Draw Rectangle with XNA

Question

I am working on game. I want to highlight a spot on the screen when something happens.

I created a class to do this for me, and found a bit of code to draw the rect

Answer 1

This is probably not the best solution, but you should be able to use a 1x1 pixel texture stretched to fit the rectangle.

Answer 2

The SafeArea demo on the XNA Creators Club site has code to do specifically that.

You don't have to create the Texture every frame, just in LoadContent. A very stripped down version of the code from that demo:

public class RectangleOverlay : DrawableGameComponent
{
    SpriteBatch spriteBatch;
    Texture2D dummyTexture;
    Rectangle dummyRectangle;
    Color Colori;

    public RectangleOverlay(Rectangle rect, Color colori, Game game)
        : base(game)
    {
        // Choose a high number, so we will draw on top of other components.
        DrawOrder = 1000;
        dummyRectangle = rect;
        Colori = colori;
    }

    protected override void LoadContent()
    {
        spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice);
        dummyTexture = new Texture2D(GraphicsDevice, 1, 1);
        dummyTexture.SetData(new Color[] { Color.White });
    }

    public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)
    {
        spriteBatch.Begin();
        spriteBatch.Draw(dummyTexture, dummyRectangle, Colori);
        spriteBatch.End();
    }
}

Answer 3

This is how I did it. It is probably not the fastest or the best solution, but it works.

using System;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics;

namespace Engine
{
    /// <summary>
    /// An extended version of the SpriteBatch class that supports line and
    /// rectangle drawing.
    /// </summary>
    public class ExtendedSpriteBatch : SpriteBatch
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// The texture used when drawing rectangles, lines and other 
        /// primitives. This is a 1x1 white texture created at runtime.
        /// </summary>
        public Texture2D WhiteTexture { get; protected set; }

        public ExtendedSpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice)
            : base(graphicsDevice)
        {
            this.WhiteTexture = new Texture2D(this.GraphicsDevice, 1, 1);
            this.WhiteTexture.SetData(new Color[] { Color.White });
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Draw a line between the two supplied points.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="start">Starting point.</param>
        /// <param name="end">End point.</param>
        /// <param name="color">The draw color.</param>
        public void DrawLine(Vector2 start, Vector2 end, Color color)
        {
            float length = (end - start).Length();
            float rotation = (float)Math.Atan2(end.Y - start.Y, end.X - start.X);
            this.Draw(this.WhiteTexture, start, null, color, rotation, Vector2.Zero, new Vector2(length, 1), SpriteEffects.None, 0);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Draw a rectangle.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="rectangle">The rectangle to draw.</param>
        /// <param name="color">The draw color.</param>
        public void DrawRectangle(Rectangle rectangle, Color color)
        {
            this.Draw(this.WhiteTexture, new Rectangle(rectangle.Left, rectangle.Top, rectangle.Width, 1), color);
            this.Draw(this.WhiteTexture, new Rectangle(rectangle.Left, rectangle.Bottom, rectangle.Width, 1), color);
            this.Draw(this.WhiteTexture, new Rectangle(rectangle.Left, rectangle.Top, 1, rectangle.Height), color);
            this.Draw(this.WhiteTexture, new Rectangle(rectangle.Right, rectangle.Top, 1, rectangle.Height + 1), color);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Fill a rectangle.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="rectangle">The rectangle to fill.</param>
        /// <param name="color">The fill color.</param>
        public void FillRectangle(Rectangle rectangle, Color color)
        {
            this.Draw(this.WhiteTexture, rectangle, color);
        }
    }
}