Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0 : Displaying Images - Resources and Content (part 2) - Adding Resources to a Project

5. Adding Resources to a Project

An XNA Game Studio project contains references to everything that it uses. To keep things simple, you can keep everything used by a project in a single file directory. Figure 5 shows the content of the JakeDisplay project directory that XNA Game Studio created for you when you made the new project. You can see the C# source files and also some other resources.

Figure 5. The contents of the JakeDisplay project directory

The project contains a Content directory. When you add an asset to this project, it is stored in this directory. Figure 6 shows the JPEG image of Jake that I used in my Pictures directory. You need to place the picture that you want to use into a directory somewhere on the computer.

You can either use one of the graphics images that are available in the sample projects or create your own picture at this point. Now that you have your graphics resource, you can tell XNA Game Studio to use it. To do this, you need to add the content to the project. Resource references are added by using the Add Existing Item – Content dialog box, which can be opened as shown in Figure 7. Start by right-clicking the JakeDisplay project’s Content item in Solution Explorer. From the menu that appears, select Add and then select Existing Item.

Figure 6. My Jake image in my Pictures directory

Figure 7. Opening the Add Existing Item – Content dialog box

Figure 8 shows the dialog box that you can use to select an item to add to the project.

Now you can select the image file that you want to use and click Add to add it. The project now contains the resource. Figure 9 shows the resource reference in the project once you’ve added it. You follow the same process to add other images to a game.

If you want to add more than one image to a project, simply repeat the process. Remember that each image is stored as part of the game program, so the more images you add, the larger your game becomes and the longer it takes to transfer it into the target when it runs.

Figure 8. The Add Existing Item – Content dialog box

Figure 9. The JakeDisplay project containing the image resource

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Note:

The Xbox and Windows PC have plenty of memory in which to store loaded images. However, the Zune device is restricted in the space that it has available. If you want to store lots of pictures in the Zune, you need to use small images (320 x 240 pixels or less) to make sure that you don’t run out of space.

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5.1. Adding Links to Resources

When you add a resource using the process described previously, XNA Game Studio makes a copy of the resource and places the copy in the Content directory of the project. If you want several projects to share a single copy of a resource, you can add a link to it instead. You do this by clicking the down arrow at the right of the Add button in the Add Existing item dialog box, as shown in Figure 10, which allows you to add the resource as a file or as a link.

Figure 10. Adding the Jake image as a link

Each time XNA Game Studio builds the game, it follows the link to the resource to use it. If the resource is moved or deleted, the build process fails.

5.2. The XNA Content Pipeline

The process of feeding resources in at one end and getting a complete game assembly out of the other is a bit like a pipeline. In fact, the XNA Framework refers to this part of the game-building process as the Content Management Pipeline.