How can I achieve 8-bit graphics effect using Silverlight? - silverlight

How can I achieve 8-bit graphics effect using Silverlight?
I want to make retro game for WP7 using Silverlight.
Should I use canvas and rectangle for this?

There is no built-in functionality for this. Since you are developing a game, you will have to create a custom layer engine that will be able to place colored rectangles in different zones of the screen, therefore achieving the desired effect.

Related

Using my After Effects motion graphics in WPF

I plan to make some motion graphics for my WPF app mainly for screen transitions. Before I jump in to do it, I would like to know if it is possible to export those animations to WPF or I can use only the built in tools to make animations? Or shall I use a sort of image sequence player in WPF for this?

Winforms and drawing complicated charts

I need to draw complicated chart (something like in the picture).
As I am developing WinForms app, I would like to show that chart in my window. What I am looking for is some library that would allow me to do that. I found ChartControl, but it seems to be a bit primitive and insufficient for my needs.
Do you know some libraries that would let me draw complex charts? Compatibility with winForms is not priority, but I would like to generate that chart using C#.
From within WinForms you can use the System.Drawing namespace to do your own drawing.
For a chart as complex as this, there is a great likelihood that you will be able to write your own code to draw it in less time than it will take you to learn some existing library (which was built primarily for bar charts) and coerce it to draw such a chart for you.

Stereoscopic 3D on WPF

I have to show stereoscopic 3D graphics on a WPF control.
I already have the code which create two DirectX-9 textures to show, one texture for each eye.
I want to use 3D Vision (not anaglyph).
I considered the following ways to show the two pictures as 3D stereo:
Using OpenGL or DirectX 11.1 Stereo API.
Using NvAPI_Stereo_SetActiveEye as described here:
http://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/40505/WP-05482-001_v01-final.pdf
Using NVidia stereo signature as described here:
NV_STEREO_IMAGE_SIGNATURE and DirectX 10/11 (nVidia 3D Vision)
Trying rendering the two picture one-after-one, hoping that CompositionTarget.Rendering not loosing too much VSyncs, and synchronizing if single VSyncs are lost. In addition turning on the 3D Vision emitter by some invisible control rendering a fictive stereoscopic image.
Rendering 3D scene and letting NVidia driver to make it stereoscopic automatically.
Rendering to some real Windows control (such as Winform control), and using WPF host (such as WinFormHost) to show the content.
The problems with the above methods are:
1-3: One of the first three ways seem to be the straight-forward solution, but are not possible in WPF since I cannot create the Device/Context and control the way that the picture is rendered.
4: With CompositionTarget.Rendering I get only about ~60Hz instead of 120Hz. I guess the problem is that EndScene() is called twice - one in my rendered scene and the other in WPF rendering mechanism, but am not sure. Anyway even if will work - that solution seems to be unstable.
5: Rendering 3D scene is not possible in my case for some technical reasons which forces me to render the two images for the two eyes by myself.
6: The problem with WinFormHost and its friends is that it is not a WPF control and it has unexpected behavior in terms of WPF controls. For example the WinForm control will hide WPF controls which are higher on the logical tree, it cannot be rotated using RotateTransform and more.
For now I chose the last solution - using WinFormHost. Does anyone know a solution for that unbreakable wall with making stereoscopic 3D within real WPF control?

WPF and DirectX - Game Overlay

Greetings
I've read WPF utilizes DirectX so I'm wondering if it is possible to create a Game Overlay with WPF. I have tried with Winforms or WPF by itself and the transparent forms or windows always cause problems for streaming software thus I'm wondering is it possible to do the following:
Create a WPF application which shows a Window on the desktop with all the options needed for the overlay. Once all the options is filled in you can press Update and the Overlay is created in the game with all the information on it. The WPF app itself won't be visible on the stream. This means all the viewers will not have any trouble with it when the broadcaster changes settings.
More about the overlay
The overlay will be a scoreboard so it will need a set amount of info. For example:
So to sum up my question(s)
Can I make a WPF application which
dynamically creates a DirectX overlay
ingame?
Since it needs to work in DirectX9,
is this project possible to make by a
single dev (me) which has little to
no exp with DirectX?
If it is possible, where should I
start?
Thanks in advance for all your possible insights and replies!
What you want would be possible using D3DImage. It allows you to host any Direct3D content within WPF and also allows you to have overlay with transparency. Here is a simple example.
From your comment above, it sounds like your really trying to inject your overlay (at least from the user's perspective) into Starcraft II. You would almost have to host a copy of the directx buffer.
Also, besides WPF, you might want to look at XNA.

WPF capabilities

In my company we have in mind a redesign of the user interface of an application and we would like to make it ... let say "fancy". We have in mind a simple story board but I doubt between WPF, XNA or DirectX. I prefer WPF so I'd need to know if it support the following capabilities and how difficult to implement are they:
Transparency: We'd like to display information layers on top of the main display.
3D support: We want network nodes (part of the interface is a network graphic) to be simple spheres connected with lines in a 3D enviroment, and the ability to control the camera so rotation of the screen is possible.
Effects: Such as shading, lens flare or glow to "signal" the discovery or deletion of a node.
Text animations: Specifically the ability to display the text as if it's being written... You know, the information text will be "filling" the panel top down, left to right...
Good news. WPF is the technology you want and it can handle your requirements with relative ease.
Transparency is simple.
3D support is good as well. For an example, check out Tim Sneath: Five Great WPF 3D Nuggets. You even get hardware acceleration.
Effects are definitely do-able via timeline animations.
The previous statement goes double for Text Animations.
...the hardest part would be the 3D support, but it's still going to be a lot easier than getting things done in XNA or using DirectX libraries directly.
AFAIK WPF 3.5 supports all of this, and even leverages hardware acceleration to get a decent performance.
It's possible to embed an XNA application in a WPF form so you could use XNA for the representation of your network and WPF controls for the GUI in front of it.

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