Development and Debugging Tools for Windows Phone 7 Series
Cullen WatersSoftware Development Engineer II
Advanced Technology Group, Microsoft Corporation
Who Should Stay for This Talk?
Game Developersworking on other mobile platforms
interested in branching out to mobileFolks who have not used XNA professionally
Who Might Want to Leave?
who have shipped an XNA XBLA title
People who are uninterested in Windows Phone 7 Series development
Game Developers
Overview
Toolset
Silverlight 3 (plus)
XNA
Visual Studio 2010
Visual Phone Developer Express
Single, integrated download
Silverlight 3 (Plus)
Silverlight 3 with some device-specific additionsAccelerometerTouchLocation
XNA Framework 4.0
A new version of XNAFull 3D support on the deviceAPIs similar to those we know and love from Windows and Xbox 360
Visual Studio 2010
Full debugging support on the device Lots of new goodness in
Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio & .NET
Productive development with .NET & C# High performance IDE Intellisense makes coding faster Integrated build/deploy/debug experience MSBuild engine for build automation
Visual Phone Developer Express
New Express SKU for Visual Studio 2010
Supports Silverlight and XNA development
Full device debugging support
Windows Phone 7 Series Emulator
Supports full application development
Reduces costs of test and development
Emulator, not a simulator
XNA Project System
C# is the only language for XNA development for Windows Phone 7 Series
All code files are organized into .csproj project files
.csproj is an MSBuild-based project system
XNA Content PipelineSimplify Your Content Usage!
Provides build-time modification of source content
Customizable, extensible
Runs only on Windows
Full .NET supportp/invokeManaged C++, VB.Net, IronPython, and so on
Content Pipeline Project Changes
Makes for easier parallel development of art and code
Content pipeline is extremely extensible, so integration with existing tools is possible
Content projects no longer appear as child projects of the game project
.NET ToolsThere are lots of great tools out there, both free and commercialThese are my “must-have” tools
Explore, browse, and analyze .NET assemblies
Understand relationships between classes
Verify code obfuscation
.NET Reflector
MSIL disassemblerUseful for seeing what code is being generated at build time
ildasm
Also known as F1 profiler Performs code performance profiling,
using sampling or instrumentation
Visual Studio Team System Profiler
Sampling vs. Instrumentation
Sampling takes samples at regular intervals Generally better for initial investigation
Instrumentation inserts probes into the code Use for more targeted profiling
Profiles managed memory usage Invaluable for debugging game memory management
CLR Profiler
Pix for Windows
Graphics debugger
GPU performance investigation
Semi-transparent view into DirectX 3D
Shader debugging
Ships with DX SDK
FxCop
Static code analysis tool
Integrated into Visual Studio
Analyzes compiled code
Not all rules will likely apply to games
Code Obfuscation
All un-obfuscated code is open source Dotfuscator Community Edition
bundled with Visual Studio
DemoObfuscation
Wait a Minute!
Most of those tools are Windows tools I’m developing a game for Windows Phone 7
Series! How do those tools apply to development for
Windows Phone 7 Series?
Debugging NetCF Titles
Cross-Platform Solution
Develop onWindows
Profile onWindows
Deploy toDevice
Getting Info from the Device
Roll your own on-device tools Visual information, from the game Check out Ito’s debugging toolset
Timing on the Phone
No high-precision timer ≈ 1 ms resolution How do you get accurate timings from that?
Capture multiple frames of data and calculate an average
Multiple 0 or 1 values, averaged over a bunch of frames, gives you a pretty accurate result
FPS component from Shawn Hargreaves
Case StudyHeightmap Collision Sample
Build and Run on Windows
Frame rate is good Iteration time is wonderful Life is good, ship it™!
But Then We Run on a NetCF Device
Frame rate is poor Gameplay is affected by unpredictable stalls What’s going on? Most likely cause: Garbage collections
Sidebar: NetCF Garbage Collector
Mark and Sweep Not generational Halts all managed threads on the device
We’re Allocating During Gameplay?!?
Let’s figure out where Run the game on PC, under CLR Profiler
DemoCLR Profiler
Kill the Collector!
Remove allocations during gameplay Pre-allocate Be careful of hidden allocators
How could this be easier? Run it again on the device,
and we get constant frame rate
Constant FPS != Good FPS
Constant + Low == still bad Fire up the VSTS profiler, and figure out
where we’re spending our time
DemoVSTS Profiler
Sidebar: NetCF Jitter
Non-optimizing jitter Primarily designed for application development
Apps bound by I/O, not by CPU/GPU High latency toleration
No inlining
There’s the Culprit!
Make changes to fix the code Run on the device again FPS is good, ship it™!
Summary
Wrapping It Up
Use Windows to your advantage Keep your game running on the target platform Design with the target platform in mind
Additional Resources
http://MicrosoftGamefest.com http://blogs.msdn.com/ShawnHar http://creators.xna.com http://www.red-gate.com CLR Profiler download page Ito's debugging tools
Questions?
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The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the
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