XNA resources

[pro4never]

So I've been doing some more work with XNA and decided to go out and buy a book on it. I also downloaded a copy of the book and can confirm it's a fantastic resource. Very easy to read, covers all the basics you'd generally hope for and moves at 'just the right' pace for those who have some basic knowledge of C# but little->no game programming knowledge.


What is XNA?

Just because I know this will be asked... XNA is a game development framework created by Microsoft and is used through the .net framework, mainly C#. It allows easy creation of cross platform games for windows, Xbox 360 and windows phone.

Some example XNA projects

3d Example

2d Example

Resources

Full e-book of Learning XNA 4.0 (fantastic resource)


Source files to go with e-book


Riemers introductory tutorials. Covers basics of using XNA


XNA Rpg Tutorial (interesting read, very specific knowledge though)

[xBlackPlagu3x]

Thanks for the resources! ^.^

[I don't have a username]

Appreciated!

[zarut]

best tile engine tut:


more awesome tuts (networking etc..)


waiting for incoming tower defense tutorial from phstudios, at 3dbuzz you can also buy few interesting tutorials one of them being 2d platform fighting game

[pro4never]

Interesting.. I'm moving away from a tile engine towards full blown 3d for my new project but useful information.

Just a note for people though, that tile engine tutorial is old. The framework has changed significantly since those videos so you'll want at least a basic knowledge of XNA before following the guide (I might argue that you're best off going with other tutorials because of that... the concept of tile engines is quite simple and there's plenty of tutorials)

Hell even my conquer map editor was written in 3d using the same concept as tile maps but overlayed on planar quads.

[KraHen]

If you`re doing 3D, you should definitely check out Great HLSL resource, with pretty neat effects explained. Also the ShaderX book and the GPU Programming Gems should help a lot. If you need physics, after doing some benchmarks I came to the conclusion that BulletX is faster than JigLibX, you should also consider PhysX (with a .NET wrapper of course). Though I can definitely tell you, instead of XNA you should do OpenGL, not much harder, and it is cross platform. Seriously, who here wants to build on Xbox 360 Arcade, to get $1000 a year for his game? Also in C++ you have direct access to some stuff like SFML (2D, networking, threading, window), libRocket (2D GUI library, loading interfaces from HTML/CSS), native Havok/PhysX, also your code will run faster.

[pro4never]

Thanks for the resources. That being said... All my development is keyed to PC so the whole cross platform aspect (even XBL) really doesn't enter into it for me. The whole reason I'm using XNA is rapid development time and prototyping.

Lets face it... if your concept is ever going to get much success (in 99.99 pct of cases) you have to have a playable demo to market to investors and it is then made with a commercial game engine by a professional design team (with or without your involvement depending on how the sale or investment goes).

Very few people will have the time, need or capability to truly write their own game engine and so being able to rapidly prototype unique concepts in a rather flexible and powerful framework is an incredibly useful thing to be able to do.

It's the exact same thing as developing a small->medium project in C# or VB... you use it over C++ because the time you save is worth the slight performance loss (or large performance loss depending on how you manage everything). There's pros and cons to all options.

[KraHen]

If I were a publisher, I`d immediately choose the native project, also don`t forget that for PC there are considerable amount of Linux users as well. Also, rapid prototyping in XNA isn`t going to be faster, the only thing it offers as a plus in 3D development are some classes like Model, Effect, the Math library, but these are existent for OpenGL as well, check out the AssImp library for model loading, SFML for shader loading and compiling, GLM for a very good math library... also there are more powerful libraries written in C++ specifically for game development purposes, so the only thing that would slow you down would be debugging the native code. And that`s what unit testing is for. I think that it`s worth the few extra hours to do it in native, when it comes with libraries such as Havok Animation, without having to write a wrapper.

Also, if you still don`t want to write your own engine, there are neat stuff out there such as Ogre3D, which offer the best of both worlds.

I get from your post that you aim to design games, not develop them, which is pretty neat, but in that case you should consider middleware such as UDK or Unity. Too bad I don`t have the skills for doing 3D graphics, and I can only do crappy 2D so this is out of question for me. :|

[pro4never]

I'm sort of a middle ground between design and development. My artistic skills are rather non existent. Instead my focus is on concepts and implementation. Being aware of my weaknesses allows me to find ways to compensate (through carefully chosen team members or simply finding ways to avoid the limitations).

I've looked into middleware and existing engines but I feel that also doesn't fit my needs. I'm not an artist nor do I claim to be. Being able to properly use such frameworks is almost exclusively reliant on having ready to go game content (sounds, sprites, meshes, animations, textures, etc).

I have neither the artistic talent nor the resources to make a full game so instead my focus is on testing small scale versions of larger game concepts.


Example of what I'm talking about.

-Large game worlds.

In facing this 'issue' I need to decide how I want to handle subdividing game space, how it is generated (procedural generation used or map editor?), drawn, stored and linked together. In making these decisions and testing various options I do not need any artistic content or skills (basic meshes and textures more then suffice.) and testing various implementations would be slowed down (I feel) by trying to work them out in native code.

This all boils down to personal preference obviously. I'm in no way against people learning openGl or directX or ANYTHING. Learning is fantastic and the more you learn, the more options you will have for problem solving. I just feel that discounting XNA as an option is equally as irresponsible as making the claim that it's the correct solution for everything.


<edit>

Extra clarification. My projects are always about teaching myself new things, working through concepts (advanced or simple) towards a solution and using logical reasoning and problem solving to create a final result. The projects themselves are a side effect of the process more so then the main purpose of my work.

[_DreadNought_]

How is this related to Conquer?

[pro4never]

Originally Posted by _DreadNought_

How is this related to Conquer?

It's not. It's our little secret

That being said... programming section and can be used for conquer applications. I wrote my map editor in XNA which is conquer related but no, this topic itself is not related to conquer. The exact same can be said about every other e-book and tutorial link in this section which are allowed to stay.

[InfamousNoone]

the co2 programming section has become the emblem of english programming on epvp

[injection illusion logic]

that was extremely AWESOME !

[KraHen]

@pro4never : Agreed with 99%, just like I would have said it. In fact you impressed me a lot, so I`m going to make an offer to you. What would you say if I told you that we should create a complete game? I happen to have a good friend who is doing some neat 2D stuff, I`m sure we could work some stuff out.

[injection illusion logic]

Originally Posted by KraHen

@pro4never : Agreed with 99%, just like I would have said it. In fact you impressed me a lot, so I`m going to make an offer to you. What would you say if I told you that we should create a complete game? I happen to have a good friend who is doing some neat 2D stuff, I`m sure we could work some stuff out.

well umm in any movie or mission and stuff like that there is always an idiot guy who ruin stuff so ppl who watch this laugh , im in , consider me this guy
jks jks :P