The first step is to open up the IDE and create our solution. When starting a large solution such as the one for FGF, I find it useful to create a Blank Solution so that the solution’s name can be different than that of the first project. Again, this can be worked around in Express as well as other versions of the editor.

The next step is an obvious one: add the first project. The design of FGF is based on a hierarchy of libraries much like the .NET Framework. Whereas libraries depend on the System DLL and mscorlib, FGF libraries can all depend on the core project, FocusedGames. To enable some cross-platform awesomeness down the road, we make this project an XNA library and then remove the references to the XNA Framework. Remember that FGF is not just an XNA framework and should support situations where XNA is not installed. You can see the cleaned project in the below screenshot.

After creating some copy projects for the Zune and the Xbox 360, repeat the process for a new project, FocusedGames.Xna. At this point you may find it nice to move the platform specific projects into platform specific Solution Folders. This is one of the features of Visual Studio I wish was present in the Express Edition, but unfortunately it was left out. The really nice part of Solution Folders is that it does not physically move the project files. Rather it simply organizes them in a virtual fashion.

Regardless, the last step is to setup the output directory. Personally, I like having the projects all push to the same bin folder so I can copy them with a Powershell script very easily. To do this, go into each project’s properties and change the output directory to something like “..\Bin\whatever was here>” and remember to change it for both Debug and Release.

Finally we are ready to start coding!

The problem is that when using an XNA project template to build a library for the simple fact that XNA projects can automatically synchronized (across platforms), Visual Studio blocks the creation of an X64 build target. Rather you are stuck with X86, Zune or Xbox 360.

The good news is that you can get around this! Open up the Windows project file (csproj) in a suitable text editor and copy the sections for both “Debug|x86″ and “Release|x86″ and paste them right after.

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<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|x86' ">
  <DebugSymbols>true</DebugSymbols>
  <DebugType>full</DebugType>
  <Optimize>false</Optimize>
  <OutputPath>..\Bin\x86\Debug\</OutputPath>
  <DefineConstants>DEBUG;TRACE;WINDOWS</DefineConstants>
  <ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
  <WarningLevel>4</WarningLevel>
  <NoStdLib>true</NoStdLib>
  <UseVSHostingProcess>false</UseVSHostingProcess>
  <PlatformTarget>x86</PlatformTarget>
  <XnaCompressContent>false</XnaCompressContent>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|x86' ">
  <DebugType>pdbonly</DebugType>
  <Optimize>true</Optimize>
  <OutputPath>..\Bin\x86\Release\</OutputPath>
  <DefineConstants>TRACE;WINDOWS</DefineConstants>
  <ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
  <WarningLevel>4</WarningLevel>
  <NoStdLib>true</NoStdLib>
  <UseVSHostingProcess>false</UseVSHostingProcess>
  <PlatformTarget>x86</PlatformTarget>
  <XnaCompressContent>true</XnaCompressContent>
</PropertyGroup>

Next you simply replace the instances of x86 with x64 and change anything else you need.

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<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|x64' ">
  <DebugSymbols>true</DebugSymbols>
  <DebugType>full</DebugType>
  <Optimize>false</Optimize>
  <OutputPath>..\Bin\x64\Debug\</OutputPath>
  <DefineConstants>DEBUG;TRACE;WINDOWS</DefineConstants>
  <ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
  <WarningLevel>4</WarningLevel>
  <NoStdLib>true</NoStdLib>
  <UseVSHostingProcess>false</UseVSHostingProcess>
  <PlatformTarget>x64</PlatformTarget>
  <XnaCompressContent>false</XnaCompressContent>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|x64' ">
  <DebugType>pdbonly</DebugType>
  <Optimize>true</Optimize>
  <OutputPath>..\Bin\x64\Release\</OutputPath>
  <DefineConstants>TRACE;WINDOWS</DefineConstants>
  <ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
  <WarningLevel>4</WarningLevel>
  <NoStdLib>true</NoStdLib>
  <UseVSHostingProcess>false</UseVSHostingProcess>
  <PlatformTarget>x64</PlatformTarget>
  <XnaCompressContent>true</XnaCompressContent>
</PropertyGroup>

One warning – this should only be used for projects that don’t require references to the XNA framework. At this time Microsoft has no support for x64 XNA references.