Is there a way to run an xna game from a web page without installing anything? Something similiar to java, silverlight or very close to a wpf browser applications (XBAP).
Scenario:
Go on webpage, Get asked to install
the game. Game installs, game screen
shows up in webpage. Can full screen,
etc.
The game is a full blown xna framework game, using 3d, has access to the system calls such as directx and other low level networking api. This is probably more of having javascript working with windows system if anything.
SilverSprite seems to do what you want. I have never used it but see XNA 2D games come to the browser via Silverlight.
Essentially it allows XNA game
developers to run their games in
Silverlight 2, though there is a
limitation: the games that can be
converted may only have
SpriteBatch-based graphics, meaning no
3D games.
If your game needs access at the level you describe then it can't really run from within the browser. It will need to be properly installed on the users machine.
You can use a ClickOnce installer to launch your came FROM a web page, but not run it IN a webpage.
The Unity game engine (and designer) is pretty darned fabulous for doing exactly what you describe. You can do all the logic in C# if desired.
Related
Have freelance job on VR - Business app and need to make it in VR and noVR modes.
Can I develop it in Unity and what problems can I face? Or can I make noVR-part in Android studio and then combine it with Unity VR-part?
Searching on the internet and can't find a proper answer.
Unity 4.6+ has a new UI thats canvas based, its pretty ok but not as nice as a modern MVVM enabled UI frameworks. There are assets you can buy that enable MVVM in Unity UI. I would recommend this if your UI is complex
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/page=1/sortby=rating/query=mvvm
The big problem with using Unity for any kind of business app type thing is that when entering text into GUI.TextFields you can't edit the text directly in the textbox. For any kind of form that has a bunch of textboxes and things to interact with, you need to do it in UIKit.I myself wouldnt use unity for what you want to do, try to look into the google Android SDK.
I am new to Xamarin and not sure if chose Xamarin.Forms to create a application for ios and android platform has a problem or not.
The application has some features below:
The application will be able to running some code in background without launching application by user.
The application can be launched by a href link or a notification.
The application is able to launch a builtin Camera application, and receive picture data from Camera application.
Thanks,
Bo
The features you are mentioning can be done with both. Actually, anything you can do on Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android can be done with Forms. Because Forms is only an abstraction layer for the UI which is installed by a NuGet package.
Now, having that said when to use Forms or when to use iOS/Android? It is mostly about UI. Are you going to do some advanced or platform specific stuff is is easier to implement that with the platform specific project.
If you UI will be the same in both platforms and mostly consists of some lists and input fields, then that is a very good candidate for a Forms project.
Notice how I said it is easier to do in the platform specific projects. Again here, you can do anything in Forms as well by the means of Custom Renderers, it is just a bit harder to do.
Ideally try it out yourself and see what suits you best.
In regard with your need to execute code in the background. This will be tricky and is very dependent on the platform that you're on. You will definitely have to write platform specific code for that for which you can use the DependencyService to abstract it to your shared code.
However like AlancLui mentioned executing code in the background isn't something that is easy to do on mobile. On iOS it is restricted to accessing location data or playing music, but still your app needs to be running (in the background). Android has something called Services for this, which makes it a bit easier.
I believe these statement are true:
1) All Universal Apps Work As Holograms
2) Universal Apps can be built using HTML/JS
Does this mean I can build a holographic universal app using web technologies? For example a holographic visualizations dashboard in D3.js?
It's still too early to say definitively, but here is some info I could find.
UPDATE: There is now a library called HoloJS which allows devs to write apps in html.
First your assumptions 1 and 2 are correct. There are ways to build UWP (Universal Windows Platform) apps in javascript/html. This means you could write a UWP JS app which can run webgl in a 2D window placed somewhere in your environment. You could also run your app on Microsoft Edge.
So if all you want to do is display a 2D dashboard in a 3D room, yes it looks very possible. If you want the application to render 3D objects all around the user, there are some problems you will need to work around.
Quoted from https://forums.hololens.com/discussion/80/is-it-possible-to-use-webgl-with-hololens-repost#latest:
"Holographic apps are powered by the same graphics stack as the rest of the Windows 10 ecosystem. That means that just like the Xbox and Win32 games, apps for HoloLens are built on top of DirectX."
So you're kind of stuck with either Unity or DirectX if you want 3D visualizations that surround the user. BUT there could be a way...
A user at the bottom of this page http://forums.hololens.com/discussion/80/is-it-possible-to-use-webgl-with-hololens-repost said:
"That is interesting idea. If I understand correctly, you are trying to hook your Edge browser with your HoloLens and project 3D graphics with WebGL on your Edge browser based on the REST APIs available from HoloLens"
So, you could perhaps fullscreen your app or find some way to ensure it is in front of your user's face and then use a server to direct API calls from the hololens to your web-app in order to transform your geometry around the user.
It might be worth it to look into integrating D3 visualizations inside a threejs app if you want the holographic visualizations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWjn1N4SJsk
If you just want a 2D screen in the environment then develop as normal and use Edge inside the hololens.
I currently have a very simple memory game for Windows Phone that I would like to port over to iOS, Android and possibly Win8 using Xamarin tools.
I would like to centralize my business logic in one assembly and simply create the UI for each platform.
For the most part, the code is simple C#, but I do make use of Bitmaps to show the cards in the game. However, from what I've read, there is no standard support across the different platforms for using Bitmaps.
What would be a recommended approach to this problem?
I'm thinking I have to use something like MonoGame, but feel that is overkill for what I want to do.
You say your code is in C#. As far as I know Xamarin is the only way to get C# code to run on Android and iOS. Xamarin has a free starter edition that you might be able to use but your app will be size limited. Once you hit the size limit you'll need to pay for a license.
After you've decided to pay for a license there are no other costs involved if you want to use MonoGame for the port. If your game is already using XNA or you have some XNA experience I recommend using MonoGame. MonoGame is a port of XNA and is designed for making games, so many game related tasks are easier.
The alternative is to build your game as an app using the standard app building API. This is possible but I can't see any advantages doing it this way unless you are trying to save money by using Xamarin's free edition. If you plan to make more games in the future, you'd be better off biting the bullet and learning MonoGame.
Using bitmaps with MonoGame shouldn't be a problem. Although, you may need to convert them to PNG's first.
Centralizing the business logic in one assembly is sort of possible using Portable Class Libraries but due to the limitations of PCL's it's often easier to use file sharing. Basically you have a soft link to the files in each project. Updating the files updates them in all projects at the same time, but adding new files requires you to add them to each project individually. It's a little bit of a maintenance pain, but not much.
For sure, as a starting point you should separate UI and logic.
To reach this I highly recommend you to make console version of game. Using console it is possible only send commands with parameters to application. No mouse or real-time keyboards usages. All UI-related tasks will be left. Only business logic and commands to use will remain.
Then, you should try MonoGame. It's reliable enough for 2D games. Even more, If IL-code is not too much, it's free for iOS and Android!
Other way is... Unity 3D. Using that engine is depends of code you wrote. In some cases it's possible to use that game engine with shared business logic. Thanks to new Unity 3D policy, indie game developers could make and deploy their games for free.
In short, plan is:
Implement core functionality (with console I/O);
Then, choose engine and implement UI for target platforms.
I have a small 2D game engine written in C#, using DirectX. Is it possible to somehow run it in a browser as a plugin? Like for example Flash and others, where you go to a site with a game and it will ask you to install a certain plugin and then you can play the game in the browser, with mouse and keyboard input.
I have searched around for hours and I still don't know what I'm looking for. I have so far primarily focused on Internet Explorer, but there are plugins, addons, extensions, etc I don't know what I need really.
Yes I think it is possible.
For example, I have an HTML page which includes an element like this:
<object id="simpleControl1"
classid="http:RenderTextProject5.dll#RenderTextProject.ScrollableControl"
height="300"
width="300">
</object>
The 'classid' attribute value has the following meaning/syntax:
RenderTextProject5.dll is the filename of a compiled .NET assembly
RenderTextProject.ScrollableControl is the qualified name (namespace plus classname) of a class which subclasses System.Windows.Forms.Control
I can then see the control being rendered in the browser.
I'm using IE (IE8, but it used to work with IE6 too), and I have the .NET framework installed on my machine (but I think I needn't have the RenderTextProject5 assembly installed on the client machine).
There may be some other caveats too (e.g. I needed to run in the Intranet security zone).
See Return of the Rich Client: Code Access Security and Distribution Features in .NET Enhance Client-Side Apps.
Look for Silverlight.. It is maybe not exactly what you need but it is a browser plugin capable of running C# code ;)
There is a relatively new plugin called Unity. It is a bit more complex, as it is a dev/3D authoring environment on its own, but uses C# as its language as far as I know. However I don't know if pure 2D programming is possible (well, may be worked around using ortho 3d?).
The basic version is free to download recently, maybe worth a check.
It is possible to run C# applications in a web browser without using plugins. For example, C# applications can be compiled into JavaScript applications using JSIL.