New Visual Studio features in the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta - multiple content projects and cross-platform synchronization

re: New Visual Studio features in the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta - multiple content projects and cross-platform synchronization

Björn — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:43:42 GMT

Something I have always wondered about (with my limited knowledge of the VS system): Why are the different platforms implemented as individual projects and not through the build configuration settings?

re: New Visual Studio features in the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta - multiple content projects and cross-platform synchronization

astebner — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:53:55 GMT

Hi Bjorn - Essentially, there are things that we do differently based on the platform that the game project targets that it wasn't possible for us to implement this purely via build configuration settings. For example, there are certain IDE settings that are only applicable to Windows games (such as ClickOnce publishing or adding web references), there is platform-specific handling of reference assemblies, there is platform-specific deployment logic, etc.

re: New Visual Studio features in the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta - multiple content projects and cross-platform synchronization

Ultrahead — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:35:57 GMT

Thanks a lot!

https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=355236&SiteID=226

re: New Visual Studio features in the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta - multiple content projects and cross-platform synchronization

Björn — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 07:10:53 GMT

Ok, that makes sense for 2.0 and below and a change to utilize VS 2008's multi-targetting thingy would have been to expensive, right? But then the VS.NET SDK is said to change tremendously with each version...

re: New Visual Studio features in the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta - multiple content projects and cross-platform synchronization

astebner — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 07:38:38 GMT

Hi Bjorn - XNA Game Studio 3.0 does support the multi-targeting features in VS 2008, but only for Windows games. For Windows, you can choose to target the desktop .NET Framework 2.0, 3.0 or 3.5 with your game. For Xbox 360 and Zune, there is only one supported version of the .NET Compact Framework that ships in XNA Game Studio for each of these platforms, so there are not multiple version to target, and therefore multi-targeting is disabled for those platforms.

There are some breaking changes in each version of the VS SDK, but for the most part, things are backwards compatible.

re: New Visual Studio features in the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta - multiple content projects and cross-platform synchronization

Björn — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:21:56 GMT

With the multi-targeting feature support I meant to choose the different platforms (as in: replace the current one-project-per-platform-approach with this feature), not .NET versions - but then I do not really know much about it, esp. if it would be possible at all :]

re: New Visual Studio features in the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta - multiple content projects and cross-platform synchronization

astebner — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:21:15 GMT

Hi Bjorn - The multi-targeting feature in VS 2008 is fairly limited and is specific to the .NET Framework versions 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5. It isn't extensible to the point that we'd be able to use it for XNA Game Studio project platforms.

Link to more detailed information about cross-platform development in XNA Game Studio 3.0

Aaron Stebner's WebLog — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:21:26 GMT

Last week, I posted some high-level details about a couple of new Visual Studio features that are available