method for drawing XNA games Landscape.

[Lucifer]

I have done some XNA work on the zune in my past, but I started a new project which is my first ever to use the zune in landscape (wide) mode. In XNA / C# there's no official way to make the zune draw that way as just a switch. So I searched zB and the web for examples and ideas, and originally I only got lost. I eventually found a thread in the official XNA site, and it looks far clearer than any other information anywhere else I found. So, after all that, I've decided to share what I found.

Here's the link: Zune In Landscape Mode? - XNA Community Forums
enjoy!
(instructions are in //'s)

[gbabey]

Instead of drawing everything to a rendertarget you could save a bit of memory by rotating the sprites ahead of time as Shawn Hargreaves explains here: Shawn Hargreaves Blog : Zune landscape mode

Either way will work fine, the RenderTarget method is a bit easier imo, but if you need to squeeze every ounce of performance out using the above method will make your deploys to the zune a bit slower, but it run a bit faster once there.

[DiNoGames]

I prefer Rendertargets, because I can flip them for lefthanded people without the need to take my hands on any game calculations. If I rotate my sprites I also need to flip all movements in my code when I want left handed support.

[BroiledVictory]

I was thinking about doing something to make paper glider left & right handed people accessible! Thanks!

[Extron]

That is a really useful code, before, I had just been designing the game sideways, so that even though all of the math used the portrait mode, the sprites were all made sideways so that there is no need to rotate them manually ingame. However, this method has become frustrating in its inflexibility. Generally, when I design a game, I usually create a renderTarget anyway so that I don't have to worry about displaying every sprite or moving them all individually when I just need to move the entire renderTarget.