# XNA 2.0 and VS 2008



## Kreij (Apr 12, 2008)

Microsoft has released all of the 2008 versions of their Visual Studio products, including the Express versions. There are several new features and improvements that make them a worthy successor to the 2005 versions.

However, one thing that is missing is XNA (Game Studio Express or GSE) support in the C# versions of the 2008 products. This is understandable, as the GSE team wanted to make sure that everything worked as planned and the currect version of GSE (2.0) did not fit into VS2008 well at all. Instead of dumping some crap on us, they said, "nope, not supported".  I can live with that.

There are some work arounds for those who want to play with XNA in VS2008.
XNA is a whole bunch of classes that act as wrappers (and more) around the DirectX APIs (it's what used to be called Managed DirectX  or MDX). Because these classes are pulled out of assemblies (DLLs) they are still accessable from VS2008. You just have to do things manually.

To use XNA in VS2008 do the following (assuming you have some version of C# 2008 installed);
Download XNA 2.0
Extract the files to a directory using your favorite extractor (WinRAR or whatever). Don't run the executable, as it will not install correctly with 2008.
Go to the directory you extracted them into and run "redists.msi" and "xnags_shared.msi".
From then you will be able to add the .net references in your 2008 C# project, and be able to access all of the XNA classes.

However, two this will be missing.
1) Templates and integratetion from the IDE. (Not really a big deal)
2) Access to the Content Pipeline. (This is a big deal)

You can always use other methods of getting data to your graphics card, but the Content Pipeline is one of the things that is so sweet that it will cause you to weep when you realize you can't use it in 2008.  Okay, maybe not weep, but it is sweet.

Anyway, the jist of this thread was to let you know that if you want to use the XNA Framework in the 2008 C# products, you can. Just be informed of what you will sacrifice if you do.

BTW, the XNA Team says that XNA 3.0 (which will be fully compatible with 2008 C#, and ONLY 2008) should appear sometime around Christmas 2008.

Thanks for reading, and have fun coding.


----------

