Installing XNA on Windows 8 with Visual Studio 2012

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Guest blog by Simon Grey Lecturer in Games Development Studies at the University of Hull

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XNA is a great framework for creating games, and we use it as a tool to motivate students to learn how to program whilst creating great games at extra-curricular events such as the three thing game. For us, a tools like XNA is an invaluable intrinsic motivator – inspiring students to want to learn to code, as opposed to being motivated because we said so, or because they will get better grades.

According to the official documentation XNA requires Visual Studio 2010. Now, clearly it’s possible to install both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2012 on the same machine, but that would have a big impact on the size of the image.

To get around the limitation of our managed desktop Hard Drive capacity we would d rather not install both if we don’t have to, but if you try to install XNA on a machine that doesn’t include Visual Studio 2010 the installation will fail.

However after some monitoring of the install process here is a nice walkthrough produced by the University of Hull of how to install XNA onto a machine with Visual Studio 2012. The University of Hull we are keen to provide students with as seamless an experience as possible when moving from working at home to working in university, with this in mind I Simon has developed the following blog post, so that students can use XNA at home with Visual Studio 2012 to allow them an easy transition to and from the machines at the University

You’ll need to download this zip file which contains the entire XNA setup and the folders that you’ll need to copy yourself.

  1. Download the zip file and unzip it somewhere. You should see an executable called XNAGS40_setup.exe and a folder called XNA Game Studio 4.0
  2. Open a command line and navigate to the folder that contains XNAGS40_setup.exe – then run XNAGS40_setup.exe /x . You’ll be asked to enter a folder. It’s probably easiest if you create a new empty folder. This folder is temporary and can be deleted after you are done.
  3. Go to the temporary folder and run redists.msi
  4. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\XLiveRedist.msi
  5. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Redist\XNA FX Redist\xnafx40_redist.msi
  6. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\xnaliveproxy.msi
  7. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\xnags_platform_tools.msi
  8. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\xnags_shared.msi
  9. Copy folder XNA Game Studio 4.0 provided in the zip file you downloaded at the start to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft
  10. Go to the temporary folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named arpentry.msi
  11. Open a cmd window and run “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe” /setup
  12. Delete the temporary folder you created, as well as the zip file and the folder you extracted that to. You don’t need those any more.
  13. Create some awesome games using XNA!

Additional resources

Visual Studio Professional 2013 https://www.dreamspark.com/Product/Product.aspx?productid=72

Visual Studio Professional 2012 https://www.dreamspark.com/Product/Product.aspx?productid=44

Visual Studio Professional 2010 https://www.dreamspark.com/Product/Product.aspx?productid=4

MonoGame for taking existing XNA Games and Apps to Windows 8 – https://www.monogame.net

XNA Game Studio - https://www.dreamspark.com/Product/Product.aspx?productid=3

Getting Started creating Xbox Indie XNA Games - https://www.slideshare.net/lee_stott/xbox-indie-account-via-xna-creators-club-for-all-students