have it? You have to test to make sure the person without the DLC doesn't crash due to a missing file.

There are a few different approaches for multiplayer. For example, in the Borderlands series:

- A player with the Mechromancer class DLC can play with anyone else, even if the other people don't own the Mechromancer DLC. This implies that the player model, sounds, etc are made available to everyone, but only people who bought the DLC can actually create that character.

- If a player tries to changes maps to an area only available in DLC, anyone without the DLC pack will get kicked from the server.

- Borderlands 2 still managed to miss one case: The Pirate DLC includes some player customization heads that you can use on your character. If you're using one of them, any player without that DLC will crash.


It's also possible that you just don't let people join the game at all if they don't own the DLC. It's kind of mean, but if your game wasn't designed with DLC in mind, you may have no choice.


If you patch the game (to support new level/item scripts or whatever) people who don't buy the DLC will still get the patch, so you need to make sure that the patch explicitly checks to see if they own each DLC pack.

Your savegame system needs to keep track of which DLC was in use when the save was made, since it's likely that the save cannot be loaded if the user uninstalls that DLC for some reason. This can also happen if a user shares his savegame files with a friend.



As far as actual implementation goes, patch the game for new code, have the code search for content, keep a separate list of whether someone has actually purchased the content or not (if you care, otherwise just base it off of whether the content is available). How you set up your XNA projects is up to you. You could easily just put all of the content in your main project and give each content file a special prefix which you use to split files into separate distributions.

okay thats useful we're actually trying to make extra levels built with Tiled. so how can I just have the game read downloaded maps?

okay thats useful we're actually trying to make extra levels built with Tiled. so how can I just have the game read downloaded maps?

As a simplistic example....
Your game could be written to pull in the file name of maps that are stored in the 'resources/map/' folder with .ringo extension. Then after pulling in the file names from the folder, it could have the user choose which one of those files he wants to play.

Once the user selects one, the game could load the map in, validate that is in the format that you expect (after all, anyone could make a .ringo file and put it in that folder), and then have your game load and use the map.

Adding maps could be as simple as adding a new map to that folder. As long as it has the same .ringo extension that your program expects, is in the expected location of 'resources/map/' and is in the same format that can be read by your game, the new map could be playable without you having to change the game program itself.