XNI — XNA for iOS

That’s how.

Hey there!

The root directory of the ContentManager is set to / by default, so when you add a .x file to your project (wherever actually) and you set the file to be included in your target, then it should appear under the Build Phases/Copy Bundle Resources step on your target. This should be good to go.

Now, just simply load the file by loading the name without extension - the only thing to watch for, since you’re not specifying the extension is that you don’t name any files the same, but just different extension (table.x and table.png is bad - there’s an overload to specify the extension if you really can’t go around naming it different).

So I’ve added a “table.x” file to my project and included it in the target. Then you have this:

Model *tableModel;
Matrix *tableWorld;

// Loading
tableModel = [[self.game.content load:@"table"] retain];    

// Rendering
[tableModel drawWithWorld:tableWorld view:camera.view projection:camera.projection];

One thing to note is that so far only text .x files are supported. So if you open it with TextEdit and see the content, then it’s OK.

Yes, all of your code needs to be rewritten in Objective-C. :) Until I get Automagical to do that for you (it only works in reverse currently), I suggest looking at ExEn (but it requires MonoTouch which costs money).

Touch works exactly the way it does on Windows phone 7. Maybe this helper class of mine will help give you a first hint:

Header:

//
//  TouchPanelHelper.h
//  Artificial I
//
//  Created by Matej Jan on 1.12.10.
//  Copyleft 2010 Retronator. Use this at will. :)
//

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

#import "Retronator.Xni.Framework.Input.Touch.h"

@interface TouchPanelHelper : GameComponent {

}

+ (TouchCollection*) getState;

@end

Implementation:

//
//  TouchPanelHelper.m
//  Artificial I
//
//  Created by Matej Jan on 1.12.10.
//  Copyleft 2010 Retronator. Use this at will. :)
//

#import "TouchPanelHelper.h"

@implementation TouchPanelHelper

static TouchCollection *touches = nil;

+ (void) initialize {
    touches = nil;
}

+ (TouchCollection *) getState {
    return touches;
}

- (void) updateWithGameTime:(GameTime *)gameTime {
    [touches release];
    touches = [[TouchPanel getState] retain];
}

- (void) dealloc
{
    [touches release];
    [super dealloc];
}


@end

Then you just add this TouchHelper to your components in your game’s init:

[self.components addComponent:[[[TouchPanelHelper alloc] initWithGame:self] autorelease]];

From now on you can always get a TouchCollection using the static call getState. Here’s some example code:

TouchCollection *touches = [TouchPanelHelper getState];

    for (TouchLocation *touch in touches) {

            if (touch.state == TouchLocationStatePressed) {
                // use touch.position vector for something
            }           
        }
    }

The reason I’ve included this extra game component is that on each getState call to the TouchPanel, the values of Pressed/Move/Released are updated. So if you call getState from more than one place inside the update loop you might get unexpected results.

When dealing with XNI you should always use XNA documentation for a guide on how to use it. For Touch input read more here: Working with Touch Input (Windows Phone)

No, I did not. I taught a little bit different architecture in my class so I coded that from scratch (well, not really that much code, just a GameState parent class and a stack in your main Game class for pushing/popping states).

Conversion of samples is planned for the next big update of the framework, but that’ll probably start only around Summer. Now we’re making our next Dawn of Play game with XNI as it is to get it out as fast as possible. But then it’ll be way about time to update to full shader architecture, content pipeline and such …