To answer your first question, 0 degrees points up, 90 degrees points right, 180 degrees points down, and 270 degrees points left. Here is a simple 2D XNA rotation tutorial to give you more information.
As for converting vectors to angles and back, I found a couple good implementations here:
Vector2 AngleToVector(float angle)
{
return new Vector2((float)Math.Cos(angle), (float)Math.Sin(angle));
}
float VectorToAngle(Vector2 vector)
{
return (float)Math.Atan2(vector.Y, vector.X);
}
Also, if you re new to 2D programming, you may want to look into Torque X 2D, which provides a lot of this for you. If you ve payed to develop for XNA you get the engine binaries for free, and there is a utility class which converts from angles to vectors and back, as well as other useful functions like this.
Edit: As Ranieri pointed out in the comments, that function doesn t make sense when up is 0 degrees. Here s one that does (up is (0, -1), right is (1, 0), down is (0, 1), left is (-1, 0):
Vector2 AngleToVector(float angle)
{
return new Vector2((float)Math.Sin(angle), -(float)Math.Cos(angle));
}
float VectorToAngle(Vector2 vector)
{
return (float)Math.Atan2(vector.X, -vector.Y);
}
I would also like to note that I ve been using Torque for a while, and it uses 0 degrees for up, so that s where I got that part. Up meaning, in this case, draw the texture to the screen in the same way that it is in the file. So down would be drawing the texture upside down.