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128-462: In many respects , XNA can be thought of as a .NET analog to Microsoft's better known game development system, DirectX , but it is aimed at developers primarily interested in writing lightweight games. XNA is the basic platform for Xbox Live Indie Games . As of January 2013, XNA is no longer being developed, and it is not compatible with Windows Runtime (the API for developing Metro-style apps ), which

256-636: A code editor supporting IntelliSense (the code completion component) as well as code refactoring . The integrated debugger works as both a source-level debugger and as a machine-level debugger. Other built-in tools include a code profiler , designer for building GUI applications, web designer , class designer, and database schema designer. It accepts plug-ins that expand the functionality at almost every level—including adding support for source control systems (like Subversion and Git ) and adding new toolsets like editors and visual designers for domain-specific languages or toolsets for other aspects of

384-550: A concurrent build system, among others. It ships with an enhanced set of UI widgets, both for Windows Forms and WPF . It also includes a multithreaded build engine ( MSBuild ) to compile multiple source files (and build the executable file) in a project across multiple threads simultaneously. It also includes support for compiling icon resources in PNG format, introduced in Windows Vista. An updated XML Schema designer

512-413: A debugger that works both as a source-level debugger and as a machine-level debugger. It works with both managed code as well as native code and can be used for debugging applications written in any language supported by Visual Studio. In addition, it can also attach to running processes, monitor, and debug those processes. If source code for the running process is available, it displays the code as it

640-414: A device driver . Hardware manufacturers have to write these drivers for a particular DirectX version's device driver interface (or DDI), and test each individual piece of hardware to make them DirectX compatible. Some hardware devices have only DirectX compatible drivers (in other words, one must install DirectX in order to use that hardware). Early versions of DirectX included an up-to-date library of all of

768-684: A managed execution environment. The runtime is available for Windows XP , Windows Vista , Windows 7 , Windows Phone and Xbox 360 . Since XNA games are written for the runtime, they can run on any platform that supports the XNA Framework with minimal or no modification. Games that run on the framework can technically be written in any .NET-compliant language, but only C# in XNA Game Studio Express IDE and all versions of Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 (as of XNA 4.0) are officially supported. Support for Visual Basic .NET

896-581: A modeless list box over the code editor window, in proximity of the editing cursor . In Visual Studio 2008 onwards, it can be made temporarily semi-transparent to see the code obstructed by it. The code editor is used for all supported languages. The code editor in Visual Studio also supports setting bookmarks in code for quick navigation. Other navigational aids include collapsing code blocks and incremental search , in addition to normal text search and regex search. The code editor also includes

1024-602: A "battle" began between supporters of the cross-platform OpenGL and the Windows-only Direct3D. Incidentally, OpenGL was supported at Microsoft by the DirectX team. If a developer chose to use the OpenGL 3D graphics API in computer games , the other APIs of DirectX besides Direct3D were often combined with OpenGL because OpenGL does not include all of DirectX's functionality (such as sound or joystick support). In

1152-440: A 32-bit application, Visual C++ 2005 supports compiling for x86-64 (AMD64 and Intel 64) as well as IA-64 ( Itanium ). The Platform SDK included 64-bit compilers and 64-bit versions of the libraries. Microsoft also announced Visual Studio Tools for Applications as the successor to Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and VSA (Visual Studio for Applications). VSTA 1.0 was released to manufacturing along with Office 2007 . It

1280-502: A base standard. Major scheduled features including GPGPU support ( DirectCompute ), and Direct3D 11 with tessellation support and improved multi-threading support to assist video game developers in developing games that better utilize multi-core processors. Parts of the new API such as multi-threaded resource handling can be supported on Direct3D 9/10/10.1-class hardware. Hardware tessellation and Shader Model 5.0 require Direct3D 11 supporting hardware. Microsoft has since released

1408-502: A certain position) and watches (which monitor the values of variables as the execution progresses). Breakpoints can be conditional, meaning they get triggered when the condition is met. Code can be stepped over , i.e., run one line (of source code) at a time. It can either step into functions to debug inside it, or step over it, i.e., the execution of the function body isn't available for manual inspection. The debugger supports Edit and Continue , i.e., it allows code to be edited as it

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1536-523: A commercial license; Enterprise organizations require a commercial license for use outside of the noted exceptions. Visual Studio Community is oriented towards individual developers and small teams. As of Visual Studio 2010, the Professional edition is the entry level commercial edition of Visual Studio. (Previously, a more feature restricted Standard edition was available.) It provides an IDE for all supported development languages. MSDN support

1664-403: A console-specific version, DirectX was used as a basis for Microsoft's Xbox , Xbox 360 and Xbox One console API. The API was developed jointly between Microsoft and Nvidia , which developed the custom graphics hardware used by the original Xbox. The Xbox API was similar to DirectX version 8.1, but is non-updateable like other console technologies. The Xbox was code named DirectXbox, but this

1792-650: A cross-platform, window system independent software interface to graphics hardware by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to bring 3D graphics programming into the mainstream of application programming. Besides it could also be used for 2D graphics and imaging and was controlled by the Architectural Review Board (ARB) which included Microsoft. Direct3D was intended to be a Microsoft controlled alternative to OpenGL, focused initially on game use. As 3D gaming grew game developers were discovering that OpenGL could be used effectively for game development. At that point

1920-458: A description of how to implement the immediate start of the installation procedure of a software title after inserting its CD-ROM, a feature called AutoPlay, was also part of the SDK. The "Direct" part of the library was so named as these routines bypassed existing core Windows 95 routines and accessed the computer hardware only via a hardware abstraction layer (HAL). Though the team had named it

2048-433: A format called Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) or Common Intermediate Language (CIL). When a CIL application executes, it is compiled while being executed into the appropriate machine language for the platform it is being executed on, thereby making code portable across several platforms. Programs compiled into CIL can be executed only on platforms which have an implementation of Common Language Infrastructure . It

2176-478: A gaming platform in Windows. Alex St. John, the evangelist for DirectX, staged an elaborate event at the 1996 Computer Game Developers Conference which game developer Jay Barnson described as a Roman theme, including real lions , togas, and something resembling an indoor carnival. It was at this event that Microsoft first introduced Direct3D , and demonstrated multiplayer MechWarrior 2 being played over

2304-419: A gaming platform, but the three committed towards this project's development. Their rebellious nature led Brad Silverberg , the senior vice president of Microsoft's office products, to name the trio the "Beastie Boys". Most of the work by the three was done among other assigned projects starting near the end of 1994. Within four months and with input from several hardware manufacturers, the team had developed

2432-564: A limited port for embedded devices using the .NET Micro Framework . A project called ANX is available which implements its own version of XNA using the SharpDX stack; support for Linux , macOS and the PlayStation Vita is in progress as well. Using ANX, developers are able to write games using code that is very similar to XNA, while still being considered a Metro application in Windows 8. DirectX Microsoft DirectX

2560-597: A limited subset of the BCL source is available, with more library support planned for later. On April 12, 2010, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010, codenamed Dev10 , and .NET Framework 4 . It is available for Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 and has support for Windows Server 2008 R2 , as well as for Windows 7 . It is the last version to support Windows XP SP3 , Windows Server 2003 SP2 , Windows Server 2003 R2 , Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 , and

2688-476: A local web server, separate from IIS , that can host ASP.NET applications during development and testing. It also supports all SQL Server 2005 databases. Database designers were upgraded to support the ADO.NET 2.0 , which is included with .NET Framework 2.0. C++ also got a similar upgrade with the addition of C++/CLI which is slated to replace the use of Managed C++ . Other new features of Visual Studio 2005 include

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2816-409: A more accessible way for developers to produce shaders. DirectX 9.0c was an update to the original, and has been continuously changed over the years affecting its compatibility with older operating systems. As of January 2007, Windows 2000 and Windows XP became the minimum required operating systems. This means support was officially dropped for Windows 98 and Windows Me. As of August 2024, DirectX 9.0c

2944-641: A multi-item clipboard and a task list. The code editor supports code snippets, which are saved templates for repetitive code and can be inserted into code and customized for the project being worked on. A management tool for code snippets is built in as well. These tools are surfaced as floating windows which can be set to automatically hide when unused or docked to the side of the screen. The code editor in Visual Studio also supports code refactoring including parameter reordering, variable and method renaming, interface extraction, and encapsulation of class members inside properties, among others. Visual Studio includes

3072-403: A new HTML / CSS editor influenced by Microsoft Expression Web are included. J# is not included. Visual Studio 2008 requires .NET 3.5 Framework and by default configures compiled assemblies to run on .NET Framework 3.5, but it also supports multi-targeting which lets the developers choose which version of the .NET Framework (out of 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, Silverlight CoreCLR or .NET Compact Framework)

3200-734: A new programming language, that targets .NET. It also introduced the successor to Visual J++ called Visual J#. Visual J# programs use Java's language-syntax. However, unlike Visual J++ programs, Visual J# programs can only target the .NET Framework, not the Java Virtual Machine that all other Java tools target. Visual Basic changed drastically to fit the new framework, and the new version was called Visual Basic .NET. Microsoft also added extensions to C++, called Managed Extensions for C++ , so .NET programs could be created in C++. Visual Studio .NET can produce applications targeting Windows (using

3328-538: A previous version's DDI. The application programmer had to query the available hardware capabilities using a complex system of "cap bits" each tied to a particular hardware feature. Direct3D 7 and earlier would work on any version of the DDI, Direct3D 8 requires a minimum DDI level of 6 and Direct3D 9 requires a minimum DDI level of 7. However, the Direct3D 10 runtime in Windows Vista cannot run on older hardware drivers due to

3456-609: A price of 80, 240 or 400 points for their game. The creator is paid 70% of the total revenue from their game sales as a baseline. Microsoft originally planned to take an additional percentage of revenue if they provided additional marketing for a game, but this policy was rescinded in March 2009, leaving the flat rate intact regardless of promotion. Microsoft also distributed a free year premium App Hub subscription for educational establishments through their DreamSpark program and MSDNAA . These accounts allowed students to develop games for

3584-616: A set of functions that are used to implement various source control functionality, with a standard Visual Studio user interface. MSSCCI was first used to integrate Visual SourceSafe with Visual Studio 6.0 but was later opened up via the Visual Studio SDK. Visual Studio .NET 2002 used MSSCCI 1.1, and Visual Studio .NET 2003 used MSSCCI 1.2. Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010 use MSSCCI Version 1.3, which adds support for rename and delete propagation, as well as asynchronous opening. Visual Studio supports running multiple instances of

3712-634: A single assembly, thus simplifying dependencies on it for software developers, development on this version has subsequently been discontinued, and it is no longer supported. The Managed DirectX 2.0 library expired on October 5, 2006. During the GDC 2006, Microsoft presented the XNA Framework , a new managed version of DirectX (similar but not identical to Managed DirectX) that is intended to assist development of games by making it easier to integrate DirectX, HLSL and other tools in one package. It also supports

3840-405: A system simultaneously; multi-GPU support was previously dependent on vendor implementations such as AMD CrossFireX or NVIDIA SLI . DirectX 12 is supported on all Fermi and later Nvidia GPUs, on AMD's GCN -based chips and on Intel's Haswell and later processors' graphics units. At SIGGRAPH 2014, Intel released a demo showing a computer generated asteroid field , in which DirectX 12

3968-423: Is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia , especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", such as Direct3D , DirectDraw , DirectMusic , DirectPlay , DirectSound , and so forth. The name DirectX was coined as a shorthand term for all of these APIs (the X standing in for

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4096-454: Is a set of game asset pipeline management tools, which help by defining, maintaining, debugging, and optimizing the game asset pipeline of individual game development efforts. A game asset pipeline describes the process by which game content, such as textures and 3D models, are modified to a form suitable for use by the gaming engine. XNA Build helps identify the pipeline dependencies, and also provides API access to enable further processing of

4224-687: Is a set of tools that allows Visual Studio and XNA Studio to act "as the key design point around organizing and consuming 3D content". Formerly known as XNA Game Studio Professional, XDK Extensions is an add-on to XNA Game Studio and requires the Microsoft Xbox 360 Development Kit. Both are only available for licensed Xbox developers. The extensions include additional managed APIs for achievements, leaderboards, and other features reserved for licensed game titles. Titles developed using XDK Extensions include winners of Microsoft's Dream.Build.Play competition among others. The most heavily publicized of these

4352-453: Is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft . It is used to develop computer programs including websites , web apps , web services and mobile apps . Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms including Windows API , Windows Forms , Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Microsoft Store and Microsoft Silverlight . It can produce both native code and managed code . Visual Studio includes

4480-552: Is an incremental update of Direct3D 10.0 which shipped with, and required, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 , which was released in February 2008. This release mainly sets a few more image quality standards for graphics vendors, while giving developers more control over image quality. It also adds support for cube map arrays, separate blend modes per-MRT, coverage mask export from a pixel shader, ability to run pixel shader per sample, access to multi-sampled depth buffers and requires that

4608-489: Is available as MSDN Essentials or the full MSDN library depending on licensing. It supports XML and XSLT editing, and can create deployment packages that only use ClickOnce and MSI . It includes tools like Server Explorer and integration with Microsoft SQL Server also. Windows Mobile development support was included in Visual Studio 2005 Standard, however, with Visual Studio 2008, it is only available in Professional and higher editions. Windows Phone 7 development support

4736-479: Is available as a free download. After the release of Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft created the Visual Studio Gallery. It serves as the central location for posting information about extensions to Visual Studio. Community developers as well as commercial developers can upload information about their extensions to Visual Studio .NET 2002 through Visual Studio 2010. Users of the site can rate and review

4864-615: Is available as a free download. While the runtimes are proprietary, closed-source software, source code is provided for most of the SDK samples. Starting with the release of Windows 8 Developer Preview, DirectX SDK has been integrated into Windows SDK. In late 1994, Microsoft was ready to release Windows 95 , its next operating system . An important factor in its value to consumers was the programs that would be able to run on it. Microsoft employee Alex St. John had been in discussions with various game developers asking how likely they would be to bring their MS-DOS games to Windows 95, and found

4992-528: Is available in the following editions or SKUs : The Community edition was announced on November 12, 2014, as a new free version, with similar functionality to Visual Studio Professional. Prior to this date, the only free editions of Visual Studio were the feature-limited Express variants. Unlike the Express variants , Visual Studio Community supports multiple languages, and provides support for extensions. Individual developers have no restrictions on their use of

5120-519: Is available via plug-ins . Java (and J# ) were supported in the past. The most basic edition of Visual Studio, the Community edition, is available free of charge. The slogan for Visual Studio Community edition is "Free, fully-featured IDE for students, open-source and individual developers". As of February 19, 2024 , Visual Studio 2022 is a current production-ready version. Visual Studio 2013, 2015 and 2017 are on Extended Support, while 2019

5248-543: Is being debugged. When debugging, if the mouse pointer hovers over any variable, its current value is displayed in a tooltip ("data tooltips"), where it can also be modified if desired. During coding, the Visual Studio debugger lets certain functions be invoked manually from the Immediate tool window. The parameters to the method are supplied at the Immediate window. Visual Studio includes many visual designers to aid in

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5376-453: Is being run. If source code is not available, it can show the disassembly . The Visual Studio debugger can also create memory dumps as well as load them later for debugging. Multi-threaded programs are also supported. The debugger can be configured to be launched when an application running outside the Visual Studio environment crashes. The Visual Studio Debugger allows setting breakpoints (which allow execution to be stopped temporarily at

5504-560: Is common to see the names "DirectX" and "Direct3D" used interchangeably. The DirectX software development kit (SDK) consists of runtime libraries in redistributable binary form, along with accompanying documentation and headers for use in coding. Originally, the runtimes were only installed by games or explicitly by the user. Windows 95 did not launch with DirectX, but DirectX was included with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2. Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 both shipped with DirectX, as has every version of Windows released since. The SDK

5632-409: Is included with Office 2007 and is also part of the Visual Studio 2005 SDK. VSTA consists of a customized IDE, based on the Visual Studio 2005 IDE, and a runtime that can be embedded in applications to expose its features via the .NET object model. Office 2007 applications continue to integrate with VBA, except for InfoPath 2007 which integrates with VSTA. Version 2.0 of VSTA (based on Visual Studio 2008)

5760-539: Is on Mainstream Support. Visual Studio does not support any programming language, solution or tool intrinsically; instead, it allows the plugging of functionality coded as a VSPackage. When installed, the functionality is available as a Service . The IDE provides three services: SVsSolution, which provides the ability to enumerate projects and solutions; SVsUIShell, which provides windowing and UI functionality (including tabs, toolbars, and tool windows); and SVsShell, which deals with registration of VSPackages. In addition,

5888-442: Is only available with Windows Vista (launched in late 2006) and later. Previous versions of Windows such as Windows XP are not able to run DirectX 10-exclusive applications. Rather, programs that are run on a Windows XP system with DirectX 10 hardware simply resort to the DirectX 9.0c code path, the latest available for Windows XP computers. Changes for DirectX 10 were extensive. Many former parts of DirectX API were deprecated in

6016-562: Is possible to run CIL programs in Linux or Mac OS X using non-Microsoft .NET implementations like Mono and DotGNU . This was the first version of Visual Studio to require an NT -based Windows platform. The installer enforces this requirement, and is the last version to support Windows NT 4.0 SP6 or later and Windows 2000 before SP3. Visual Studio .NET 2002 shipped in four editions: Academic, Professional, Enterprise Developer, and Enterprise Architect. Microsoft introduced C# (C-sharp),

6144-514: Is stable for iOS , Android including OUYA , macOS , Linux and Metro for Windows 8 , Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 , as well as PlayStation Mobile in 2D. PlayStation Mobile 3D and Raspberry Pi development are currently in progress. FNA is a full-featured open source reimplementation of XNA forked from MonoGame. The goal of FNA is to preserve the XNA game library by reimplementing XNA itself. An open source project called Grommet contains

6272-568: Is still regularly updated. Windows XP SP2 and newer include DirectX 9.0c, but may require a newer DirectX runtime redistributable installation for DirectX 9.0c applications compiled with the February 2005 DirectX 9.0 SDK or newer. DirectX 9 had a significant impact on game development. Many games from the mid-2000s to early 2010s were developed using DirectX 9 and it became a standard target for developers. Even today, some games still use DirectX 9 as an option for older or less powerful hardware. A major update to DirectX API, DirectX 10 ships with and

6400-449: Is the last version available for Windows XP SP2 , Windows Server 2003 SP1 , as well as the only version to support Windows Vista before SP2 and Windows Server 2008 before SP2 and the last version to support targeting Windows 2000 for C++ applications. Visual Studio 2008 is focused on development of Windows Vista , 2007 Office system, and Web applications. For visual design, a new Windows Presentation Foundation visual designer and

6528-450: Is the last version to run on Windows 2000 and also the last version able to target Windows 98 and Windows Me for C++ applications. Visual Studio 2005's internal version number is 8.0 while the file format version is 9.0. Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2005 on December 14, 2006. An additional update for Service Pack 1 that offers Windows Vista compatibility was made available on June 3, 2007. Visual Studio 2005

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6656-702: The Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT), to aid in content creation. The XNA Framework provides support for both 2D and 3D game creation and allows use of the Xbox 360 controllers and vibrations. XNA framework games that target the Xbox 360 platform could only be distributed by members of the Microsoft XNA Creator's Club/App Hub, which carried a $ 99/year subscription fee. Desktop applications can be distributed free of charge under Microsoft's current licensing. XNA Build

6784-614: The Microsoft Platform SDK instead. DirectX has been confirmed to be present in Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 . Real-time raytracing was announced as DXR in 2018. Support for compiling HLSL to SPIR-V was also added in the DirectX Shader Compiler the same year. DirectX is composed of multiple APIs: Microsoft has deprecated the following components: DirectX functionality is provided in

6912-435: The city of the same name ). It includes an upgrade to the .NET Framework, version 1.1, and is the first release to support developing programs for mobile devices, using ASP.NET or the .NET Compact Framework. The Visual C++ compiler's standards-compliance improved, especially in the area of partial template specialization . Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 is a version of the same C++ compiler shipped with Visual Studio .NET 2003 without

7040-593: The software development lifecycle (like the Azure DevOps client: Team Explorer). Visual Studio supports 36 different programming languages and allows the code editor and debugger to support (to varying degrees) nearly any programming language, provided a language-specific service exists. Built-in languages include C , C++ , C++/CLI , Visual Basic .NET , C# , F# , JavaScript , TypeScript , XML , XSLT , HTML , and CSS . Support for other languages such as Python , Ruby , Node.js , and M among others

7168-401: The "Deployment Designer" which allows application designs to be validated before deployments, an improved environment for web publishing when combined with ASP.NET 2.0 and load testing to see application performance under various sorts of user loads. Starting with the 2005 edition, Visual Studio also added extensive 64-bit support. While the host development environment itself is only available as

7296-783: The "Game SDK" ( software development kit ), the name "DirectX" came from one journalist that had mocked the naming scheme of the various libraries. The team opted to continue to use that naming scheme and call the project DirectX. The first version of DirectX was released in September 1995 as the Windows Game SDK. Its DirectDraw component was the Win32 replacement for the DCI and WinG APIs for Windows 3.1 . DirectX allowed all versions of Microsoft Windows, starting with Windows 95, to incorporate high-performance multimedia. Eisler wrote about

7424-527: The AMD outperformed the more powerful Nvidia under DirectX 12. The performance discrepancies may be due to poor Nvidia driver optimizations for DirectX 12, or even hardware limitations of the card which was optimized for DirectX 11 serial execution; however, the exact cause remains unclear. The performance improvements of DirectX 12 on the Xbox are not as substantial as on the PC. In March 2018, DirectX Raytracing (DXR)

7552-505: The Community edition. The following uses also allow unlimited usage: contributing to Open Source projects, academic research, in a classroom learning environment and for developing and testing device drivers for the Windows operating system. All other use by an organization depends on its classification as an Enterprise (more than 250 employees or more than 1 million USD in annual revenue, per Microsoft). Non-Enterprises may use up to 5 copies without restriction, user number 6 and higher require

7680-421: The Direct3D 11 Technical Preview. Direct3D 11 is a strict superset of Direct3D 10.1 — all hardware and API features of version 10.1 are retained, and new features are added only when necessary for exposing new functionality. This helps to keep backwards compatibility with previous versions of DirectX. Four updates for DirectX 11 were released: DirectX 12 was announced by Microsoft at GDC on March 20, 2014, and

7808-516: The DirectX compatible drivers currently available. This practice was stopped however, in favor of the web-based Windows Update driver-update system, which allowed users to download only the drivers relevant to their hardware, rather than the entire library. Prior to DirectX 10, DirectX runtime was designed to be backward compatible with older drivers, meaning that newer versions of the APIs were designed to interoperate with older drivers written against

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7936-542: The DirectX pattern has been continued for Windows APIs such as Direct2D and DirectWrite . Direct3D (the 3D graphics API within DirectX) is widely used in the development of video games for Microsoft Windows and the Xbox line of consoles. Direct3D is also used by other software applications for visualization and graphics tasks such as CAD/CAM engineering. As Direct3D is the most widely publicized component of DirectX, it

8064-780: The IDE is also responsible for coordinating and enabling communication between services. All editors, designers, project types and other tools are implemented as VSPackages. Visual Studio uses COM to access the VSPackages. The Visual Studio SDK also includes the Managed Package Framework ( MPF ), which is a set of managed wrappers around the COM-interfaces that allow the Packages to be written in any CLI compliant language . However, MPF does not provide all

8192-536: The IDE that Microsoft made freely available. As of 2010 it is no longer available and the Express Editions have superseded it. Visual Studio .NET 2003 also supports Managed C++, which is the predecessor of C++/CLI. The internal version number of Visual Studio .NET 2003 is version 7.1 while the file format version is 8.0. Visual Studio .NET 2003 drops support for Windows NT 4.0, and is the last version to support Windows 2000 SP3 and Windows XP before SP2 and

8320-480: The IDE via COM and can be created in any COM-compliant languages. Packages are created using the Visual Studio SDK and provide the highest level of extensibility. They can create designers and other tools, as well as integrate other programming languages. The Visual Studio SDK provides unmanaged APIs as well as a managed API to accomplish these tasks. However, the managed API isn't as comprehensive as

8448-667: The Internet. The DirectX team faced the challenging task of testing each DirectX release against an array of computer hardware and software . A variety of different graphics cards, audio cards, motherboards, CPUs, input devices, games, and other multimedia applications were tested with each beta and final release. The DirectX team also built and distributed tests that allowed the hardware industry to confirm that new hardware designs and driver releases would be compatible with DirectX. Prior to DirectX Microsoft had added OpenGL to their Windows NT platform. OpenGL had been designed as

8576-509: The MPF includes wrappers for writing managed language services. Visual Studio does not include any source control support built in but it defines two alternative ways for source control systems to integrate with the IDE. A Source Control VSPackage can provide its own customised user interface. In contrast, a source control plugin using the MSSCCI (Microsoft Source Code Control Interface) provides

8704-690: The STL/CLR, which is a port of the C++ Standard Template Library (STL) containers and algorithms to managed code . STL/CLR defines STL-like containers, iterators and algorithms that work on C++/CLI managed objects. Visual Studio 2008 features include an XAML -based designer (codenamed Cider ), workflow designer , LINQ to SQL designer (for defining the type mappings and object encapsulation for SQL Server data), XSLT debugger, JavaScript Intellisense support, JavaScript Debugging support, support for UAC manifests ,

8832-436: The Visual Studio 2008 IDE is available under a shared source license to some of Microsoft 's partners and ISVs . Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 on August 11, 2008. The internal version number of Visual Studio 2008 is version 9.0 while the file format version is 10.0. Visual Studio 2008 requires Windows XP Service Pack 2 plus Windows Installer 3.1, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or later. It

8960-475: The WinG interface which came bundled with the game, it crashed so frequently on many desktop systems that parents had flooded Disney 's call-in help lines. St. John recognized the resistances for game development under Windows would be a limitation, and recruited two additional engineers, Craig Eisler and Eric Engstrom , to develop a better solution to get more programmers to develop games for Windows. The project

9088-559: The Windows Forms part of the .NET Framework), the Web (using ASP.NET and Web Services ) and, with an add-in, portable devices (using the .NET Compact Framework). The internal version number of Visual Studio .NET 2002 is version 7.0. Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio .NET 2002 in March 2005. In April 2003, Microsoft introduced a minor upgrade to Visual Studio .NET called Visual Studio .NET 2003, codenamed Everett (for

9216-428: The Xbox 360 they will have to pay an annual fee of US$ 99 (or a four-month fee of US$ 49) for admission to the Microsoft XNA Creator's Club. With an update, XNA developers could compile Xbox 360 binaries and share them with other Microsoft XNA Creator's Club members. XNA Game Studio 2.0 was released on December 13, 2007. XNA Game Studio 2.0 features the ability to be used with all versions of Visual Studio 2005 (including

9344-403: The Xbox 360, but developers still needed a premium Xbox Live account to submit their game to the marketplace. A project called Mono.XNA was formed to port XNA to the open source and cross-platform Mono framework. From the codebase of Mono.XNA and SilverSprite, a new project called MonoGame was formed to port XNA to several mobile devices. As of version 3.0.1 (released March 3, 2013), support

9472-481: The assembly runs on. Visual Studio 2008 also includes new code analysis tools, including the new Code Metrics tool (only in Team Edition and Team Suite Edition). For Visual C++ , Visual Studio adds a new version of Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC 9.0) that adds support for the visual styles and UI controls introduced with Windows Vista . For native and managed code interoperability, Visual C++ introduces

9600-441: The code window, along with indicating the location of the currently executing instruction in the current thread, the currently executing instructions in other threads are also pointed out. The Visual Studio debugger supports integrated debugging of the .NET 3.5 Framework Base Class Library (BCL) which can dynamically download the BCL source code and debug symbols and allow stepping into the BCL source during debugging. As of 2010

9728-475: The dependency data. The dependency data can be analyzed to help reduce the size of a game by finding content that is not actually used. For example, XNA Build analysis revealed that 40% of the textures that shipped with MechCommander 2 were unused and could have been omitted. XNA Game Studio is a programming environment for development of games. Five revisions have been released so far, but as of 2015, no new versions will be developed. XNA Game Studio Express

9856-478: The developer's XNA project. Games created using XNA Game Studio may be distributed via the Windows Phone marketplace, and formerly via Xbox Live Indie Games . The software may also be used to create commercial games which target Windows. Dream Build Play was an annual and global $ 75,000 Microsoft contest promoting Microsoft XNA and eventually Xbox Live Indie Games , although it predated it. The contest

9984-522: The development of applications. These tools include: Microsoft Visual Studio can write high-quality code with comprehensive testing tools to aid in the development of applications. These tools include: Unit testing , IntelliTest, Live Unit Testing, Test Explorer, CodeLens test indicators, code coverage analysis, Fakes. Visual Studio allows developers to write extensions for Visual Studio to extend its capabilities. These extensions "plug into" Visual Studio and extend its functionality. Extensions come in

10112-478: The development on the platform independent .NET Framework . Visual Studio 6.0 was the last version to include Visual J++, which Microsoft removed as part of a settlement with Sun Microsystems that required Microsoft Internet Explorer not to provide support for the Java Virtual Machine . Visual Studio 6.0 came in two editions: Professional and Enterprise. The Enterprise edition contained extra features not found in Professional edition, including: Visual Studio

10240-533: The different AppIds. The Visual Studio Express edition products are installed with their own AppIds, but the Standard, Professional, and Team Suite products share the same AppId. Consequently, one can install the Express editions side-by-side with other editions, unlike the other editions which update the same installation. The professional edition includes a superset of the VSPackages in the standard edition, and

10368-595: The environment (each with its own set of VSPackages). The instances use different registry hives (see MSDN 's definition of the term "registry hive " in the sense used here) to store their configuration state and are differentiated by their AppId (Application ID). The instances are launched by an AppId-specific .exe that selects the AppId, sets the root hive, and launches the IDE. VSPackages registered for one AppId are integrated with other VSPackages for that AppId. The various product editions of Visual Studio are created using

10496-450: The execution of managed code on the Xbox 360. The XNA Game Studio Express RTM was made available on December 11, 2006, as a free download for Windows XP. Unlike the DirectX runtime, Managed DirectX , XNA Framework or the Xbox 360 APIs (XInput, XACT etc.) have not shipped as part of Windows. Developers are expected to redistribute the runtime components along with their games or applications. Visual Studio 2005 Visual Studio

10624-437: The extensions to help assess the quality of extensions being posted. An extension is stored in a VSIX file. Internally a VSIX file is a ZIP file that contains some XML files, and possibly one or more DLL's. One of the main advantages of these extensions is that they do not require Administrator rights to be installed. RSS feeds to notify users on updates to the site and tagging features are also planned. Microsoft Visual Studio

10752-449: The first published DirectX game. Microsoft promoted the game heavily with Bill Gates appearing in ads for the title. DirectX 2.0 became a built-in component of Windows with the releases of Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows NT 4.0 in mid-1996. Since Windows 95 itself was still new and few games had been released for it, Microsoft engaged in heavy promotion of DirectX to developers who were generally distrustful of Microsoft's ability to build

10880-416: The first set of application programming interfaces (APIs) which they presented at the 1995 Game Developers Conference . The SDK included libraries implementing DirectDraw for bit-mapped graphics, DirectSound for audio, and DirectPlay for communication between players over a network. Furthermore, an extended joystick API already present in Windows 95 was documented for the first time as DirectInput, while

11008-462: The form of COM -style objects and interfaces. Additionally, while not DirectX components themselves, managed objects have been built on top of some parts of DirectX, such as Managed Direct3D and the XNA graphics library on top of Direct3D 9. Microsoft distributes debugging tool for DirectX called "PIX". Introduced by Microsoft in 2002, DirectX 9 was a significant release in the DirectX family. It brought many important features and enhancements to

11136-513: The form of macros , add-ins , and packages . Macros represent repeatable tasks and actions that developers can record programmatically for saving, replaying, and distributing. Macros, however, cannot implement new commands or create tool windows. They are written using Visual Basic and are not compiled. Add-Ins provide access to the Visual Studio object model and can interact with the IDE tools. Add-Ins can be used to implement new functionality and can add new tool windows. Add-Ins are plugged into

11264-499: The free Visual C# 2005 Express Edition ), a networking API using Xbox Live on both Windows and Xbox 360 and better device handling. XNA Game Studio 3.0 (for Visual Studio 2008 or the free Visual C# 2008 Express Edition) allows production of games targeting the Zune platform and adds Xbox Live community support. It was released on October 30, 2008, and supported C# 3.0, LINQ and most versions of Visual Studio 2008. XNA Game Studio 4.0

11392-466: The frenzy to build DirectX 1 through 5 in his blog. To get more developers on board DirectX, Microsoft approached id Software 's John Carmack and offered to port Doom and Doom 2 from MS-DOS to DirectX, free of charge, with id retaining all publishing rights to the game. Carmack agreed, and Microsoft's Gabe Newell led the porting project. The first game was released as Doom 95 in August 1996,

11520-818: The functionality exposed by the Visual Studio COM interfaces. The services can then be consumed for creation of other packages, which add functionality to the Visual Studio IDE. Support for programming languages is added by using a specific VSPackage called a Language Service . A language service defines various interfaces which the VSPackage implementation can implement to add support for various functionalities. Functionalities that can be added this way include syntax coloring, statement completion, brace matching, parameter information tooltips, member lists, and error markers for background compilation. If

11648-626: The graphics capabilities of Windows. At the time of its release, it supported Windows 98 , Windows Me , Windows 2000 , and Windows XP . As of August 2024 it remains supported by all subsequent versions of Windows for backward compatibility. One of the key features introduced in DirectX 9 was Shader Model 2.0, which included Pixel Shader 2.0 and Vertex Shader 2.0. These allowed for more complex and realistic graphics rendering. It also brought much needed performance improvements through better hardware acceleration capabilities, and better utilization of GPU resources. It also introduced HLSL , which provided

11776-545: The installation. The Isolated mode of the shell creates a new AppId where the packages are installed. These are to be started with a different executable. It is aimed for development of custom development environments, either for a specific language or a specific scenario. The Integrated mode installs the packages into the AppId of the Professional/Standard/Team System editions, so that the tools integrate into these editions. The Visual Studio Shell

11904-506: The interface is implemented, the functionality will be available for the language. Language services are implemented on a per-language basis. The implementations can reuse code from the parser or the compiler for the language. Language services can be implemented either in native code or managed code . For native code, either the native COM interfaces or the Babel Framework (part of Visual Studio SDK) can be used. For managed code,

12032-719: The latest DirectX SDK and are preserved for compatibility only: DirectInput was deprecated in favor of XInput , DirectSound was deprecated in favor of the Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool system (XACT) and additionally lost support for hardware accelerated audio, since the Vista audio stack renders sound in software on the CPU. The DirectPlay DPLAY.DLL was also removed and was replaced with dplayx.dll; games that rely on this DLL must duplicate it and rename it to dplay.dll. In order to achieve backwards compatibility, DirectX in Windows Vista contains several versions of Direct3D: Direct3D 10.1

12160-415: The main goal of Direct3D 12 is to achieve "console-level efficiency on phone, tablet and PC". The release of Direct3D 12 comes alongside other initiatives for low-overhead graphics APIs including AMD's Mantle for AMD graphics cards, Apple's Metal for iOS and macOS and Khronos Group 's cross-platform Vulkan . Multiadapter support will feature in DirectX 12 allowing developers to utilize multiple GPUs on

12288-488: The new features in Ultimate includes DirectX Raytracing 1.1 , Variable Rate Shading, which gives programmers control over the level of detail of shading depending on design choices, Mesh Shaders , and Sampler Feedback. The version number as reported by Microsoft's DxDiag tool (version 4.09.0000.0900 and higher) use the x.xx.xxxx.xxxx format for version numbers. However, the DirectX and Windows XP MSDN page claims that

12416-450: The only version to support Windows 7 before SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 before SP1. The Visual Studio 2010 IDE was redesigned which, according to Microsoft , clears the UI organization and "reduces clutter and complexity." The new IDE better supports multiple document windows and floating tool windows, while offering better multi-monitor support. The IDE shell has been rewritten using

12544-714: The only version to support Windows Server 2003 before SP1. Visual Studio .NET 2003 shipped in five editions: Academic, Standard, Professional, Enterprise Developer, and Enterprise Architect. The Visual Studio .NET 2003 Enterprise Architect edition includes an implementation of Microsoft Visio 2002's modeling technologies, including tools for creating Unified Modeling Language -based visual representations of an application's architecture, and an object-role modeling (ORM) and logical database-modeling solution. "Enterprise Templates" were also introduced, to help larger development teams standardize coding styles and enforce policies around component usage and property settings. Service Pack 1

12672-402: The particular API names) and soon became the name of the collection. When Microsoft later set out to develop a gaming console , the X was used as the basis of the name Xbox to indicate that the console was based on DirectX technology. The X initial has been carried forward in the naming of APIs designed for the Xbox such as XInput and the Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT), while

12800-548: The professional edition has three CDs, and the enterprise four CDs. It included Visual J++ 1.1 for Java programming and introduced Visual InterDev for creating dynamically generated web sites using Active Server Pages. There was a single companion CD that contained the Microsoft Developer Network library . Visual Studio 97 is only compatible with Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 . It is the last version to support Windows NT 4.0 before SP3. Visual Studio 97

12928-585: The registry always has been in the x.xx.xx.xxxx format. Therefore, when the above table lists a version as '4.09.00.0904' Microsoft's DxDiag tool may have it as '4.09.0000.0904'. Various releases of Windows have included and supported various versions of DirectX, allowing newer versions of the operating system to continue running applications designed for earlier versions of DirectX until those versions can be gradually phased out in favor of newer APIs, drivers, and hardware. APIs such as Direct3D and DirectSound need to interact with hardware, and they do this through

13056-542: The responses mostly negative, since programmers had found that the Windows environment did not provide the necessary features which were available under MS-DOS using BIOS routines or direct hardware access. There were also strong fears of compatibility; a notable case of this was from Disney's Animated Storybook: The Lion King which was based on the WinG programming interface. Due to numerous incompatible graphics drivers from new Compaq computers that were not tested with

13184-476: The runtime directly uses Direct3D 9 DDI provided in all WDDM drivers. Feature level 11_1 has been introduced with Direct3D 11.1 . In 2002, Microsoft released a version of DirectX compatible with the Microsoft .NET Framework , thus allowing programmers to take advantage of DirectX functionality from within .NET applications using compatible languages such as managed C++ or the use of the C# programming language. This API

13312-508: The significantly updated DDI, which requires a unified feature set and abandons the use of "cap bits". Direct3D 10.1 introduces " feature levels " 10_0 and 10_1, which allow use of only the hardware features defined in the specified version of Direct3D API. Direct3D 11 adds level 11_0 and "10 Level 9" - a subset of the Direct3D 10 API designed to run on Direct3D 9 hardware, which has three feature levels (9_1, 9_2 and 9_3) grouped by common capabilities of "low", "med" and "high-end" video cards;

13440-626: The team suite includes a superset of the VSPackages in both other editions. The AppId system is leveraged by the Visual Studio Shell in Visual Studio 2008. Visual Studio includes a code editor that supports syntax highlighting and code completion using IntelliSense for variables , functions , methods , loops , and LINQ queries. IntelliSense is supported for the included languages, as well as for XML , Cascading Style Sheets , and JavaScript when developing web sites and web applications . Autocomplete suggestions appear in

13568-442: The unmanaged one. Extensions are supported in the Standard (and higher) versions of Visual Studio 2005. Express Editions do not support hosting extensions. Visual Studio 2008 introduced the Visual Studio Shell that allows for development of a customized version of the IDE. The Visual Studio Shell defines a set of VSPackages that provide the functionality required in any IDE. On top of that, other packages can be added to customize

13696-573: The video card supports Shader Model 4.1 or higher and 32-bit floating-point operations. Direct3D 10.1 still fully supports Direct3D 10 hardware, but in order to utilize all of the new features, updated hardware is required. Microsoft unveiled DirectX 11 at the Gamefest 08 event in Seattle. The Final Platform Update launched for Windows Vista on October 27, 2009, which was a week after the initial release of Windows 7 , which launched with Direct3D 11 as

13824-548: Was The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai . The Microsoft XNA Framework 2.0 EULA specifically prohibits the distribution of commercial networked games that connect to Xbox Live and/or Games for Windows Live in the absence of a specific agreement signed by both the developer and Microsoft. This means that XNA Game Studio can still be used to develop commercial games and other programs for the Windows platform, although Microsoft's networking support code for Xbox/Windows Live cannot be used. Self-developed network code can still be used inside

13952-498: Was Visual Studio 97. Before that, Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual FoxPro and Visual SourceSafe were sold as separate products. Microsoft first released Visual Studio (codenamed Boston , for the city of the same name , thus beginning the VS codenames related to places) in 1997, bundling many of its programming tools together for the first time. Visual Studio 97 came in two editions: Visual Studio Professional and Visual Studio Enterprise,

14080-408: Was added in 2011. The XNA Framework encapsulates low-level technological details involved in coding a game, making sure that the framework itself takes care of the difference between platforms when games are ported from one compatible platform to another, and thereby allowing game developers to focus more on the content and gaming experience. The XNA Framework integrates with a number of tools, such as

14208-486: Was added to all editions in Visual Studio 2010. Development for Windows Mobile is no longer supported in Visual Studio 2010. It is superseded by Windows Phone 7 . In addition to the features provided by the Professional edition, the Enterprise edition provides a new set of software development, database development, collaboration, metrics, architecture, testing and reporting tools. The first version of Visual Studio

14336-526: Was also sold as a bundle with the separate IDEs used for Visual C++, Visual Basic and Visual FoxPro. Microsoft released Visual Studio .NET (VS.NET), codenamed Rainier (for Washington's Mount Rainier ), in February 2002 (the beta version was released via Microsoft Developer Network in 2001). The biggest change was the introduction of a managed code development environment using the .NET Framework. Programs developed using .NET are not compiled to machine language (like C++ is, for example) but instead to

14464-518: Was an attempt at using the same development environment for multiple languages. Visual J++, InterDev, and the MSDN Library had all been using the same 'environment', called Developer Studio. Visual Studio was also sold as a bundle with the separate IDEs used for Visual C++, Visual Basic and Visual FoxPro. The next version, version 6.0 (codenamed Aspen , after the ski resort in Colorado),

14592-577: Was announced, capable of real-time ray-tracing on supported hardware, and the DXR API was added in the Windows 10 October 2018 update. In 2019 Microsoft announced the arrival of DirectX 12 to Windows 7 but only as a plug-in for certain game titles. Microsoft revealed DirectX 12 Ultimate in March 2020. DirectX 12 Ultimate will unify to a common library on both Windows 10 computers and the Xbox Series X and other ninth-generation Xbox consoles. Among

14720-662: Was claimed to be 50–70% more efficient than DirectX 11 in rendering speed and CPU power consumption. Ashes of the Singularity was the first publicly available game to utilize DirectX 12. Testing by Ars Technica in August 2015 revealed slight performance regressions in DirectX 12 over DirectX 11 mode for the Nvidia GeForce 980 Ti , whereas the AMD Radeon R9 290x achieved consistent performance improvements of up to 70% under DirectX 12, and in some scenarios

14848-609: Was codenamed the Manhattan Project, like the World War II project of the same name , and the idea was to displace the Japanese-developed video game consoles with personal computers running Microsoft's operating system. It had initially used the radiation symbol as its logo but Microsoft asked the team to change the logo. Management did not agree to the project as they were already writing off Windows as

14976-676: Was first announced in 2006 and first opened in January 2007. Many winners are notable developers in the Indie game community. Xbox 360 games written in XNA Game Studio could be submitted to the App Hub, for which premium membership was required (about US$ 99/year). All games submitted to the App Hub were subjected to peer review by other creators. If the game passed review then it would be listed on Xbox Live Marketplace . Creators could set

15104-508: Was introduced with Windows 8 . Microsoft XNA Framework is based on the native implementation of .NET Compact Framework 2.0 for Xbox 360 development and .NET Framework 2.0 on Windows. It includes an extensive set of class libraries, specific to game development, to promote maximum code reuse across target platforms. The framework runs on a version of the Common Language Runtime that is optimized for gaming to provide

15232-429: Was known as " Managed DirectX " (or MDX for short), and claimed to operate at 98% of performance of the underlying native DirectX APIs. In December 2005, February 2006, April 2006, and August 2006, Microsoft released successive updates to this library, culminating in a beta version called Managed DirectX 2.0. While Managed DirectX 2.0 consolidated functionality that had previously been scattered over multiple assemblies into

15360-496: Was officially launched alongside Windows 10 on July 29, 2015. The primary feature highlight for the new release of DirectX was the introduction of advanced low-level programming APIs for Direct3D 12 which can reduce driver overhead. Developers are now able to implement their own command lists and buffers to the GPU, allowing for more efficient resource utilization through parallel computation . Lead developer Max McMullen stated that

15488-676: Was released September 13, 2006. Visual Studio 2005, codenamed Whidbey (a reference to Whidbey Island in Puget Sound region ), was released online in October 2005 and to retail stores a few weeks later. Microsoft removed the ".NET" moniker from Visual Studio 2005 (as well as every other product with .NET in its name), but it still primarily targets the .NET Framework, which was upgraded to version 2.0. It requires Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4, Windows XP with at least Service Pack 2 or Windows Server 2003 with at least Service Pack 1. It

15616-550: Was released in April 2008. It is significantly different from the first version, including features such as dynamic programming and support for WPF , WCF , WF , LINQ , and .NET 3.5 Framework. Visual Studio 2008, and Visual Studio Team System 2008 codenamed Orcas (a reference to Orcas Island , also an island in Puget Sound region , like Whidbey for the previous 2005 release), were released to MSDN subscribers on November 19, 2007, alongside .NET Framework 3.5. The source code for

15744-569: Was released in June 1998 and is the last version to support the Windows 9x platform, as well as Windows NT 4.0 before SP6, but after SP2. Each version of each language in part also settled to v6.0, including Visual J++ which was prior v1.1, and Visual InterDev at the first release. The v6 edition of Microsoft was the core environment for the next four releases to provide programmers with an integrated look-alike platform. This led Microsoft to transition

15872-533: Was released on September 16, 2010. It added support for the Windows Phone platform (including 3D hardware acceleration), framework hardware profiles, configurable effects, built-in state objects, graphics device scalars and orientation, cross-platform and multi-touch input, microphone input and buffered audio playback, and Visual Studio 2010 integration. XNA "Game Studio 4.0 Refresh" was released on 6 October 2011, and added support for Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango), and Visual Basic . The XNA Framework Content Pipeline

16000-497: Was released separately some time after the release of Visual Studio 2008. Visual Studio Debugger includes features targeting easier debugging of multi-threaded applications. In debugging mode, in the Threads window, which lists all the threads, hovering over a thread displays the stack trace of that thread in tooltips. The threads can directly be named and flagged for easier identification from that window itself. In addition, in

16128-403: Was shortened to Xbox for its commercial name. In 2002, Microsoft released DirectX 9 with support for the use of much longer shader programs than before with pixel and vertex shader version 2.0. Microsoft has continued to update the DirectX suite since then, introducing Shader Model 3.0 in DirectX 9.0c, released in August 2004. As of April 2005, DirectShow was removed from DirectX and moved to

16256-428: Was the first version released on August 30, 2006, and was intended for students, hobbyists, and independent game developers. It was available as a free download. Express provides basic "starter kits" for rapid development of specific genres of games, such as platform games , real-time strategy , and first-person shooters . Developers could create Windows games for free with the XNA Framework, but to run their games on

16384-464: Was upgraded to support all the new features introduced in .NET Framework 2.0, including generics and ASP.NET 2.0. The IntelliSense feature in Visual Studio was upgraded for generics and new project types were added to support ASP.NET web services. Visual Studio 2005 additionally introduces support for a new task-based build platform called Microsoft Build Engine ( MSBuild ) which employs a new XML-based project file format. Visual Studio 2005 also includes

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