XNA/Graphics Cards Question...

[Trivun]

For those who aren't aware, I'm part of a team making a retro RPG for Xbox Live Arcade, and we happen to be working on a gameplay demo at the moment to start us off and get an idea of how to progress onwards. Anyway, a level designer I've been in touch with the guy actually putting together the designs I've come up with in XNA, and he's sent me a copy of the maps so far that we've come up with, so I can have a look and make any changes if necessary. However, after spending most of last night and this morning trying to install the Windows Phone Developer tools onto my crappy laptop, including XNA Game Studio 4, I've discovered that I can't open th debug file sent to me because my crappy laptop doesn't have a graphics card advanced enough to be compatible with the program.

So, I need a new graphics card. However, since I'm using a laptop, I can't just install one quickly, I'd have to dismantle the entire laptop to get to the place where I'd install it and set it up, and I'm a bit of a software whizz but a hardware novice. And since my laptop is crappy and old and I'll be replacing it within the next month or so anyway, I don't see any need to buy one and then pay another £100 or so to PC World or Best Buy to get their support guys or the Geek Squad to do it for me.

However, I have found through a Google search that there are such things as 'virtual graphics cards', which use part of your RAM (of which I have plenty to spare) to boost your graphics performance on a par with modern, up-to-date, graphics cards. What I don't know is if there are any out there that I can download for free, legally, and without them adding a load of viruses to my computer (i.e. trustworthy ones). Also, I don't know if any of them would be compatible with XNA Game Studio 4, allowing me to actually run the files I need to run for this project.

So the question here is, are there any virtual graphics cards that I can download that would fit my needs as stated in the last paragraph? Also, any advice for using XNA Game Studio 4 would be much appreciated, especially in the way of making sure it runs smoothly without any bugs or problems...

 

[yayforgiveaway]

That won't help you. RAM is not as important as sheer power of a graphics card. Beside DDRx is not graphics wise optimized like GDDRx

 

[Weaver]

I believe XNA has a 2 modes which you can switch between (I ran into this when trying to take my game development to a coffee shop on my laptop). These modes are called "HiDef" and "Reach".

If your laptop can't run your project in HiDef mode try switching it to "Reach" mode. However, be warned that some shader effects won't work in Reach mode. That being said, if you're going for an oldschool RPG feel you may want to keep it in reach mode anyways. You can find some details here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2010/07/19/selecting-reach-vs-hidef.aspx

Also, if your team needs programmers with some experience in XNA, a few years of coding C# professionally and a computer science degree send me a PM.

EDIT: I realize I might have misunderstood you. When you said "debug file" i assumed you meant a Visual Studio project (with .pdb files). However, you might simply be trying to open up the map model in your map editor.

 

[Trivun]

I believe XNA has a 2 modes which you can switch between (I ran into this when trying to take my game development to a coffee shop on my laptop). These modes are called "HiDef" and "Reach".

If your laptop can't run your project in HiDef mode try switching it to "Reach" mode. However, be warned that some shader effects won't work in Reach mode. That being said, if you're going for an oldschool RPG feel you may want to keep it in reach mode anyways. You can find some details here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2010/07/19/selecting-reach-vs-hidef.aspx

Also, if your team needs programmers with some experience in XNA, a few years of coding C# professionally and a computer science degree send me a PM.

EDIT: I realize I might have misunderstood you. When you said "debug file" i assumed you meant a Visual Studio project (with .pdb files). However, you might simply be trying to open up the map model in your map editor.

We have an experienced programmer on board already, and the team is all sorted out now, so apologies there. However, you could always ask the team leader, he's on this site too as 'Thaius', since he's the one you'd need to speak to if you want to help out (I'm just a co-writer and game/level designer...). Anyhow, thanks for the advice, I'll try that and see if it works . Also, yes, it is just opening up the map files in the map editor. However, I do also need to open the actual .exe file that makes up the demo, since we'll be play-testing it to make sure we're on the right track...