Time for action – reading textures into memory

1. Double-click on Game1.vb in Solution Explorer to open it or bring it to the front if it is already open.

2. In the Class Declarations area of Game1 (right below Private WithEvents spriteBatch As SpriteBatch), add:

   Private playingPieces As Texture2D
   Private background As Texture2D
   Private titleScreen As Texture2D

3. Add code to load each of the Texture2D objects at the end of LoadContent():

   playingPieces = Content.Load(Of Texture2D)("Textures\Tile_Sheet")
   background = Content.Load(Of Texture2D)("Textures\Background")
   titleScreen = Content.Load(Of Texture2D)("Textures\TitleScreen")

What just happened?

In order to load the textures from disk, you need an in-memory object to hold them. These are declared as instances of the Texture2D class.

A default XNA project sets up the Content instance of the ContentManager class for you automatically. The Content object's Load() method is used to read .XNB files from disk and into the Texture2D instances declared earlier...