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Getting Started with Visual C# 2010 for Windows Phone

Visual C# 2010 Express

At the time of this writing, the current version of the development tool for Windows Phone 7 is Visual Studio 2010. To make development simple for newcomers to the Windows Mobile platform, Microsoft has set up a package that will install everything you need to develop, compile, and run code in the emulator or on a physical Windows Phone device—for free. The download URL at this time is http://www.microsoft. com/express/Phone. If you are using a licensed copy of Visual Studio 2010, such as the Professional, Premium, or Ultimate edition, then you will find XNA Game Studio 4.0 and related tools at http://create.msdn.com (the App Hub website). The App Hub website, shown in Figure 2.1, also contains links to the development tools.

The App Hub website has download links to the development tools.
FIGURE 2.1 The App Hub website has download links to the development tools.

The most common Windows Phone developer will be using the free version of Visual C# 2010, called the Express edition. This continues the wonderful gift Microsoft first began giving developers with the release of Visual Studio 2005. At that time, the usual “professional” versions of Visual Studio were still available, of course, and I would be remiss if I failed to point out that a licensed copy of Visual Studio is required by any person or organization building software for business activities (including both for-profit and nonprofit). The usual freelance developer will also need one of the professional editions of Visual Studio, if it is used for profit. But any single person who is just learning, or any organization that just wants to evaluate Visual Studio for a short time, prior to buying a full license, can take advantage of the free Express editions. I speak of “editions” because each language is treated as a separate product. The professional editions include all the languages, but the free Express editions, listed here, are each installed separately:

  • Visual C# 2010 Express
  • Visual Basic 2010 Express
  • Visual C++ 2010 Express

The version of Visual Studio we will be using is called Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone. This is a “package” with the Windows Phone SDK already prepackaged with Visual C# 2010 Express. (Despite the name, “Visual Studio” here supports only the C# language.) It’s a nice package that makes it very easy to get started doing Windows Phone development. But if you are using Visual Studio 2010 Professional (or one of the other editions) along with the Windows Phone SDK, you will see a lot more project templates in the New Project dialog, shown in Figure 2.2.

The New Project dialog in Visual C# 2010 Express.
FIGURE 2.2 The New Project dialog in Visual C# 2010 Express.
  • Windows Phone Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Databound Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Class Library (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Panorama Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Pivot Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Game (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Game Library (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Windows Game (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Windows Game Library (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Xbox 360 Game (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Xbox 360 Game Library (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Content Pipeline Extension Library (4.0)
  • Empty Content Project (4.0) (Visual C#)

As you can see, even in this limited version of Visual Studio 2010, all the XNA Game Studio 4.0 project templates are included—not just those limited to Windows Phone. The project templates with “(4.0)” in the name come from the XNA Game Studio SDK, which is what we will be primarily using to build Windows Phone games. The first five project templates come with the Silverlight SDK. That’s all we get with this version of Visual Studio 2010. It’s not even possible to build a basic Windows application here—only Windows Phone (games or apps), Windows (game only), and Xbox 360 (obviously, game only). The first five project templates are covered in the next section, “Using Silverlight for WP7.”

Did you notice that all of these project templates are based on the C# language? Unfortunately for Visual Basic fans, we cannot use Basic to program games or apps for Windows Phone using Visual C# 2010 Express. You can install Visual Basic 2010 Express with Silverlight and then use that to make WP7 applications. XNA, however, supports only C#.

We don’t look at Xbox 360 development in this book at all. If you’re interested in the subject, see my complementary book XNA Game Studio 4.0 for Xbox 360 Developers [Cengage, 2011].

Using Silverlight for WP7

Microsoft Silverlight is a web browser plug-in “runtime.” Silverlight is not, strictly speaking, a development tool. It might be compared to DirectX, in that it is like a library, but for rich-content web apps. It’s similar to ASP.NET in that Silverlight applications run in a web browser, but it is more capable for building consumer applications (while ASP.NET is primarily for business apps). But the way Silverlight applications are built is quite different from ASP.NET—it’s more of a design tool with an editing environment called Expression Blend. The design goal of Silverlight is to produce web applications that are rich in media support, and it supports all standard web browsers (not just Internet Explorer, which is a pleasant surprise!), including Firefox and Safari on Mac.

Using Expression Blend to Build Silverlight Projects

Microsoft Expression Blend 4 is a free tool installed with the Windows Phone package that makes it easier to design Silverlight-powered web pages with rich media content support. Blend can be used to design and create engaging user experiences for Silverlight pages. Windows application support is possible with the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) library. A key feature of Blend is that it separates design from programming. As you can see in Figure 2.3, the New Project dialog in Blend lists the same project types found in Visual C# 2010 Express.

Expression Blend is a Silverlight development tool for web designers.
FIGURE 2.3 Expression Blend is a Silverlight development tool for web designers.

Let’s create a quick Expression Blend project to see how it works. While working on this quick first project, keep in mind that we’re not building a “Blend” project, but a “Silverlight” project—using Blend. Blend is a whole new Silverlight design and development tool, not affiliated with Visual Studio (but probably based on it). The Silverlight library is already installed on the Windows Phone emulator and actual phones.

Here’s how to create the project:

  1. Create a Windows Phone Application project using the New Project dialog. Click File, New Project.
  2. Blend creates a standard project for Windows Phone, complete with an application title and opening page for the app.
  3. Run the project with Project, Run Project, or by pressing F5. The running program is shown in Figure 2.4.
Our first project with Expression Blend.
FIGURE 2.4 Our first project with Expression Blend.

This is a useless app, but it shows the steps needed to create a new project and run it in the Windows Phone emulator. Did you notice how large the emulator window appears? That’s full size with respect to the screen resolution of WP7. As you’ll recall from the first hour, the resolution is 480×800. That is enough pixels to support 480p DVD movies, but not the 740p or 1080p HD standards. Still, DVD quality is great for a phone! And when rotated to landscape mode, 800×480 is a lot of screen real estate for a game too.

You can make quick and easy changes to the labels at the top and experiment with the design controls in the toolbox on the left. Here you can see that the application title and page title have been renamed, and some images and shapes have been added to the page. Pressing F5 again brings it up in the emulator, shown in Figure 2.5.

Now that you’ve seen what’s possible with Expression Blend’s more designer-friendly editor, let’s take a look at the same Silverlight project in Visual Studio 2010.

Silverlight Projects

The Silverlight runtime for WP7 supports some impressive media types with many different audio and video codecs, vector graphics, bitmap graphics, and animation. That should trigger the perimeter alert of any game developer worth their salt! Silverlight brings some highly interactive input mechanisms to the Web, including accelerometer motion detection, multitouch input (for devices that support it),camera, microphone input, and various phone-type features (like accessing an address book and dialing).

Making quick changes to the page is easy with Expression Blend.
FIGURE 2.5 Making quick changes to the page is easy with Expression Blend.

To find out whether your preferred web browser supports Silverlight, visit the installer web page at http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/get-started/install.

The Visual Studio 2010 project templates specific to Silverlight are highlighted in bold in the list below. These are the same project templates shown in Expression Blend!

  • Windows Phone Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Databound Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Class Library (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Panorama Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Pivot Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Game (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Game Library (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Windows Game (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Windows Game Library (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Xbox 360 Game (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Xbox 360 Game Library (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Content Pipeline Extension Library (4.0)
  • Empty Content Project (4.0) (Visual C#)

Let’s create a quick project in Visual Studio in order to compare it with Expression Blend. You’ll note right away that it is not the same rich design environment, but is more programmer oriented.

Comparing Visual Studio with Expression Blend

Let’s create a new project in Visual C# 2010 in order to compare it with Expression Blend. Follow these steps:

  1. Open the New Project dialog with File, New Project.
  2. Next, in the New Project dialog, choose the target folder for the project and type in a project name, as shown in Figure 2.6.

    Creating a new Silverlight project in Visual C# 2010 Express.
    FIGURE 2.6 Creating a new Silverlight project in Visual C# 2010 Express.
  3. Click the OK button to generate the new project shown in the figure. Not very user-friendly, is it? First of all, double-clicking a label does not make it editable, among other limitations (compared to Expression Blend). Where are the control properties? Oh, yes, in the Properties window in Visual Studio. See Figure 2.7. This is also very data-centric, which programmers love and designers loathe. The view on the left is how the page appears on the device (or emulator); the view on the right is the HTML-like source code behind the page, which can be edited.
  4. Bring up the Properties window (if not already visible) by using the View menu. Select a control on the page, such as the application title. Scroll down in the Properties to the Text property, where you can change the label’s text, as shown in Figure 2.8. Play around with the various properties to change the horizontal alignment, the color of the text, and so on. Open the Toolbox (located on the left side of Visual Studio) to gain access to new controls such as the Ellipse control shown here.
    The new Silverlight project has been created.
    FIGURE 2.7 The new Silverlight project has been created.

    Adding content to the Silverlight page.
    FIGURE 2.8 Adding content to the Silverlight page.

XNA Game Studio

XNA Game Studio 4.0 was released in the fall of 2010. (From now on, let’s just shorten this to “XNA” or “XNA 4.0”, even though “Game Studio” is the name of the SDK, and “XNA” is the overall product name.) XNA 4.0 saw several new improvements to the graphics system, but due to the hardware of the Xbox 360, XNA is still based on Direct3D 9 (not the newer versions, Direct3D 10 or 11). This is actually very good news for a beginner, since Direct3D 9 is much easier to learn than 10 or 11. Although XNA abstracts the C++-based DirectX libraries into the C#-based XNA Framework, there is still much DirectX-ish code that you have to know in order to build a capable graphics engine in XNA. While XNA 4.0 added WP7 support, it simultaneously dropped support for Zune (the portable multimedia and music player).

I have a Zune HD, and it’s a nice device! It can play 720p HD movies and even export them to an HDTV via an adapter and HDMI cable. It plays music well too. But, like many consumers, I just did not have much incentive to go online and download games for the Zune. This is, of course, purely a subjective matter of opinion, but it’s disappointing for game developers who put effort into making games for Zune. Fortunately, the code base is largely the same (thanks to XNA and C#), so those Zune games can be easily ported to WP7 now.

Rendering states, enumerations, return values, and so forth are the same in XNA as they are in Direct3D, so it could be helpful to study a Direct3D book to improve your skills as an XNA programmer!

The project templates for Windows Phone might surprise you—there are only two! We can build a Windows Phone game or a game library. All the other templates are related to the other platforms supported by XNA.

  • Windows Phone Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Databound Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Class Library (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Panorama Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Pivot Application (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Game (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Windows Phone Game Library (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Windows Game (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Windows Game Library (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Xbox 360 Game (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Xbox 360 Game Library (4.0) (Visual C#)
  • Content Pipeline Extension Library (4.0)
  • Empty Content Project (4.0) (Visual C#)

Let’s build a quick XNA project for Windows Phone to see what it looks like. We’ll definitely be doing a lot of this in upcoming chapters since XNA is our primary focus (the coverage of Silverlight was only for the curious—grab a full-blown Silverlight or Expression Blend book for more complete and in-depth coverage.

Creating Your First XNA 4.0 Project

Let’s create a new XNA 4.0 project in Visual C# 2010, so we can use this as a comparison with the previous project created with Expression Blend. Follow these steps:

  1. Create a new project. We’ll be basing these tutorials around Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone. The processes will be similar to using the Professional version, but you will see many more project templates in the New Project dialog. Open the File menu and choose New Project. The New Project dialog is shown in Figure 2.9.

    Creating a new XNA 4.0 project.
    FIGURE 2.9 Creating a new XNA 4.0 project.
  2. The new project has been created. Note, from Figure 2.10, the code that has been automatically generated for the XNA project. If you have ever worked with XNA before, this will be no surprise—the code looks exactly like the generated code for Windows and Xbox 360 projects!

    The new XNA 4.0 project has been created.
    FIGURE 2.10 The new XNA 4.0 project has been created.
  3. Run the project with Build, Run, or by pressing F5. The emulator will come up, as shown in Figure 2.11. Doesn’t look like much—just a blue screen! That’s exactly what we want to see, because we haven’t written any game code yet.
  4. Add a SpriteFont to the Content project. Right-click the content project, called XNA ExampleContent(Content) in the Solution Explorer. Choose Add, New Item, as shown in Figure 2.12.
    Running the XNA project in the Windows Phone emulator.
    FIGURE 2.11 Running the XNA project in the Windows Phone emulator.

    Adding a new item to the content project.
    FIGURE 2.12 Adding a new item to the content project.
  5. In the Add Item dialog, choose the Sprite Font item from the list, as shown in Figure 2.13, and leave the filename as SpriteFont1.spritefont.

    Adding a new SpriteFont content item to the project.
    FIGURE 2.13 Adding a new SpriteFont content item to the project.
  6. Create the font variable. The comments in the code listing have been removed to make the code easier to read. We’ll dig into the purpose of all this code in the next hour, so don’t be concerned with understanding all the code yet. Type in the two new bold lines of code shown here to add the font variable.
    [code]
    public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game
    {
    GraphicsDeviceManager graphics;
    SpriteBatch spriteBatch;
    //new font variable
    SpriteFont font;
    public Game1()
    {
    graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this);
    Content.RootDirectory = “Content”;
    TargetElapsedTime = TimeSpan.FromTicks(333333);
    }
    [/code]
  7. Load the font. Enter the two new lines shown in bold in the LoadContent method.
    [code]
    protected override void Initialize()
    {
    base.Initialize();
    }
    protected override void LoadContent()
    {
    spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice);
    //load the font
    font = Content.Load<SpriteFont>(“SpriteFont1”);
    }
    protected override void UnloadContent()
    {
    }
    [/code]
  8. Print a message on the screen. Using the SpriteBatch and SpriteFont objects, we can print any text message. This is done from the Draw method—add the code highlighted in bold.
    [code]
    protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime)
    {
    if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back ==
    ButtonState.Pressed)
    this.Exit();
    base.Update(gameTime);
    }
    protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)
    {
    GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue);
    //print a message
    spriteBatch.Begin();
    string text = “HELLO FROM XNA!”;
    Vector2 pos = font.MeasureString(text);
    spriteBatch.DrawString(font, text, pos, Color.White);
    spriteBatch.End();
    base.Draw(gameTime);
    }
    }
    [/code]
  9. Run the program using Debug, Start Debugging, or by pressing F5. The program will come up in the emulator, shown in Figure 2.14. Now there’s just one big problem: The font is too small, and the screen needs to be rotated to landscape mode so we can read it!
  10. Click the emulator window to cause the little control menu to appear at the upper right. There are two icons that will rotate the window left or right, allowing us to switch from portrait to landscape mode. All XNA projects will default to portrait mode by default. Landscape mode is shown in Figure 2.15.
    The text message is displayed in the emulator— sideways!
    FIGURE 2.14 The text message is displayed in the emulator— sideways!

    Rotating the emulator window to landscape mode for XNA projects.
    FIGURE 2.15 Rotating the emulator window to landscape mode for XNA projects.
  11. Enlarge the font. We’re almost done; there’s just one final thing I want to show you how to do here. Open the font file you created, SpriteFont1. spritefont. Change the size value from 14 to 36. Now rerun the project by pressing F5. The new, large font is shown in Figure 2.16.

    Enlarging the font to make it more readable.
    FIGURE 2.16 Enlarging the font to make it more readable.

XNA or Silverlight: What’s the Verdict?

We have now seen two projects developed with the two different, and somewhat competing tools: XNA and Silverlight. Which should we choose? This is really a matter of preference when it comes to developing a game. Although XNA is far more capable due to its rendering capabilities, Silverlight can be used to make a game as well, with form-based control programming. For portable, touchscreen applications, it’s a given: Silverlight. But for serious game development, XNA is the only serious option.

We covered quite a bit of information regarding Visual Studio 2010, the project templates available for Windows Phone, and the value-added tool Expression Blend. A sample project was presented using Expression Blend with a corresponding Silverlight project in Visual Studio, as well as an XNA project. We’re off to a good start and already writing quite a bit of code! In the next hour, you will create your first Windows Phone game.

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