These are the release notes for the Beta release of Windows Phone Developer Tools.
System Requirements
Supported Operating System
- Windows® Vista® (x86 and x64) ENU with Service Pack 2 – all editions except Starter Edition
- Windows 7 (x86 and x64) ENU – all editions except Starter Edition
Hardware
- Installation requires 3 GB of free disk space on the system drive.
- 2 GB RAM
- XNA® Game Studio deployment to Windows® Phone Emulator requires a DirectX® 10 or later graphics card with WDDM 1.1 driver. For additional information, see item #1 in Windows Phone Deployment and Debugging in XNA Game Studio.
- DirectX 10 capable card with a WDDM 1.1 driver is needed to take advantage of GPU acceleration on the Windows Phone Emulator for a Silverlight® application. The DX10 card is optional for Silverlight applications.
Installation
- If Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (WPDT CTP) is currently installed on you machine you must uninstall it before running setup for Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta. To uninstall WPDT CTP from the control panel, right-click Microsoft Windows Phone Developers Tools CTP – ENU and select uninstall. This will remove WPDT CTP and its components from your computer.
Note: We advise you not to uninstall WPDT CTP components (such as Silverlight 4 RC) before uninstalling WPDT CTP itself. Doing so will cause the WPDT CTP uninstall program to go into install/repair mode and instruct you to install the "missing" components. If this occurs you will need to re-install those components before uninstalling WPDT CTP. For more information and steps to resolution for this and related issues read this Blog article . - You can install Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta even if you do not have Visual Studio already installed.
- Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta is compatible only with the English version of Visual Studio® 2010 RTM.
If you have Visual Studio 2010 Professional or a higher edition installed, continue to use it for Windows Phone development. - Click on the Windows Phone Developers Tools link and follow the instructions.
Uninstallation
Uninstall Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta from the Control Panel by selecting Uninstall or change a program. This will uninstall all the components installed with this product.
Known Issues
Breaking Changes for Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta
Silverlight Application Development
Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
Installation
- Windows Phone Developer Tools BETA is only compatible with the English version of Visual Studio® 2010 RTM.
If you have any version of Visual Studio 2010 product family other than Visual Studio 2010 RTM installed on your computer, setup will stop and instruct you to uninstall the product or a set of components. - Installation is supported only on the English-United States (en-US) version of Visual Studio® 2010 RTM.
- For additional installation and uninstallation known issues related to Visual Studio 2010, see this
ReadMe file. - This preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0 is available only with the Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools BETA.
- If Silverlight 4 Tools or Blend components fail to install as part of WPDT installation, they can be installed from Add Remove Programs:
- Right-click Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta – ENU and select Uninstall/Change.
- Select Add Optional components and proceed with the installation.
- Right-click Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta – ENU and select Uninstall/Change.
Uninstallation
- If you uninstall Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools BETA or XNA Game Studio 4.0 from a computer that has XNA Game Studio 3.1 installed, you must repair the XNA Game Studio Platform Tools Component. To repair XNA Game Studio 3.1, you can run the MSI located at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Setup\xnags_platform_tools.msi.
Breaking Changes for Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta
Item | Description | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Framework consolidation | Consolidated the following DLLs into Microsoft.Phone.dll. Microsoft.Phone.dll contains the following:
| ||||||
Silverlight control template | Updated the Silverlight for Windows Phone control templates and changed the default control styles and templates. Along with simple cosmetic changes, the sizing of some controls has changed such that any layouts depending on a specific height / width of a control may be broken. In particular, since the MinHeight / MinWidth constraint has been removed from some controls, you may see controls getting “squashed” if the explicit height set in XAML is too small. Therefore, you should review layouts with the new templates. In general, applications should avoid setting explicit widths and heights on elements unless strictly necessary. Relying on alignment will generally give better results. The following minor issues will be fixed in a future update:
| ||||||
Application Manifest File | Changed the following elements in the WMAppManifest file:
| ||||||
Phone Controls | Removed Microsoft.Phone.Controls.dll. You must remove the following:
Additonal work items to consider:
| ||||||
Page and Frame Classes/ Navigation/Controls | Moved phone-specific members of Page and Frame classes to new classes, PhoneApplicationPage and PhoneApplicationFrame in the Microsoft.Phone.Controls namespace. Your builds will break if you use the old types. API changes as follows:
| ||||||
WindowsPhoneEvents | Removed the WindowsPhoneEvents class and replaced with PhoneApplicationService class. Renamed Pause and Resume with Activated and Deactivated. Renamed ApplicationIdleDetection with ApplicationIdleDetectionMode and UserIdleDetectionMode. | ||||||
Manipulation EventArgs in Silverlight | Changed the following properties:
| ||||||
Push Notifications APIs | Changed push notification APIs. These changes apply to Microsoft.Phone.Notification and Microsoft.Phone.Shell. The following list shows the summary of changes:
For more information, see How to: Set Up a Notification Channel for Windows Phone and How to: Send a Push Notification from a Web Service for Windows Phone. | ||||||
Network state API | Changed the following namespace: Old namespace Microsoft.Devices.NeworkInformation to new namespace Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation. | ||||||
LicenseInfo Class | Changed the following namespace and class names:
| ||||||
WebBrowser | Changed the following APIs:
| ||||||
PhoneNumberChooserTask and PhotoChooserTask | Modified the Chooser APIs, such as PhoneNumberChooserTask and PhotoChooserTask, to use delegates for returning data back to the calling application. The Completed event in those classes is fired when data is returned back to the application. You can assign delegates to the Completed event to retrieve the returned data. You must remove any references to ITask. The following is a code example:
| ||||||
Accelerometer | If you used Microsoft.Devices.Sensors namespace, you must change your implementation to use the latest Accelerometer class design. Here is the summary of changes:
| ||||||
Interlocked Class in System.Threading Namespace | In the Silverlight System.Threading namespace, the 64-bit managed Interlocked methods are not supported. Use the 32-bit methods for your application. The following is a list of the unsupported methods:
| ||||||
Reactive Extensions for .NET Framework | Changed namespace from System.Reactive to Microsoft.Phone.Reactive. The new assembly is Microsoft.Phone.Reactive.dll. You must update existing projects to use the new reference assembly. The following namespaces were consolidated into a single new namespace Microsoft.Phone.Reactive:
| ||||||
System.Windows.Browser | Removed System.Windows.Browser.dll because this is not supported. The HTML DOM bridge APIs in System.Windows.Browser namespace are not supported in Windows Phone. The HttpUtility class is supported in Windows Phone. It is moving to System.Windows.dll in System.Net namespace. If your application uses HttpUtility class, change the namespace to System.Net. Any Windows Phone application that started as a Silverlight 3 application will likely be impacted by this change. The default unhandled exception event handler in the Silverlight 3 application template used a type from System.Windows.Browser.dll. | ||||||
Application Bar | Changed the following Application Bar APIs:
| ||||||
Orientation and Layout Updates | Orientation: Previously, only the page was rotated, but not the entire application frame. There was a two-phase event system for detecting changes in orientation, [On]OrientationChanging followed by [On]OrientationChanged. In this release, the entire application frame rotates and there is only a single event/override—[On]OrientationChanged. You should remove all handlers for the OrientationChanging event. System Chrome: There are fewer layout passes to handle the differences in layout when page transitions occur. There is no visible effect as a result of this change. The updates also provided the correct behavior for TransformToVisual and FindElementsInHostCoordinates APIs. Make sure that you remove any code that previously provided workarounds for these APIs. | ||||||
User Interface | Removed UIElement.Effect and the corresponding effects DropShadow and Blur. | ||||||
New Exception for Xbox LIVE games | If a game update is available, Xbox LIVE services will not be available until the player installs the game update. When a game update is available, GamerServicesDispatcher will throw a GameUpdateRequiredException when this method is called from a previous version of the game. Games must handle the GameUpdateRequired exception on Windows Phone and allow the player to confirm requests to update the application. | ||||||
Application Activation Behavior | A second launch of an application that is already running or deactivated causes the termination of the first instance of the application. Any code that assumed a resume of the application should be re-evaluated. Your code should not assume that launching the second instance will bring the previously running instance back to the foreground. For more information, see Execution Model Overview for Windows Phone. | ||||||
Microsoft.Phone.Shell namespace | Changed the following enumerations:
| ||||||
XNA Framework |
|
Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone Beta
- Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone Beta installs side by side with Expression Blend 4.
- Silverlight, WPF, and SketchFlow projects are not available in Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone Beta. To build Silverlight, WPF, or SketchFlow projects, download the trial version of
Expression Studio 4 Ultimate .
Silverlight Application Development
- You must restart the phone registration tool for each phone that you want to unlock for development. The new phone registration tool does not recognize when you change devices. If, after unlocking a device, you attempt to unlock another device without restarting the tool, it will falsely indicate that the second device was successfully unlocked. The workaround is to restart the registration tool before you unlock a device.
- Modification to the WMAppManifest.xml file is required for existing projects from previous CTP releases. You will need to make the following change to avoid a build error when building these projects with Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta:
- Open the file \Properties\ WMAppManifest.xml
- Locate the tag
<DefaultTask Name="_default" PlaceHolderString="Default task" />
and change it to<DefaultTask Name="_default" />
- Open the file \Properties\ WMAppManifest.xml
- During the installation of Windows Phone Developer Tools (WPDT), the setup for Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 might fail. If this occurs, ignore the error. After WPDT setup completes and if all other WPDT components except Silverlight 4 have been installed, you can install the Silverlight 4 Developer Runtime from this location
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=188039 . There is no need to install WPDT again. - The WebBrowser control will not appear in the Emulator image. A work around for this issue is to avoid using the DefaultStyleKey and set the style directly.
- For existing Silverlight projects, you may need to add NavigationPage=”MainPage.xaml” to the DefaultTask element in the WMAppManifest.xml file. MainPage.xaml should be set to the initial xaml page for your application. This was previously set in App.xaml.
- Changing namespace results in a black screen. If you change the default namespace of primary Silverlight files (for example, App.xaml, MainPage.xaml, MainPage.xaml.cs), then, on deployment, the Emulator will display a black screen. This does not apply to files that you add such as views, helper classes, etc.
- For existing projects, the ListViewItem control has been removed. You may need to remove the style definition for this from App.xaml. Look for mpc:ListViewItem.
- Playback of video and audio is disabled on the phone while connected to the Zune client. To test video and audio playback on the device, shut down the Zune client or disconnect the device after deploying the application and then launch it from the phone’s application list. This limitation does not apply to audio playback via the Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio.SoundEffect class.
- In this release, per frame callbacks (i.e. handling the CompositionTarget.Rendering event) should be used sparingly due to less than optimal performance.
- ApplicationBar and related classes cannot participate in data binding and name scopes, so you will need to use code-behind if you want to programmatically change any properties.
- Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta includes database components. These components are not supported for application development.
- When using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate for Silverlight application development for Windows Phone, the following features are not supported:
- Profiler
- IntelliTrace
- Lab Management
- Testing
- Data
- Show Data Source
- Add New Date Source
- Schema Compare
- Show Data Source
- Profiler
- MediaElement will be tinted when the Background property is set on the container of a MediaElement. To work around this issue, do not set the background or set it to transparent.
- When the same namespace exists between Silverlight and Windows Phone, pressing F1 Help resolves to Silverlight. This is the default behavior for Visual Studio 2010.
- Windows Phone documentation is only available online in MSDN®. A local copy of the Windows Phone documentation is not included in the developer tools download and you cannot get a copy via Help Library Manager.
Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
- After launching Visual Studio, the first time you attempt to deploy an application to a pin locked phone the deployment will fail with "Access Denied". If you then unlock the phone and attempt to deploy the application again, the deployment will succeed. If you subsequently re-lock the phone, the deployment will still succeed. You will be able to deploy the application to the locked phone until you close Visual Studio.
To reproduce this issue:- Use the Developer Unlock tool to unlock the Device.
- Pin-Lock the Device.
- Launch Visual Studio, create a new Phone Developer project, and then build and deploy the project to the device
Expected Result: Successful Deployment
Actual Result: “Access Denied” - Clear the pin-lock (i.e. unlock the device)
- Deploy the same project from step 3.
Expected/Actual Result: Successful Deployment - Pin-Lock the device
- Deploy same project from step 3.
Expected/Actual Result: Successful Deployment. - Pin-Lock the device.
- Close and then re-launch Visual Studio. Re-load the Phone Developer Project from Step 3.
- Deploy the project to the device.
Expected Result: Successful Deployment.
Actual Result: “Access Denied”
- Use the Developer Unlock tool to unlock the Device.
- While deploying/debugging if you get the following error: “Application could not be launched for debugging”. First, verify that the application is installed on the target device and that there is no splashscreen in the project. Then, uninstall the application and in Visual Studio do the following:
- Add an image file with the name SplashScreenImage.jpg to the project.
- In Solution Explorer, right-click the file and select Properties.
- In the Properties pane, set Build Action to Content.
- Rebuild the application and redeploy it.
- Add an image file with the name SplashScreenImage.jpg to the project.
- The Windows Phone Developer Tools Express Start menu shortcut will not be installed if Visual Studio 2010 is present. Windows Phone Developer Tools Express will be installed, but the Start menu shortcut will not be installed.
- If you have existing projects that were created with the Windows Phone Developer Tools MIX CTP release, you must add the capabilities section to the file named WMAppManifest.xml in the properties folder. Replace the empty capabilities section with the code below. There is a warning dialog box when opening old Silverlight projects, but not for XNA Framework projects.
<Capabilities> <Capability Name="ID_CAP_NETWORKING" /> <Capability Name="ID_CAP_LOCATION" /> <Capability Name="ID_CAP_SENSORS" /> <Capability Name="ID_CAP_MICROPHONE" /> <Capability Name="ID_CAP_MEDIALIB" /> <Capability Name="ID_CAP_GAMERSERVICES" /> <Capability Name="ID_CAP_PHONEDIALER" /> <Capability Name="ID_CAP_PUSH_NOTIFICATION" /> <Capability Name="ID_CAP_WEBBROWSERCOMPONENT" /> </Capabilities>
- Playback of video and audio is disabled on the phone while connected to the Zune client. To test video and audio playback on the device,
shut down the Zune client or disconnect the device after deploying the application and then launch it from the phone’s application list. This
limitation does not apply to audio playback via the Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio.SoundEffect class.
- When using the Emulator to debug an application that calls the MediaPlayerLauncher to play video, the launcher UI does not render properly Specifically:
- The controls across the bottom of the display are cut off. Only the lower half of the controls is displayed.
- Video frames only render if you actively and continually click on the UI. For example, if you click once you will see a frame or two then the display will go black again. If you click constantly, you can see the entire video.
- The controls across the bottom of the display are cut off. Only the lower half of the controls is displayed.
- The application icon is not updated if a new image has the same name. If you rebuild the project and deploy the application, the image will get updated.
- In debug mode, if you perform a Break All (CTRL + ALT + BREAK) command, the application fails to break into a managed thread. Instead, the device loses its connection and displays the error message: "The device connection has been lost."
- If you change the assembly name of a project, you must rebuild the project before deploying the application. If you do not rebuild the project, a blank page may appear when you run or debug the application.
- Simple Remote Procedures (Sirep) directory restrictions. With the public preview release, directory access on the phone is not yet restricted. In the future, access will be limited to the \application data\phone tools\10.0 directory.
- To change the namespace for your application, you need to modify the following files:
[projectname].csproj
,App.xaml
andApp.xaml.cs
where [projectname] is the name of your application project. For example, to change the default namespace from OldNamespace to NewNamespace do the following:- In your [projectname].csproj file, locate the <SilverlightAppEntry> tag and replace the current namespace name with the new namespace name. That is, change
<SilverlightAppEntry>OldNamespace.App</SilverlightAppEntry>
to<SilverlightAppEntry>NewNamespace.App</SilverlightAppEntry>
. - In your App.xaml file, locate the following line
x:Class=”OldNamespace.App"
and change it tox:Class="NewNamespace.App"
. - In your App.xaml.cs file, locate the namespace declaration and change
namespace OldNamespace
tonamespace NewNamespace
.
- In your [projectname].csproj file, locate the <SilverlightAppEntry> tag and replace the current namespace name with the new namespace name. That is, change
- Setting a breakpoint in a page constructor during application load results in the application closing. To reproduce this issue:
- Create a Windows Phone Application in WPDT.
- Set breakpoint in MainPage constructor.
- Deploy and debug the device.
Current: Breakpoint hits. If you sit at the breakpoint for more than a few seconds, the returns back to home screen. - Create a Windows Phone Application in WPDT.
- In previous releases the application virtualization feature (sometimes referred to as “tombstoning”), which removes background applications from memory, was only invoked when the system resources required it.
In this release, when an application is deactivated, the system immediately removes the process from memory after the appropriate events, which let the application save runtime state, have been executed.
This allows developers to see the effect of this virtualization during development and allows them to write proper code to handle all cases.
This behavior is currently enforced for all applications and games by default. As a result, if a user navigates back to an application that he or she previously navigated away from (for example by using the Start button) the application must be re-started and re-activated. This has a significant performance side effect.
In future releases, we will allow the system to make this choice based on a policy which will address most of the end user and performance issues.
As a result of the changes to the Application Virtualization feature you must modify your existing applications to avoid erratic or buggy behavior. You can apply either of the two following options:- Create a new project once you’ve installed WPDT Beta and copy all of your resources and code into it.
- Make corresponding changes in the following files:
App.xaml: Look for the shell:PhoneApplicationService tag in an example WPDT Beta application – wiring-up of Application lifecycle event handlers is done here.
App.xaml.cs: Look for phone-specific initialization in an example WPDT Beta application: InitializePhoneApplication called in App constructor, a new Phone application initialization region and four new Application lifecycle event handlers - Application_Launching, Application_Activated, Application_Deactivated, Application_Closing
WMAppManifest.xml: Set <DefaultTask … NavigationPage=”MainPage.xaml”/>. This attribute setting specifies the application start page. This attribute is optional and is not required for an application that sets the start page in code according to some internal logic.
- Create a new project once you’ve installed WPDT Beta and copy all of your resources and code into it.
- When you are debugging an application and the phone is disconnected while the application is in the Tombstone state, you will get a black screen. To reproduce this issue:
- Begin debugging an application.
- Navigate away from the application by pressing the phone Start key. This will put the application in the Tombstoned state.
- Disconnect the phone.
- Press the phone Back (<-) key. Notice that the screen goes black. However, if you press F5 in the debugger you can resume debugging the application.
- Begin debugging an application.
- After a series of deployment/debugging cycles you might get the following error message when you attempt to deploy an application to the device:
“This program is blocked by group policy. For more information, contact your system administrator”
If this occurs you will need to reset the device. To reset the device:- Go to Settings
- Select “About”
- Push “reset your phone”
- Go to Settings
Windows Phone Emulator
- There is a behavior change in the accelerometer in the Emulator that may cause problems for existing applications. Previously, the accelerometer sensor would not start in the Emulator. You could include code to test for this condition. Now, the accelerometer starts, but it always returns a vector of (0, 0, -1). You should be able to use the same accelerometer code in both the Emulator and the device. However, in the Emulator, it will always indicate that the position has not changed.
- Emulator Software Input Panel (SIP) and the desktop keyboard cannot be active at the same time. Use the Pause/Break key to toggle between them.
- The Emulator or device does not launch applications in the correct orientation when in Landscape mode. This issue is exposed when you set the orientation to Landscape mode on the Emulator or device before deploying an application. If you launch an application that supports Portrait and Landscape mode, the application will start up in Portrait mode even though the orientation is set to Landscape.
- If you run the emulator on a Windows 7 computer with hardware assist enabled and have Virtual PC 7 running, the error message that appears is incorrect. The error message should say:
“Device Emulator is not compatible with Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7, Close all running instances of Windows Virtual PC and re-launch Device Emulator."
Instead, a more general error message about Virtual Machine Manager appears. When you click OK, the emulator should close. However, a second dialog box appears that says:
"Error: The saved-state file {D:\ProgramDate\Microsoft\XDE\{E575DA31-FC47-4766-853F-018D823B9EE6} is corrupt. You can delete the corrupted files and then launch the Emulator. Do you want to delete the corrupt saved state file before exiting?"
Ignore this dialogue box. - When using the Emulator to debug an application that calls the MediaPlayerLauncher to play video, the launcher UI does not render properly. Specifically:
- The controls across the bottom of the display are cut off. Only the lower half of the controls is displayed.
- Video frames only render if you actively and continually click on the UI. For example, if you click once you will see a frame or two then the display will go black again. If you click constantly, you can see the entire video.
- The controls across the bottom of the display are cut off. Only the lower half of the controls is displayed.
- Hardware virtualization: To improve the performance of the emulator (including the boot time), you can turn on the hardware virtualization setting in the BIOS. For more information, see the topic “Setup and System Requirements for Windows Phone Emulator” in the Windows Phone Developer Tools documentation on MSDN
- GPU support: Windows Phone Emulator supports GPU peripheral emulation using the host GPU on a PC that support DDI version 10 and above and DirectX version 10 and above. On all other machines, the emulator falls back to software emulation which is not optimized for performance. For more information, see the topic “Setup and System Requirements for Windows Phone Emulator” in the Windows Phone Developer Tools documentation on MSDN.
You can check if your PC supports the recommended configuration by running ‘dxdiag’ from any command-line window. - Media: The emulator supports the VC-1 (WMV simple, main, and advanced profiles) container for video encoding.
- For push notifications, if the emulator host computer is behind a proxy, SOCKS proxy has to be configured on the host computer. You can go to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Internet Options > Connections tab, and then choose the Setting option to set this configuration.
- The emulator does not support orientation changes when the keyboard is enabled. You must disable the keyboard by pressing the Pause/Break key, and then rotate the emulator.
- Application scenarios that are dependent on a virtual network adapter are not supported. In some cases, the virtual network adapter may cause application failures that you can work around by disabling the adapter.
- An existing virtual machine instance of Virtual Box closes when Windows Phone Emulator is launched on a host PC with Hardware VT enabled.
- An existing virtual machine instance of VMWare closes when Windows Phone Emulator is launched on a host PC with Hardware VT enabled.
- To run XNA Framework games on the emulator on a Windows Vista host computer, you must have Windows Vista SP2. For more information about requirements for running XNA games, see the section in this document titled “Windows Phone Deployment and Debugging in XNA Game Studio”.
- The emulator synchronizes to the current time at startup, but not to the current system time zone. The default time zone in the Emulator is set to UTC-9 (Alaska). Any application which is date and time sensitive should use UTC.
- Applications running on the Emulator will not give the correct UTC time as the Emulator is not synced with the current UTC time on the host computer. To work around this issue, delete or rename to any name the saved state file (*.dess) which is located under %ProgramData%\Microsoft\XDE and re-launch the Emulator.
XNA Game Development
- The preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0 includes project templates for Xbox 360 games and game libraries. Developers can create and build Xbox 360 game and Xbox 360 game library projects using the preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0, but these projects cannot deploy or run.
- When upgrading a game containing a Content Pipeline extension project, you may see the error message: "References to projects targeting XNA Framework version 'v3.1' are not supported from project targeting XNA Framework version 'v4.0'." To complete the upgrade, close and then reopen the solution file.
- When building XNA Game Studio projects created with a previous preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0, you will see the following build error:
The 'PlaceHolderString' attribute is not declared.
To correct this build error:- In Solution Explorer, expand the Properties folder, and then open WMAppManifest.xml
- Locate the DefaultTask element:
<DefaultTask Name="_default" PlaceHolderString="Default task" />
- Delete the PlaceHolderString attribute, and save the file.
<DefaultTask Name="_default" />
- In Solution Explorer, expand the Properties folder, and then open WMAppManifest.xml
- Developers who are using projects created with a previous preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0 must add a 173x173 file named Background.png to the game project, the game will use as a tile image. To use the default tile image, create a new Windows Phone game project and copy the file Background.png from the new project into their existing project. Then, add the following properties to the game .csproj file:
<TileTitle>name that matches what is listed for AssemblyTitle in AssemblyInfo.cs</TileTitle> <TileImage>Background.png</TileImage>
- When building XNA Game Studio projects created with a previous preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0, the GameThumbnail.png file is copied to the XAP twice during the build process, with the second copy overwriting the first. To prevent this duplicate copy action:
- In Solution Explorer, right-click GameThumbnail.png and click Properties.
- In Properties, select the Copy to Output Directory value and click Do Not Copy.
- In Solution Explorer, right-click GameThumbnail.png and click Properties.
- Developers are not able to add the same content project to both a Game and Game Library in the same solution. If a game project references a game library project in the same solution, and both projects reference the same content project, you will receive the following build error:
Unable to copy file {filename}
This occurs because content is deleted from the output folder when a game and a referenced game library both contain a content reference to the same content project. To work around this issue, you can remove the reference to the content project from either the game or game library. - Visual Studio 2010 Test projects will not run if the test project references an XNA Game Studio content project. Developers should deselect content projects when using the Create Test Wizard.
- XNA Game Studio no longer supports FBX files that contain multiple animation takes. A game will display multiple copies of the first animation take if an FBX file specifies multiple animation takes.
Windows Phone Deployment and Debugging in XNA Game Studio
- The maximum size of XNA application that can be deployed on the Emulator or a Device is 300 MB.
- XNA Game Studio will check for a DirectX 10 or later graphics card with a WDDM 1.1 driver before deploying to the Windows Phone Emulator. If the graphics card does not support DirectX 10 or later, the following message will be displayed in the error window of Visual Studio:The
Deploy failed with the following error: The current display adapter does not meet the emulator requirements to run XNA Framework applications.
DirectX Caps Viewer Tool can be used to determine if a graphics card supports DirectX 10 or later and if a WDDM 1.1 driver is installed. This tool is available for download via the DirectX SDK.
To determine if a graphics card supports DirectX 10 or later:- In the DirectX Caps Viewer, expand the DXGI 1.1 Devices folder, and then expand the next level folder for the video card. Under this folder, you will see folders for Direct3D® 10, Direct3D 10.1, and the like.
- Expand the Direct3D 10.1 folder and look at the Feature Level entry. In this folder, you will see an entry for D3D10_FEATURE_LEVEL_10_0 or D3D10_FEATURE_LEVEL_10_1 if the graphics card supports DirectX 10 or later. If the Feature Level indicates a feature level of 9_n or less, it cannot support the Direct3D of the Windows Phone Emulator.
On Windows Vista SP2, the four updates that are a part ofKB 971644 are also required to support deployment to the Windows Phone Emulator.
The following updates referenced in KB 971644 are required for Windows Vista x86-based systems:Update for Windows Vista (KB971512) Update for Windows Vista (KB971513) Update for Windows Vista (KB971514) Update for Windows Vista (KB960362)
- In the DirectX Caps Viewer, expand the DXGI 1.1 Devices folder, and then expand the next level folder for the video card. Under this folder, you will see folders for Direct3D® 10, Direct3D 10.1, and the like.
- Windows Phone Games do not display in the Windows Phone Emulator application list after deploying to the emulator.
The Games Hub is not available in the Windows Phone Emulator, and Windows Phone games will not display in the Windows Phone Emulator application list after deploying to the emulator. If you need to launch a Windows Phone game outside of a debugging session, you can change the Genre value of the Windows Phone Manifest. To do this, open \Properties\WindowsPhoneManifest.xml and change the Genre value in the App element from "Apps.Games" to "NormalApp."
To view the Windows Phone Game in the application list, open \Properties\WMAppManifest.xml and change the Genre value in the App element from "Apps.Games" to "NormalApp". - Unable to start program error if project not configured to build or deploy.
If a project is not configured to build and or deploy a game, the operation will fail with the following error message:To set a game project to build or deploy:Unable to start program '\Windows\taskhost.exe'. The drive cannot locate a specific area or track on the disk.
- In Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, click Tools, then click Settings, then click Expert Settings to enable the Solution Configurations drop-down.
- From the Solution Configurations drop-down in the standard toolbar, select Configuration Manager.
- Check the Build and Deploy checkboxes.
- In Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, click Tools, then click Settings, then click Expert Settings to enable the Solution Configurations drop-down.
- Build and Deploy options such as F5 will not work if an XNA Game Studio 4.0 project specifies the Any CPU configuration.
If a C# content project has no build configuration specified, the default setting is Debug|Any CPU. A Debug|Any CPU build configuration will be created if a .suo file is deleted. To resolve this issue, set the project build configuration to Windows Phone.
XNA Framework
- Gesture support is now available through the TouchPanel.ReadGesture method.
- MediaLibrary.SavePicture is now available on Windows Phone Emulator.
- Guide.IsTrialMode now returns false as expected when debugging, unless Guide.SimulateTrialMode is true.
- On the Windows Phone Emulator the MediaLibrary class will always behave as an empty library.
- GamerServices functionality is not supported. Gamer services are not available for the preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0. Most methods and properties in the Microsoft.Xna.GamerServices namespace will return default values if called.
Scenarios Not Supported
- Windows XP and Windows Server® are not supported.
- Virtual PC and Hyper-V™ are not supported.
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