XnaConsole Wiki & Documentation Rss Feed

Updated Wiki: How to Use the Demo

Shader — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:41:22 GMT

How to use the demo

First, build the project. The demo is based off of Going Beyond tutorials 1 and 2 in the xna help file. The controls are the same. Basically, use an Xna compatible gamepad to control the ship. The left stick rotates the ship, and the right trigger accelerates it. The more you press the trigger, the faster it goes, and the more the gamepad rumbles. If you get lost, press a to reset the ship. The start button resets everything.

However, this is a demo of the console, not a demo on how to draw a model, or how to control it with a gamepad. To open the console, press the ~ (tilde) key. You will be given a prompt that looks like this:

###
### Xna Console V.1.0.1
###
>>>_

That blinking underscore is your cursor. Hopefully, it will act the way you expect it to. You can type letters in the normal fashion, and it even repeats characters when you hold them. You can move your cursor left and right with the left and right arrow keys, but only as far as the end of the line. You can also use the home and end keys to quickly reach the beginning and end of the line. Backspace and delete both work, and delete the previous and next characters respectively. The tab key currently adds four spaces.

Ok, now that you understand the basic features of the text input system, let's use the console to do something interesting!

First of all, the game adds itself to the interpreter as a global variable, so that we can access its members directly from the console. If you want to see what they are, type in:

>>> print dir(game)

This will print the members of game. Now that we know what they are, we can change some of them. Try changing the Acceleration, RotRate, and CameraPosition variables, and see how they effect the game. For example:

>>> game.Acceleration = 2.0

will make the ship move twice as fast when you pull the trigger the same distance.

>>> game.CameraPosition = Vector3(0, 5000, 1)

will put the camera directly on top of the ship.

The python interpreter included can handle multi line input, so the following will work:

>>> for i in range(10):
...     print i
... 
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
>>>

It will start a multiline section when you end a line with ":", and will terminate the block when you enter a blank line. Note, the console does not as yet auto indent, or handle tabs. If you type in a tab, it will just output four spaces.

Finally, to close the console, just press the ~ key again. It will preserve your ouput and command history for you, so that it will still be there when you open it again. Of course, if you want to clear the output, just type in

>>> Console.Clear()

If you want to exit the game, you can type in:

>>> game.Exit()

Updated Wiki: Home

Shader — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:40:37 GMT

Project Description
Xna Console allows you to debug and tweak your game on the fly by providing a simple text interface to an interpreter, such as IronPython. You can change variables, test code, or even play your game itself indirectly from the relative safety of a console, all while your game is still running.

Since Xna Console is designed to work somewhat like other consoles, it's easy to write your own text based games, or implement an interpreter other than IronPython.

Features

IronPython as interpreter
Some standard console features, such as cursor positioning, command history, etc.
Easy to implement an alternative interpreter, or even a text based adventure game.

Getting Started

You can download the project here: XnaConsole v.1.01

If you need a place to get started, or want some help, check out the following links:

License

Basically, you're allowed to do whatever you want with this code. However, I request that you publish back to this website any improvements made to the console, and that any compatible interpreters you may write for public languages also be made available. If you make an interpreter for your own secret language, you don't have to give it away. Also, it would be nice if you let me know what you've used it in, especially if it becomes a successful game ;)

Get Involved

I'm not really working all that hard on this project, so if anyone out there wants to help out and keep it alive, send me a message!

Tentative Future Plans

Ideas I've had for future features:

Have the console render to a texture, so that it can be displayed anywhere in 3d space, such as on a highway billboard, a computer screen, or heads-up-display.
Add colored text handling, so that games like rogue are more interesting. Also, syntax highlighting becomes a possibility.
Text selection, copying, pasting, etc. Maybe even use the windows clipboard if the game is running on a pc.
Somehow add intellisense/word completion. Examples are the tab completion features of IronPython's console, and the source engine console in Portal and HL2.

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Shader — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:58:12 GMT

Features

IronPython as interpreter
Some standard console features, such as cursor positioning, command history, etc.
Easy to implement an alternative interpreter, or even a text based adventure game.

Getting Started

You can download the project here: Xna Console v.1.0

If you need a place to get started, or want some help, check out the following links:

License

Get Involved

I'm not really working all that hard on this project, so if anyone out there wants to help out and keep it alive, send me a message!

Tentative Future Plans

Ideas I've had for future features:

Have the console render to a texture, so that it can be displayed anywhere in 3d space, such as on a highway billboard, a computer screen, or heads-up-display.
Add colored text handling, so that games like rogue are more interesting. Also, syntax highlighting becomes a possibility.
Text selection, copying, pasting, etc. Maybe even use the windows clipboard if the game is running on a pc.
Somehow add intellisense/word completion. Examples are the tab completion features of IronPython's console, and the source engine console in Portal and HL2.

UPDATED WIKI: How to use Xna Console with something other than IronPython

Shader — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:52:11 GMT

How to use Xna Console with something other than IronPython

If you want to use something other than IronPython for your console, such as IronScheme, Lua, or some other script language you've designed yourself, just follow the example of the PythonInterpreter class. All that's required is that you know 2 methods of the XnaConsole class, Prompt(), and WriteLine().

First, make a class responsible for interpreting the input. Give it a instance of XnaConsole for handling text.

public XnaConsoleComponent Console;

Then, in the constructor, initialize the console with a SpriteFont:

Console = new XnaConsoleComponent(game, font);

Where font is your SpriteFont of choice. Next, you'll need to prompt for some input:

Console.Prompt(Prompt, Callback);

Where Prompt is the text you want to show the user, and Callback is a method you want called with the user's input. This callback needs to be a public void method that takes one string as input, such as:

public void HandleInput(string str);

Then, when you've handled the input, you may want to give a response, via Console.WriteLine():

Console.WriteLine("Response to input");

And then continue prompting for more input. That's all there is to it! If you need any more help, look at the code in PythonInterpreter.cs

UPDATED WIKI: How to use Xna Console with your game

Shader — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:49:25 GMT

How to use Xna Console with your game

This is pretty simple.

Include the files XnaConsole.cs, and PythonInterpreter.cs in your project. PythonInterpreter.cs is only necessary if you want to use IronPython as your interpreter. Also, if you do use IronPython, you will need to reference IronPython.dll and IronMath.dll.
Add "using XnaConsole;" to the using statements where your game class is defined.
Add these lines to your game in the variable declaration section:

PythonInterpreter interp;

and in the constructor or initialize method say:

interp = new PythonInterpreter(this, Content.Load<SpriteFont>("ConsoleFont"));
interp.AddGlobal("game", this);

where "ConsoleFont" is a spritefont of your choice. I usually use Consolas, as can be seen in the example project.

Run your game! That was easy.

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Shader — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:45:52 GMT

Project Description
Xna Console allows you to debug and tweak your game on the fly by providing a simple text interface to an interpreter, such as IronPython. You can change variables, test code, or even play your game itself indirectly, all from the relative safety of a console, even though your game is still running.

Since Xna Console is designed to work somewhat like other consoles, it's easy to write your own text based games, or implement an interpreter other than IronPython.

Features

IronPython as interpreter
Some standard console features, such as cursor positioning, command history, etc.
Easy to implement an alternative interpreter, or even a text based adventure game.

Getting Started

You can download the project here: Xna Console v.1.0

If you need a place to get started, or want some help, check out the following links:

License

Get Involved

I'm not really working all that hard on this project, so if anyone out there wants to help out and keep it alive, send me a message!

UPDATED WIKI: How to use Xna Console with something other than IronPython

Shader — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:50:11 GMT

How to use Xna Console with something other than IronPython

public XnaConsoleComponent Console;

Then, in the constructor, initialize the console with a SpriteFont:

Console = new XnaConsoleComponent(game, font);

Where font is your SpriteFont of choice. Next, you'll need to prompt for some input:

Console.Prompt(Prompt, Callback);

Where Prompt is the text you want to show the user, and Callback is a method you want called with the user's input. This callback needs to be declared like this:

public void HandleInput(string str);

Then, when you've handled the input, you may want to give a response, via Console.WriteLine():

Console.WriteLine("Response to input");

And then continue prompting for more input. That's all there is to it! If you need any more help, look at the code in PythonInterpreter.cs

UPDATED WIKI: How to use Xna Console with something other than IronPython

Shader — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:49:33 GMT

How to write your own interpreter

public XnaConsoleComponent Console;

Then, in the constructor, initialize the console with a SpriteFont:

Console = new XnaConsoleComponent(game, font);

Where font is your SpriteFont of choice. Next, you'll need to prompt for some input:

Console.Prompt(Prompt, Callback);

Where Prompt is the text you want to show the user, and Callback is a method you want called with the user's input. This callback needs to be declared like this:

public void HandleInput(string str);

Then, when you've handled the input, you may want to give a response, via Console.WriteLine():

Console.WriteLine("Response to input");

And then continue prompting for more input. That's all there is to it! If you need any more help, look at the code in PythonInterpreter.cs

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Shader — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:43:53 GMT

Project Description
Xna Console allows you to debug and tweak your game on the fly by providing a simple text interface to an interpreter, such as IronPython. You can change variables, test code, or even play your game itself indirectly, all from the relative safety of a console, even though your game is still running.

Since Xna Console is designed to work somewhat like other consoles, it's easy to write your own text based games, or implement an interpreter other than IronPython.

Features

IronPython as interpreter
Some standard console features, such as cursor positioning, command history, etc.
Easy to implement an alternative interpreter, or even a text based adventure game. Unfortunately, it won't work very well for ascii games like Rogue yet.

Getting Started

You can download the project here: Xna Console v.1.0

If you need a place to get started, or want some help, check out the following links:

License

Get Involved

I'm not really working all that hard on this project, so if anyone out there wants to help out and keep it alive, send me a message!

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Shader — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:37:51 GMT

Project Description
Xna Console allows you to debug and tweak your game on the fly by providing a simple text interface to an interpreter, such as IronPython. You can change variables, test code, or program a text based adventure game, all from the relative safety of a sprite based console.

Currently Xna Console uses IronPython as its scripting language, but it's designed to be easy to implement an interface to your own favorite .Net compatible interpreter. You can even write your own scripting language based on Colossal Cave.

Features

IronPython as interpreter
Some standard console features, such as cursor positioning, command history, etc.
Easy to implement an alternative interpreter, or even a text based adventure game. Unfortunately, it won't work very well for ascii games like Rogue yet.

Getting Started

You can download the project here: Xna Console v.1.0

If you need a place to get started, or want some help, check out the following links:

License

Get Involved

I'm not really working all that hard on this project, so if anyone out there wants to help out and keep it alive, send me a message!

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Shader — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:18:43 GMT

Project Description
Xna Console allows you to debug and tweak your game on the fly by providing a simple text interface to an interpreter, such as IronPython. You can change variables, test code, or program a text based adventure game, all from the relative safety of a sprite based console.

Currently Xna Console uses IronPython as its scripting language, but it's designed to be easy to implement an interface to your own favorite .Net compatible interpreter. You can even write your own scripting language based on Colossal Cave.

Features

Characters repeat when keys are held
IronPython as interpreter
Multiline properly handled by IronPython
Cursor can be positioned with the arrow keys to edit anywhere in the string
Command history only includes commands, and not entire output
Easy to implement an alternative interpreter

Getting Started

You can download the project here: Xna Console v.1.0

If you need a place to get started, or want some help, check out the following links:

License

Get Involved

I'm not really working all that hard on this project, so if anyone out there wants to help out and keep it alive, send me a message!

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Shader — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:54:53 GMT

Project Description
Xna Console allows you to debug and tweak your game on the fly by providing a simple text interface to an interpreter, such as IronPython. You can change variables, test code, or program a text based adventure game, all from the relative safety of a sprite based console.

Currently Xna Console uses IronPython as its scripting language, but it's designed to be easy to implement an interface to your own favorite .Net compatible interpreter. You can even write your own scripting language based on Colossal Cave.

Features

Characters repeat when keys are held
IronPython as interpreter
Multiline properly handled by IronPython
Cursor can be positioned with the arrow keys to edit anywhere in the string
Command history only includes commands, and not entire output
Easy to implement an alternative interpreter

Getting Started

You can download the project here: Xna Console v.1.0

If you need a place to get started, or want some help, check out the following links:

License

Basically, you're allowed to do whatever you want with this code. In addition, I request that you publish back to this website any improvements made to the console, and that any compatible interpreters you may write for public languages also be made available. If you make an interpreter for your own secret language, you don't have to give it away. Also, it would be nice if you let me know what you've used it in, especially if it becomes a successful game ;)

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Shader — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:53:04 GMT

Project Description
Xna Console allows you to debug and tweak your game on the fly by providing a simple text interface to an interpreter, such as IronPython. You can change variables, test code, or program a text based adventure game, all from the relative safety of a sprite based console.

Currently Xna Console uses IronPython as its scripting language, but it's designed to be easy to implement an interface to your own favorite .Net compatible interpreter. You can even write your own scripting language based on Colossal Cave.

Features

* Characters repeat when keys are held
* IronPython as interpreter
* Multiline properly handled by IronPython
* Cursor can be positioned with the arrow keys to edit anywhere in the string
* Command history only includes commands, and not entire output
* Easy to implement an alternative interpreter

Getting Started

First, you'll need to download the project Cannot resolve link: [release:here|1]

Help

If you need a place to get started, or want some help, check out the following links:

License

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Shader — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:36:08 GMT

Project Description
Xna Console allows you to debug and tweak your game on the fly by providing a simple text interface to an interpreter, such as IronPython. You can change variables, test code, or program a text based adventure game, all from the relative safety of a sprite based console.

Currently Xna Console uses IronPython as its scripting language, but it's designed to be easy to implement an interface to your own favorite .Net compatible interpreter. You can even write your own scripting language based on Colossal Cave.

Getting Started

First, you'll need to download the project Cannot resolve link: [release:here|1]

Help

If you need a place to get started, or want some help, check out the following links:

License

UPDATED WIKI: Credits

Shader — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:32:03 GMT

Credits

The folks at http://xnalearners.spaces.live.com, who wrote the original python console on which this console is based.

The IronPython team, who provided the python back end, and some ideas from their source code.

The Microsoft XNA team, who provided both Xna itself, and the tutorial on which the demo is based.

UPDATED WIKI: How to write your own interpreter

Shader — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:31:29 GMT

How to write your own interpreter

If you want to use something other than IronPython for your console, such as IronScheme, Lua, or some other script language you've designed yourself, all you have to do is make a class that implements the IInterpreter interface. The interface defines three methods:

public string GetPrompt();

This returns the current prompt. This exists to allow multiple prompts, for things like multiline input, etc.

public string Execute(string str);

The main method. This takes a command and returns the results, to be printed by the console.

public void AddGlobal(string str, object obj);

This adds a global variable, to make it easier to get things done, as opposed to typing in the fully qualified variable name.

Note: this is a method, so it copies the object. Thus, it's only useful for reference types, such as object, and not value types such as int. In theory, you could change it to use the ref modifier, to make it pass by reference, but IronPython doesn't support that, so I didn't bother.

When you're ready to use your interpreter, you can either pass it to the constructor of a new XnaConsole object, or pass it as an argument to the XnaConsole.SetInterpreter() method.

If you need any more help than you got here, you can look in PythonInterpreter.cs for an example.

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Shader — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:31:05 GMT

Project Description
Xna Console allows you to debug and tweak your game on the fly by providing a simple text interface to an interpreter, such as IronPython. You can change variables, test code, or program a text based adventure game, all from the relative safety of a sprite based console.

Currently Xna Console uses IronPython as its scripting language, but it's designed to be easy to implement an interface to your own favorite .Net compatible interpreter. You can even write your own scripting language based on Colossal Cave.

How to use the demo
How to use Xna Console with your game
How to write your own interpreter
Credits

How to use the demo

###
### Xna Console V.1.0
###
>>>_

>>> print dir(game)

>>> game.Acceleration = 2.0

will make the ship move twice as fast when you pull the trigger the same distance.

>>> game.CameraPosition = Vector3(0, 5000, 1)

will put the camera directly on top of the ship.

The python interpreter included can handle multi line input, so the following will work:

>>> for i in range(10):
...     print i
... 
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
>>>

>>> Console.Clear()

How to use Xna Console with your game

This is pretty simple.

Include the files XnaConsole.cs, IInterpreter.cs, and PythonInterpreter.cs in your project. The last is only necessary if you want to use python as your interpreter. Also, if you do use IronPython, you will need to reference IronPython.dll and IronMath.dll.
Add "using XnaConsole;" to the using statements where your game class is defined.
Add these lines to your game in the variable declaration section:

PythonInterpreter interp;
XnaConsoleComponent console;

and in the constructor or initialize method say:

interp = new PythonInterpreter;
XnaConsoleComponent console = new XnaConsoleComponent(this, interp, Content.Load<SpriteFont>("ConsoleFont")); //ConsoleFont is a spritefont
interp.AddGlobal("game", this);
interp.AddGlobal("Console", console);
Components.Add(console);

where "ConsoleFont" is a spritefont of your choice. I usually use Consolas, as can be seen in the example project.

Run your game! That was easy.

How to write your own interpreter

public string GetPrompt();

This returns the current prompt. This exists to allow multiple prompts, for things like multiline input, etc.

public string Execute(string str);

The main method. This takes a command and returns the results, to be printed by the console.

public void AddGlobal(string str, object obj);

Credits

License

UPDATED WIKI: How to use Xna Console with your game

Shader — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:29:48 GMT

How to use Xna Console with your game

This is pretty simple.

Include the files XnaConsole.cs, IInterpreter.cs, and PythonInterpreter.cs in your project. The last is only necessary if you want to use python as your interpreter. Also, if you do use IronPython, you will need to reference IronPython.dll and IronMath.dll.
Add "using XnaConsole;" to the using statements where your game class is defined.
Add these lines to your game in the variable declaration section:

PythonInterpreter interp;
XnaConsoleComponent console;

and in the constructor or initialize method say:

interp = new PythonInterpreter;
XnaConsoleComponent console = new XnaConsoleComponent(this, interp, Content.Load<SpriteFont>("ConsoleFont")); //ConsoleFont is a spritefont
interp.AddGlobal("game", this);
interp.AddGlobal("Console", console);
Components.Add(console);

where "ConsoleFont" is a spritefont of your choice. I usually use Consolas, as can be seen in the example project.

Run your game! That was easy.

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Shader — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:28:51 GMT

Project Description
Xna Console allows you to debug and tweak your game on the fly by providing a simple text interface to an interpreter, such as IronPython. You can change variables, test code, or program a text based adventure game, all from the relative safety of a sprite based console.

Currently Xna Console uses IronPython as its scripting language, but it's designed to be easy to implement an interface to your own favorite .Net compatible interpreter. You can even write your own scripting language based on Colossal Cave.

How to use the demo
How to use Xna Console with your game

How to use the demo

###
### Xna Console V.1.0
###
>>>_

>>> print dir(game)

>>> game.Acceleration = 2.0

will make the ship move twice as fast when you pull the trigger the same distance.

>>> game.CameraPosition = Vector3(0, 5000, 1)

will put the camera directly on top of the ship.

The python interpreter included can handle multi line input, so the following will work:

>>> for i in range(10):
...     print i
... 
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
>>>

>>> Console.Clear()

How to use Xna Console with your game

This is pretty simple.

Include the files XnaConsole.cs, IInterpreter.cs, and PythonInterpreter.cs in your project. The last is only necessary if you want to use python as your interpreter. Also, if you do use IronPython, you will need to reference IronPython.dll and IronMath.dll.
Add "using XnaConsole;" to the using statements where your game class is defined.
Add these lines to your game in the variable declaration section:

PythonInterpreter interp;
XnaConsoleComponent console;

and in the constructor or initialize method say:

interp = new PythonInterpreter;
XnaConsoleComponent console = new XnaConsoleComponent(this, interp, Content.Load<SpriteFont>("ConsoleFont")); //ConsoleFont is a spritefont
interp.AddGlobal("game", this);
interp.AddGlobal("Console", console);
Components.Add(console);

where "ConsoleFont" is a spritefont of your choice. I usually use Consolas, as can be seen in the example project.

Run your game! That was easy.

How to write your own interpreter

public string GetPrompt();

This returns the current prompt. This exists to allow multiple prompts, for things like multiline input, etc.

public string Execute(string str);

The main method. This takes a command and returns the results, to be printed by the console.

public void AddGlobal(string str, object obj);

Credits

License

UPDATED WIKI: How to Use the Demo

Shader — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:28:00 GMT

How to use the demo

###
### Xna Console V.1.0
###
>>>_

>>> print dir(game)

>>> game.Acceleration = 2.0

will make the ship move twice as fast when you pull the trigger the same distance.

>>> game.CameraPosition = Vector3(0, 5000, 1)

will put the camera directly on top of the ship.

The python interpreter included can handle multi line input, so the following will work:

>>> for i in range(10):
...     print i
... 
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
>>>

>>> Console.Clear()

If you want to exit the game, you can type in:

>>> game.Exit()