Product Description

Would you like to create your own games, but never have the time to dig into the details of multimedia programming? Now you don’t have to! XNA 3.0 makes it simple to create your own games, which will run on your PC and Xbox 360 console. Even if you don’t know how to program at all, Beginning XNA 3.0 Game Programming: From Novice to Professional will teach you the basics of C# 2008 programming along the way. Don’t get overwhelmed with details you don’t need to know—just learn what you need to start creating your own games right now!

This fast–paced introduction to XNA 3.0 and the C# language provides you with a quick–start guide to creating high–quality XNA games. You’ll be introduced to the key concepts and ideas you need to know in a gradual fashion so that you master one concept before using it as a foundation for the next. Before long you will have the skills to create smooth, professional–looking results in a range of gaming genres. By the end of the book, you will have constructed several working games and have an excellent knowledge base from which to investigate more advanced techniques.

What you’ll learn

• Master game planning and programming basics.
• Understand 2–D graphics, audio, and input basics.
• Create your first 2–D game.
• Improve your first 2–D game.
• Explore the basics of game networking.
• Deal with sound in XNA 3.0.
• See how to create a 2–D multiplayer game, Rock Rain Live!
• Understand 3–D game programming basics.
• Render pipelines, shaders, and effects.
• Work with lights, cameras, and transformations.
• Generate a terrain.
• Learn skeletal animation techniques.
• Create a third–person shooter game.
• Play games on the Zune console.

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone approaching XNA programming for the Xbox 360 for the first time, whether they have experience programming computer games or not.

About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry–level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82821 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781430218173
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author

Alexandre Lobão is a passionate man. His first passion was reading, starting with large books—Mark Twain, Érico Veríssimo, Jules Verne, Monteiro Lobato, Alexandre Dumas, and others—when he was seven. When he was twelve, he discovered his two next passions: playing and creating games (by that time on his first Apple computer), and writing.

Many years later—he’s about forty now—these passions flourish. Now he’s a teacher of academic game development courses, has written four books on the topic, and has participated in some Brazilian game development contests both as a contestant and as a judge. He has also written short story books, children’s books, and young adult books, and in 2008 he released his first romance, The Name of the Eagle, currently only available in Portuguese. And, of course, he still loves to read, from Ken Follett to Paulo Coelho.

His ultimate passions—starting in 1995 and still burning now—are his wife, Waléria, and his kids, Natália and Rafael.

Alexandre believes that lives needs passion to be lived entirely, and hopes that this book helps light this passion in readers’ hearts. You can find his work at http://www.AlexandreLobao.com.

Bruno Evangelista is a lead programmer at Tectoy Digital (http://www.ttd.com). Prior to his current employment, he was a graphics programmer at Ilusis (http://www.ilusis.com) and a software engineer at Olympya (http://olympya.com).

As an XNA developer, Bruno had been finalist of the first and second Microsoft XNA Challenge Brazil. He also maintains an open source skeletal animation library for XNA, named XNAnimation (http://www.codeplex.com/xnanimation).

Besides his professional experience, Bruno had hosted some talks and courses about game development at some conferences, including SIBGRAPI, SBGAMES and Microsoft Gamefest (Brazil).

Bruno received his B.Sc. degree in computer science from Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC), and is currently a M.Sc. student in computer science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). He is 23 year old and lives in the beautiful city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. His works can be found at http://www.BrunoEvangelista.com.

José Antonio Leal de Farias has been a game programmer since he acquired his first computer in 1985, when he tried to draw aliens on an 80x25 pixel screen. After obtaining a degree in Computer Science, he established one of the first game companies in Brazil in 1997, called Hardcode Entertainment. He has worked on many diverse gaming projects in Europe and the US. In 2004 he received the Most Valuable Professional award from Microsoft for his contributions to the Brazilian coding community. In 2006 he established the Sharp Games community, devoted to studying and spreading advice about the XNA platform. You can find the portal for Sharp Games at http://www.sharpgames.net.

Riemer Grootjans received a degree in electronic engineering with a specialization in informatics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is currently a member of a research team working toward a Ph.D. where he is responsible for the visualization of 3D data.

For a few years, Riemer has been maintaining a web site with tutorials for DirectX. Since the early beta stages of XNA in 2006, he has ported all his content to XNA and is helping more than 1,000 people on their path to XNA success every day.

In July 2007 and 2008, he received the Microsoft MVP Award for his contributions to the XNA community.

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Customer Reviews

Great book
Excellent book.

I found this book to be very well written and organized.

I have a B.S. in computer science(grad 2009), however I was very new to both C# and game design in general at the time of purchase. I had watched some of the "beginning XNA" videos on the XNA creators website, that was my first introduction to C# and XNA.

I had originally decided to buy this book after downloading the source code (available for download at apress). After skimming through the source code I was impressed with how readable/organized the code was.

The book does a great job of explaining the concepts of game design with well written sections, informative images, and great source code explanation.

For the most part the authors walk you through a lot of the code line by line. However once in a while the author will add a new object in one place and mention you need to add it in other methods(such as 'load' or 'initialize'), after a while you start to appreciate him skipping over some of the more obvious steps. So while reading be sure to keep an eye out for those.

In summary I would recommend this book to anyone who is comfortable with programming and wants to learn basic game programming.

Great!
It's what I ordered. Lots of detail and steps and just what I needed to get into XNA programming.

Please do not buy this book!
I am trying to learn XNA on my own. My skills as a programmer are very low, but have been able to code a very simple version of pong (in XNA) on my own. I turn to these books because I need more guidance in the world of XNA. This book "Beginning XNA 3.0 Game Programming: From Novice to Professional" is a disaster. The authors, who are professional programmers, failed to go through their code properly. In chapter 3 you begin a very simple 2D game. There are a couple cases where the author fails to be specific when telling you where to type your code. I also had problems with the author failing to state that you need to declare more variables at the top of your class. They just skip over them. I had to open up the sample file (downloadable from [...]) to check my code, because the book is missing necessary code. Here I found a plethora of issues of which the book ignored important steps, or misplaced code. I copied the necessary code from the compete file and placed it in my code. I was able to get many issues taken care of, but the game still won't run. I had all these problems between the pages 41 and 49. The game consisted of a background and a spaceship that moves on the screen. The end of page 49 tells you to test the project and it doesn't work. I have run through this code several times and I have tried to fix it on my own. I have had little to no success. I can't continue on, because I can't test my code.

This is very frustrating because I am a beginner. If I was advanced in XNA and I could remedy these issues on the fly, then I wouldn't need this book. The programmers who wrote this book need to check the entire book, instead of making a quick update for a quick buck! Now I have wasted time and money and I have learned nothing.