Sorry that I missed your replies to this topic back in January. In case you are still around or anyone reading, I thought I would reply.

How did you initial trial of DotFuscator Professional Edition go?

About Controllers
I researched this since my game allows a Game Pad for use on PC. XNA and MonoGame only support XBOX compatible controllers. Supporting other input systems would require a lot of work outside of XNA/MonoGame.

You can use a 3rd party emulator like TocaEdit Xbox 360 Controller Emulator (http://www.x360ce.com/). This software will map a non-Xbox compatible controller to the Xbox control scheme and feed it to the game. There are downsides to this approach like having to place the emulator in the install directory. The good part about this approach is the emulator handles all the compatibility issues with most every controller ever made.

This is my opinion, but I would be wary of not supporting the keyboard and/or mouse on a PC game. Players will expect a PC game to not require a game pad if they do not want it to, and I imagine you may get a lot of negative reviews for not supporting.

Everyone: I mentioned I was in a online game-jam, and it was my first. I'd like outside opinions on this. My game, due to its nature, requires a game controller. Actually a Xbox compatible controller as is needed by MonoGame. Is this unreasonable to expect gamers to have a game controller? I've got advice to the contrary and maybe I was mistaken to expect that not every game can be controlled by keyboard/mouse in a PC game?

On a side note, does anyone have experience with older Usb joysticks in MonoGame or are we limited to x-input?

At any rate, after a few more posts, you'll be able to post your own links just fine. I think you only need the first "karma" bar before you can post links. (I have no control over when and how you can post links. It's a Wikidot thing.)

It's something I heard someone with absolutely no scruples talking about once in a previous workplace and would like to avoid. It is important for applications that are not games and contain propriety information even more so! It wasn't a concern when I was a .Net Web application developer as there were other ways things were secured, but I now consider having this knowledge part of my professional development.

Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but what is the concern with de-compiling someone else's work? Are you worried they would wholesale steal your game/idea or is it that they would have access to some of your methods/code? I guess having access to some of the code would allow them to review for vulnerabilities, but it is a video game so not too critical of a system.

I use click once as well with my XNA games to publish PC versions of my demo, but I haven't thought through what could be maliciously done with the provided published demos…

I also was intrigued when I saw that you had a competition going on through this site. I would not enter at this point, but I may enter an upcoming one. I'd rather compete or collaborate with others who are using the MonoGame framework or XNA and are programmers.

My game isn't 100% complete yet, but the competition is done. I am continuing to work on it. If your at all interested in taking a look, please visit my wordpress site: https://pandemicgame.wordpress.com/ to download an early version. Keep in mind I am aware my artistic skills are lacking and I am still developing my game dev skills though I am an experienced C# programmer.

I'm glad you brought it up!

Is that why you dropped into the chat room earlier? I saw that you had been in there, but I was AFK when you were around. Sorry about that.

I managed to obfuscate it afterwards using crypto obfuscator for .NET but this is a trial version. I found the .NET Reactor free version inadequate and a professional license is said to be expensive. Surely there is an open-source alternative or really inexpensive alternative. Could you write a tutorial on obfuscating MonoGame projects alongside deployment? I think other developers would find this invaluable and not everyone knows how easy it is to reverse engineer !

Thanks

I finally got Visual Studio 2015 working on my cpu and plan to try the script soon, so if we want to use it in a future collaboration I should be able to work with it.

-Brett

Do you have plans to update your XNA 4.0 install script to handle Visual Studio 2015 or provide a new page so people have the option of either Visual Studio 2013 or 2015?

The install script you have for 2013 works great and it would be nice to have the same option for 2015. I have no idea the time commitment or feasibility of setting up Visual Studio 2015 for XNA though.

-Brett

Basicly C or any derivate DOES NOT support returning more than 1 variable. So you cannot return 2 or more values.
The options are:

1-encapsulate the returning values in an kind of object
2-using in/out parameters

For 1:
Old C hadn't objects so, the only way to do this was using STRUCTS. Well you could use arrays instead, but a struct makes more sense from a semantic point of view and less prone to errors. So, my preference (because my background is C hehe) is using first structs, then objects (objects add a significative amoount of overhead), then anykind of collection (arrays, lists, dictionarys -why not? ;) - ).

For 2:
If you have to use OUT parameters… well.. out types are designed for values that CAN change inside a method, not to workaround the limitations of the language. What if your method creates 2 objects, who would be the parameters? empty obviously because the user should never give any because is the method itself which creates the objects.

The key is OUT parameters are essentially related to the meaning of the variables.If the parameter needs to be changed in the method, then it's ok being out… if you are using it like a mechanism to return 2 values, then it's not a good method, but many times the language limitations imposes you the way to follow.

Use Structs.

But I have been unable to find an up to date walkthough/tutorial on how to get started.

I have a DX shader (.fx file) from the max install called "StandardFX.fx"
Its fine in its function HOWEVER for the Ambient Occlusion map slot it uses (unwrap) Map Channel 1.

I am not a coder

but in the code is there an easy way to identify where this Map Channel is defined as #1 and change it to Map Channel 2 ??? (i.e. a different UV unwrap layout for AO)

thanks
Ivon
I can copy the code here if needed…

I actually got the idea from a math teacher who explained an algebra concept by replacing the numbers with shapes. Everything still worked, but now I could *see* it working, if that makes sense.

I guess I could summarize by saying that I prefer books with pictures :P

The color thing might be a good idea, but I think the implementation on Wikidot would be a beast. Perhaps what's needed is to take it a little slower on things like that and sort of walk the reader through the diagramming process a little more carefully. I know I was helping somebody in the chat room a couple of days ago, and they were having trouble understanding the program. I walked them through it line by line, symbol by symbol, and things started clicking for them. Doing more of that within the tutorials would probably be helpful to everybody.

So I've kind of taken your idea and pointed it in a somewhat different direction. I'd love to hear from you if this would be a suitable replacement for the color coding that you brought up, and hear from other people as well.