Installing

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Pre requisites

Following softwares are required to develop games with XNA and Pulsar:

• XNA Game Studio 4.0
• Visual Studio 2010 Express or better
• .NET 4.0
• Pulsar (latest version available here)

Archive content

The archive you have downloaded follows this structure:

- bin
  - Windows (DLLs for Windows Game and content pipeline)
	- Debug
	- Release
  - Xbox360 (DLLs for Xbox360 Game)
	- Debug
	- Release
- content
	- Pulsar.Content (Content project used by the engine)

The 'bin' folder contains all DLLs necessary for the engine to works. There are a Windows version and an Xbox 360 version, and for each platform you have a Debug and Release version.

Depending on what you plan to develop, you are not forced to use all DLLs. Here is a description of each one in order to understand what to install:

• Pulsar.dll: It's the core dll, you need to install this one to have access to basic functionalities
• Pulsar.Graphics (Optional): This dll contains the rendering engine.
• Pulsar.Game (Optional): This dll contains helpers to create games.

When you create a game, you need at least to add a reference to Pulsar.dll.

The 'Windows/Debug' folder has one more dll:

• Pulsar.Pipeline.dll (Optional): This dll contains everything necessary to use Pulsar assets.

Installing

I. Create game project

1. Create a new XNA game project (Windows or Xbox360)

   Important: Your game profile must be HiDef, Pulsar uses shader model 3.0.

II. Install engine library

Now that the game project is created, we need to add references Pulsar's DLLs.

1. Extract Pulsar's DLLs from the archive:

   The archive has a 'bin' folder that contains DLLs for both Windows and Xbox360 games.

   Those folders should be copied somewhere where your project can access them. For example you can create a 'lib' folder at the root of your solution and copy them inside.

2. Add a reference to Pulsar's DLLs in your game project:

   In your project, go to References->Add References, browse to the folder where you have copied DLLs and add needed ones. To help you know which one to use, read the previous section "Archive content".

   Depending on the platform of your game (Win or Xbox), you will use DLLs in the 'Windows' folder or 'Xbox360'. Both folders contain two version of the same DLLs: debug and release.

III. Install content pipeline library (Optional)

This step is optional and is only required if you plan to use Pulsar assets (eg: Mesh, ...).

This step should be repeated for each of your content project.

1. Add a reference to Pulsar's DLLs in your content project:

   As for the step II.2, you need to add a reference to Pulsar's engine dll in your content project. This is required for the content pipeline to run.

2. Add a reference to Pulsar pipeline DLLs in your content projects:

   In your content project, go to References->Add References, browse to the folder where you have copied DLLs for Windows and use Pulsar.Pipeline dll in the Debug folder.

IV. Install Pulsar content project (Optional)

This step is optional and is only required if you plan to use specific functionalities (eg: Pulsar.Graphics.dll, ...).

1. Extract Pulsar content project:

   The archive has a 'content' folder that contains Pulsar content project.

   As for the 'bin' folder in the previous step, you need to copy the content project somewhere your project can access it. For example you can create a 'content' folder at the root of your solution and copy it inside.

2. Add Pulsar.Content project to your solution:

   In the solution explorer, do a right-click on the root of your solution then Add->Existing project and browse to the .contentproj file of the content project.

3. Add a reference to the content project:

   Now on your game project, do Content References->Add Content References and select Pulsar.Content.