Description:
This sample showcases a complex application built on top of
the Silverlight/XNA application model, leveraging full 3D rendering,
Silverlight’s animation engine, and the use of dependency properties to act as
the proxy between Silverlight UI and the XNA Framework based rendering system.
Sample Overview
The new Silverlight/XNA feature for Windows Phone OS 7.1
opens a lot of possibilities for application developers. Aside from using
Silverlight to render the UI for games, you can also build complex applications
leveraging 3D graphics. This sample is one such example, showing an application
that allows the viewing of a tank model while having lots of control over the
display of the tank.
Please note that this sample was written as a demonstration
of the Silverlight/XNA feature. It is not intended to be a beginner’s example
to the feature and is intended for developers with some level of familiarity
with both Silverlight and the XNA Framework. If you are just getting started
with Silverlight or XNA Game Studio and want to see a simpler example of the
Silverlight/XNA integration, please take a look at our Paddle
Battle sample.
The sample demonstrates a lot of features throughout the
application and takes advantage of many features from both Silverlight and XNA
Game Studio to make it happen. Here are a few of those features broken down
into more detail:
3D Rendering with XNA
Framework
The core of the application is the 3D rendering of a tank
model with the ability to toggle a number of animations, change how the tank is
rendered, and adjust properties of the lights affecting the model. Under the
covers this is implemented through the Renderer class which reads information
from the RendererState and draws the tank.
The RendererState and associated LightState objects are
DependencyObjects that contain information regarding how to render the scene,
such as the camera’s location, which animations are active, and the properties
of the lights in the scene. The state objects subclass DependencyObject and
expose a large number of dependency properties to enable databinding directly
to the Silverlight UI. This greatly reduces the need for complex code behinds.
Additionally the dependency properties enable any of the rendering state values
to be animated with Storyboards.
Page Navigation
The sample takes advantage of the built in page navigation
system of Silverlight on Windows Phone, breaking each section of application
functionality into a new page. This enables very consolidated pieces of
functionality and is much easier to work with than trying to maintain all the
application’s state on a single page.
In addition to the basic system of pages, the sample also
leverages its own BasePage class which provides a lot of common functionality
to pages, such as full screen UIElementRenderer support for drawing Silverlight
UI on top of the screen as well as invoking the 3D rendering system.
Storyboard Animation
The sample takes advantage of the Silverlight Storyboard
animation system to drive the movement of the camera in between pages. By
leveraging dependency properties on the RendererState, the app creates a
Storyboard with a few animations and attaches them to the camera properties of
the state object. Silverlight then takes care of all the animations, including
applying animation curves. All of this is retrieved by the Renderer through the
RendererState object.
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