3/12/2010

These are the release notes for the Customer Technology Preview (CTP) 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. 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 Windows Phone Emulator.

Installation

  1. You can install Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP even if you do not have Visual Studio already installed.
  2. Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP is only compatible with Visual Studio® 2010 RC.
    You cannot install Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP on a computer that has other versions of Visual Studio 2010 on it. For additional information, see Installation in Known Issues.
  3. Click on the Windows Phone Developers Tools link and follow the instructions.

Uninstallation

Uninstall Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP-ENU from the Control Panel by selecting Uninstall or change a program. This will uninstall all the components installed with this product, including the preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0.

Known Issues

Installation

Uninstallation

Silverlight Application Development

Windows Phone Emulator

XNA Game Development

Windows Phone Deployment and Debugging in XNA Game Studio

XNA Framework

Installation

  1. Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP is only compatible with Visual Studio® 2010 RC.
    If you have any version of Visual Studio 2010 product family other than Visual Studio 2010 RC installed on your computer, setup will stop and instruct you to uninstall the product or a set of components. Even after uninstalling the other versions of Visual Studio, Windows Developer Tools CTP may not work. Instead, you should install Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP on another computer.
  2. Installation on a non-default path is not supported. Workaround: Use the default path provided.
  3. Installation is only supported on the English-United States (en-US) version of the operating system. Installation may proceed with other localized operating systems, but it is not supported.
  4. Installation progress screen goes blank when you are navigating the Setup Wizard pages using only the keyboard. Workaround: Use the mouse instead of the keyboard to navigate the Setup Wizard pages.
  5. The “View Log files” on setup error page is not working. Workaround: Setup logs (dd *.txt) are available in %TEMP% folder. You can also download the setup log collection tool to gather log files automatically when reporting bugs or posting them to forums.
  6. When you install the tools as an administrator and then you try to run the tools from a normal user account, deployment to the emulator fails. Workaround: keep running the tools as an administrator or change the privileges of the c:\programdata\microsoft\phone tools\corecon\10.0\addons\ImageConfig.xsl file so that all accounts can read it (i.e. everyone).
  7. For additional installation and uninstallation known issues related to Visual Studio 2010 RC, see this ReadMe file.
  8. This preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0 is only available with the Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP.

Uninstallation

  1. Uninstalling any version of XNA Game Studio after installing Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP requires a repair of the remaining versions of XNA Game Studio.
    If you uninstall Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP, XNA Game Studio 4.0, or prior versions of XNA Game Studio (such as XNA Game Studio 3.1) from a computer after installing Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP, you must repair any remaining installations of XNA Game Studio.
    To repair XNA Game Studio:
    1. From Control Panel | Programs and Features, select the version of Microsoft XNA Game Studio.
    2. Select Uninstall/Change.
    3. Select Reinstall in the setup wizard.

Silverlight Application Development

  1. Dragging a control from the Toolbox to an XAML text editing window is not working. You can add the control on the designer surface or edit the XAML directly to add the control.
  2. Per frame callbacks (i.e. handling the CompositionTarget.Rendering event) should be used sparingly in this release due to less than optimal performance.
  3. 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.
  4. Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP includes database components. These components are not supported for application development.
  5. When using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate RC 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
  6. MediaElement will be tinted when the Background property is set on the container of a MediaElement. Workaround: do not set the background or set it to transparent.
  7. The “Support central settings” option under the Application tab of Project Properties is not supported. As a result, debugging the settings task of the application is not supported.
  8. The WebBrowser control default size is not set. After you drag and drop the control from the toolbox to the emulator and you lose focus, you cannot get it back. Workaround: Click on the WebBrowser control name in the XAML file to regain focus on the emulator, and then stretch the controls so you can see it.
  9. The Add Service Reference option is not supported in the Windows Phone add-in to Visual Studio 2010. Workaround: Use Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone to add service references.
  10. 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 RC.
  11. 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 copy via Help Library Manager.

Windows Phone Emulator

  1. Hardware virtualization: To improve the performance of the emulator (including the boot time), you can turn on the hardware virtualization setting.
  2. 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.
    You can check if your PC supports the recommended configuration by running ‘dxdiag’ from any command-line window.
  3. Media: The emulator supports the VC-1 (WMV simple, main, and advanced profiles) container for video encoding.
  4. Runtime exception occurs when an application attempts to use a launcher/chooser in Microsoft.Phone.Tasks to call an application that is not present in the Emulator home screen. The following error string is displayed, “The drive cannot locate a specific area or track on the disk.” Workaround: Do not use the launcher/chooser or catch this exception.
  5. The emulator syncs up to the current time at startup, but not to the current system time zone. Workaround: set up your computer time zone to GMT.
  6. Test servers with fully qualified domain name (FQDN) (for example, http://mytestserver/mydomain.com) are not accessible using the emulator if the host machine is not connected to the network with a proxy server. You have to use the server name (for example, http://mytestserver) directly.
  7. The push client debugging has to wait for two minutes after boot of the emulator (or device) before using the APIs (i.e. Start screen show up).
  8. 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.

XNA Game Development

  1. The Visual Studio 2010 project upgrade wizard does not support the complete upgrade of XNA Game Studio 3.0 or 3.1 projects to XNA Game Studio 4.0. The wizard will not upgrade XNA game project-specific metadata or XNA game content projects.
    The Visual Studio 2010 Upgrade Wizard has a checkbox specifying if it should create a backup of a Visual Studio project. Selecting this option will not back up XNA game content projects.
    To upgrade a project to XNA Game Studio 4.0, you must create a new game project and add copies of code or assets from your existing project to the new project.
  2. Create copy of project for Windows Phone option is not supported
    In XNA Game Studio, selecting a game project and clicking the Create Copy of Project for Windows Phone menu will not complete the necessary steps to create a copy of an existing Windows game as a Windows Phone game in XNA Game Studio 4.0. After creating the Windows Phone copy, you must perform the following additional steps.
    1. Remove the following references:
      • Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Avatar
      • Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Net
      • Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Storage
      • Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Video
      • Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Xact
    2. Create a new blank Windows Phone Game project and go to the Properties folder.
    3. Copy the files AppManifest.xml and WindowsPhoneManifest.xml from the new blank Windows Phone Game project into the Properties folder.
    4. Edit WindowsPhoneManifest.xml and update the following values:
      • Update the ProductID value to match the GUID that is listed for the assembly GUID in AssemblyInfo.cs
      • Update the Title to match the AssemblyTitle in AssemblyInfo.cs
  3. Xbox® 360® Game project templates are included but not supported in the preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0.
    The preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0 which is included with Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP 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.
  4. Do not 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.

Windows Phone Deployment and Debugging in XNA Game Studio

  1. XNA Game Studio will check for a DirectX 10 or later graphics card 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:
    Deploy failed with the following error: The current display adapter does not meet the emulator requirements to run XNA Framework applications.
    The DirectX Caps Viewer Tool can be used to determine if a graphics card supports DirectX 10 or later. This tool is available for download via DirectX SDK.
    To determine if a graphics card supports DirectX 10 or later:
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    If you see this error message and your graphics card is DirectX 10-capable as reported by the DirectX Caps Viewer Tool, you should refer to the Web site for the manufacturer of the graphics card to see if a newer driver is available.
    On Windows Vista®, SP2 and the 4 updates that are a part of KB 971644 are also required to support deployment to the Windows Phone Emulator:
    It is possible to bypass this capabilities check in XNA Game Studio by setting the following registry setting:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\XDE XNAEnableGPU = 1 (REG_DWORD)
    Caution: If you override this registry key, the project will attempt to deploy but only a black screen will be displayed in the emulator if the required graphics card capabilities are not available.
  2. 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, these operations will fail with the following error message:
    The specified package cannot be opened or contains an invalid manifest or signature.
  3. To set a game project to build or deploy:
    1. In Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, click Tools, then click Settings, then click Expert Settings to enable the Solution Configurations drop-down.
    2. From the Solution Configurations drop-down in the standard toolbar, select Configuration Manager.
    3. Verify that the check boxes for Build and Deploy are checked for your Windows Phone Game project.
  4. Deployment fails if the assembly GUID does not match the ProductID value in the Windows Phone manifest
    If the assembly GUID in Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs does not match the ProductID value in the App element in Properties\WindowsPhoneManifest.xml, deployment will fail with the following error:
    The specified package cannot be opened or contains an invalid manifest or signature.
    Make sure that the assembly GUID in Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs matches the ProductID value in the App element in Properties\WindowsPhoneManifest.xml
  5. Deployment fails if a game thumbnail is not copied to the output directory
    If Copy to Output Directory is not set to Copy always for the game thumbnail, game deployment will fail with the following error:
    Value does not fall within the expected range
    To resolve this issue, click on the game thumbnail and set Copy to Output Directory to Copy always.
  6. Windows Phone Emulator sometimes hangs when the back button is used to exit a game.
    In some circumstances, the Windows Phone Emulator will become unresponsive if the back button is used to exit a game. If this occurs, you can exit the session by clicking on the Close button (X) on the Windows Phone Emulator application window.

XNA Framework

  1. Game hangs when calling security critical methods in the game constructor.
    Security-critical operations are actions that affect code access security, such as elevation of user rights, calling unsafe managed code, and so forth. Calling a method marked with the SecurityCriticalAttribute, such as Assembly.GetName, from a Game constructor will cause an XNA Framework-based game to fail to launch. In addition, the game process will hang, preventing debugging.
  2. MediaLibrary.SavePicture hangs Windows Phone Emulator.
    MediaLibrary.SavePicture is not supported for the Windows Phone Emulator included with the Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP.
  3. 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.
  4. Windows Phone keyboard is not visible in emulator after an initial call to Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput.
    The Windows Phone keyboard is only visible the first time Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput is called. On subsequent calls, the keys will continue to function but the keyboard will not be visible. This behavior will persist between deployment and debugging sessions. To make the keyboard visible again, you can close the emulator between deployment and debugging sessions.
  5. No TextBox is available if default text is not specified in call to Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput.
    If an empty string is specified for the defaultText parameter of Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput, no textbox will display, which will prevent users from entering text.
  6. Game flickers when Game.IsFullScreen is set to true.
    Some games may flicker when rendering some types of transparent content if Game.IsFullScreen is true. To work around this issue, you can set Game.IsFullScreen to false, or use a different blending state such as BlendState.AlphaBlend or BlendState.Additive.
  7. Song.FromUri throws InvalidOperationException if called before MediaLibrary or MediaPlayer initialization.
    When calling Song.FromUri, the method throws an InvalidOperationException. To work around this issue, call the constructor for MediaLibrary or MediaPlayer before calling the Song.FromUri method.
  8. Guide.IsTrialMode always returns true.
    For this preview release of XNA Game Studio 4.0, trial mode is not supported. Guide.IsTrialMode will always return true, even if Guide.SimulateTrialMode is false. In the final release of XNA Game Studio 4.0, trial mode will exhibit the same behavior as seen with Xbox 360 games, where Guide.IsTrialMode will always return false when debugging an application if no license is available and Guide.SimulateTrialMode can be set to true to change this behavior.
  9. The new automatic rotation and scaling feature in XNA Game Studio 4.0 is not supported for this preview release. When creating prototypes with XNA Game Studio 4.0, you should rotate after drawing to the render target. In the final release, this functionality will be available without special workarounds.

Scenarios Not Supported

  • Opening Windows Phone projects in Expression Blend® is not supported, except for Expression Blend 4 Beta with “MICROSOFT EXPRESSION BLEND ADD-IN PREVIEW FOR WINDOWS PHONE.”
  • Round-trip editing of the Windows Phone projects between Expression Blend and Visual Studio is not supported.
  • Windows XP and Windows Server® are not supported.
  • Virtual PC and Hyper-V™ are not supported.

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