- What is XNA Debug Terminal and Why Use It?
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Visual Studio provides an excellent way to debug your windows forms, web sites, or many other applications. Unfortunately the design of
their debug system is not well suited for the structure of video games. Most other applications have a set beginning and end to
their execution. For web pages the beginning is the request from the client and initial creation of the page and the end is the
processing of server controls into html and sending that data back to the client. The programmer can easily see exactly what happens
in between those two cases. He/She can track every step from beginning to end. With video games, however, the main content is an
infinite loop. With Visual Studio's debugging tools you can only see the behavior of one frame at a time while your game and screen
rendering are halted. Seeing the value of any expression requires the pausing of your game. Tracking values between frames is very
tedious and time consuming. This is why XNA Debug Terminal was made.
XNA Debug Terminal is a library that creates a display to run on top of your game. It allows you to retrieve/set values and invoke methods all while
your game is running. It is even possible to track values in real-time as the game progresses. This brings the concept of Visual Studio's
debugger into an environment more suited for game development.
- How Do I Use It?
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Go to the How To section for more information on downloading and setting up.
- Who Can Use It?
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Anyone using Visual Studio and XNA. Note that this was designed in Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 using XNA 3, 3.1, and 4.0 and hasn't been tested in other versions.
- License Information
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This program is protected under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3.
A copy of this license is included in all version downloads in a file called COPYING