I think the .mat needs at least the textures need to be added into the text file in order for the texture to shown...not exactly sure how Sunburn processor work but that's what I found.

Could you create an issue item in the Issue Tracker tab instead please? Comments isn't the best place to talk on issues ;)

Thanks for the quick answer!
One last thing though: setting InputSensibility to 0.25f (or anything, for that matter) makes the menu completely unresponsive, and the default setting seems to wait a good second between inputs.

I'll make a note to let developers know what are the default virtual map key bindings so that this gets avoided in the future.
As for the GamePad not being recognized when UseKeyboardMouseInput is set to true, this is not a bug but by design. The InputManager doesn't automatically decide for you which input device will be used, it lets you, the developer, decide and use whatever you need.
Not sure this is a bad design decision but so far it has been working pretty well. If you want, you can check in the Application.Initialize override if a GamePad is plugged (using Xna Input usual code) and therefore set if the InputManager should use Keyboard & Mouse instead.

Je crois que je viens de trouver le probleme: Seems the Main Menu buttons are tied to the "A" button and not the "Start" button. Unfortunately, nowhere does it say that the default Virtual map has Buttons.A tied to Keys.Space. I can now properly remap the keyboard.
Unfortunately, this does not fix the issue with the GamePad being unrecognized if UseKeyboardMouseInput = true. Is there a way to check *what* type of controller is being used?

I do, unfortunately. I simply removed the missing IGF and SunBurn references and added them back (switching out SunBurn Pro to Indie) and ran it -- same issue.

That's odd! Could you please try with the unmodified source code of the Ace on Steroids tutorial above and tell me if you see the same defect?

Sorry, forgot to add: Sunburn Indie edition.

IGF 0.8.0.0 and SunBurn 2.0.6.15. I've downloaded 2.0.7 but haven't used it yet :)

What version of the framework do you use in your project?

**DOUBLE EDIT**: It also seems that my Xbox gamepad is completely unrecognized by the game once the Press Start screen appears. The only way I can use it is to comment out the UseKeyboardMouseInput and the virtual mapping lines.

*EDIT*: I've downloaded your source code, and the same problem happens: once past the Press Start screen, the Enter key does not work. Also, manually changing the InputSensibility (to 0.25f as suggested earlier) makes the Main Menu completely unresponsive.

Something similar to Dids is happening to me. I followed the tutorial to the letter except that I manually mapped the Start button to Keys.Enter. I can get pass the "Press Start" screen by hitting Enter, and I can use the arrows to navigate the menu; however, Enter mysteriously stops working after that, and I can't hit Play or even Exit.

Open the MainMenuLayer.cs file in the Layers/MainMenu project directory and right after creating the _rootMainMenu instance in the MainMenuLayer constructor, add the following line:
_rootMainMenu.InputSensibility = 0.25f;
You should see the input being more responsive to your up/down movements. You can this way tell how long do you want the player to move up and down before switching to the next/previous menu item ;)

As it turns out, I was missing something crucial: sessionManager.BeginPlayerIdentification();
Now the only thing acting strangely is the menu navigation, as it seems to only detect about 75% of the keystrokes (up and down) that I push.

If you follow the instructions in this tutorial, it'll work exactly as expected.
Note that by default, the "Start" button is mapped to the "Return" key.

Am I wrong in assuming that people without a gamepad can't get past the "Press Start" screen, even if they've mapped the Start key to the VirtualGamepad and enable mouse and keyboard?
As that's exactly what's happening to me. :-/