Question

I am trying to serialize data in my XNA project. I have a Texture2D background property that I use during runtime, but I also have a ‘string property’ to hold my Background name. This will allow me to serialize the asset name so I can later use the info to de-serialize later and load into my game.

Problem is myTexture.Name property is suppose to hold the Asset Name but when I try to serialize into an XML file, the BackgroundName Element is empty.

Here is what the Property code looks like:

//This property is Only used for serialization, myTexture is Texture2D and is assigned in the ctor of the class
public string BGName { get { return this.myTexture.Name;} set{/*Empty on purpose*/} }

Could someone please advise, how to retrieve the asset name from a Texture2D, according to MSDN, this field holds the name of the texture.

Answer 1

The Name property on GraphicsResource isn’t actually used by the XNA Framework; it’s up to you to populate it with whatever you feel is appropriate. You could write a helper method to do this easily enough:

public static Texture2D LoadTexture2D(this ContentManager content, String asset)
{
    var texture = content.Load<Texture2D>(asset);
    texture.Name = asset;
    return texture;
}

var texture = contentManager.LoadTexture2D("textures\\whatever");
Console.WriteLine(texture.Name); // should be "textures\\whatever"