Posted 07/21/2008 @ 12:30:08 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Developer Diary , Programming , Tales Framework , XNA

Since the 4th of July weekend I've been coding in XNA in my spare time. As is typical with me I've been putting together an extension framework. The goal of the framework is to provide some basic needs when writing XNA games. I'll release, as Microsoft calls them, a Community Technical Preview (CTP) soon.

While not exhaustive, here is what I've been doing:

• A UI control, screen state and input management system. It is largely meant to handle things like menuing systems and heads-up displays. General features:
  • Hierarchical control structure similar to WinForms or WPF.
  • Controller-bound screen state management system.
  • Layout handling including control docking, automatic sizing and layout managers.
  • Focus manager that, unlike most UI systems, supports more than one control in focus at a time; it supports one control in focus per controller.
  • Input-mechanism that supports binding 'gestures' similar to WPF. 
  • Includes a few helpful controls, though nothing implies how a control should look; a developer has full control.
  • Developers can extend anything (e.g. they can add input gestures, layout managers, controls, etc).
• A GameSession that replaces NetworkSession. General features:
  • Abstracted the notion of sessions so it supports both pure local or network games where the participants can be local users, network users or even bots.
  • Includes controls and screens that do not make assumptions on how something looks, but manage the lobby process. This means developers generally do not need to write the game session logic, but concentrate on how the lobby should look.

I'll post more details, including samples, once I release the CTP.