Question

I have a set of images in which each image needs to be able to rotate to 90 degrees, 180 degrees, and 270 degrees. All of these images are of type Texture2D. Are there built in functions to accomplish this for me? Or should I load additional rotated images of each image? Or is there a better way of completing this task?

Answer 1

You can rotate (and scale) your Textures as you draw them to the buffer using SpriteBatch.Draw, although you will need to specify most (or all) of the arguments. Angles are given in radians.

SpriteBatch.Begin();
angle = (float)Math.PI / 2.0f;  // 90 degrees
scale = 1.0f;
SpriteBatch.Draw(myTexture, sourceRect, destRect, Color.White, angle,
                 position, scale, SpriteEffects.None, 0.0f);
SpriteBatch.End();

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.xna.framework.graphics.spritebatch.draw.aspx

You could also load pre-rotated copies of the images, but you’ll probably get the usual Premature Optimization lecture.