Beginning XNA 2.0 Game Programming: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice in Game Programming) (Paperback)

~ Alexandre Santos Lobao (Author), Bruno Pereira Evangelista (Author), José Antonio Leal de Farias (Author)
Key Phrases: content pipeline, sound bank, game studio, Rock Rain, Windows Game, Using Statements (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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 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 2.0 Game Programming: From Novice to Professional will teach you the basics of C# 2005 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!

The fast–paced introduction to XNA and the C# language provides professional developers a quick-start guide to creating a commercial product using XNA, as well as offering home enthusiasts or hobbyists everything they need to begin putting together games in their spare time. You’ll discover and understand all the key concepts required to create smooth, professional–looking results in a range of gaming genres. Every reader will come away with a firm foundation onto which they can build more advanced ideas.

What you’ll learn

• Game Planning and Programming Basics
• 2-D Graphics, Audio, and Input Basics
• Creating Your First 2-D Game
• Improving Your First 2-D Game
• Basics of Game Networking
• Rock Rain Live!
• 3-D Game Programming Basics
• Rendering Pipeline, Shaders, and Effects
• Lights, Camera, Transformations!
• Generating a Terrain
• Skeletal Animation
• Creating a Third-Person Shooter Game

Who is this book for?

Anyone approaching XNA programming for the Xbox 360 for the first time

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 knowbut 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!

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: Apress (April 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599241
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599242
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #96,160 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A little too to the point. , July 20, 2008

By	Geoffrey Cleaver "Geoffio" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book doesn't beat around the bush, which can be a good thing for an already experienced developer. However if you aren't experienced it could easily leave you lost. If you are a "novice" like the book claims to cater too you'll probably never get to them without further reading from other materials.

The QC for this book was very poorly done. There are tons of errors in the spelling and in the code. They completely forgot to explain certain things and then expect you to have figured them out on your own later.

The book covers a decent amount of useful information, but it seems like they just pushed it out a bit too soon. If they had gone through the tutorials and tried them out and made sure all the steps were covered, it would have been a lot nicer to learn with. Instead the tutorials left me lost most of the time. I spent hours trying to figure out what steps they forgot to include.

I think this book could be quite a useful tool if you are already well versed in the .net C# environment. However I would recommend a different approach if you have little C# experience.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great learning value!, July 3, 2008

By	Charles Gatian "Chaz" (Toledo, OH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You should understand C# code before diving into this book. I tried online tutorials and nothing comes close to just reading and using this book! Although there were a few places where I had to use an online resource to figure out exactly what the author was talking about, it still supasses any other online XNA intro.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best XNA book, code examples contain errors, where is the Quality Control?, September 7, 2008

By	Milford Hughes "XNA Noob" (Riverview, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I found this book on the web and still decided to buy it. The book is the easiest time I think I have ever had learning XNA, however, like all programming books it seems that only experienced coders who correct errors as they read are the ones in charge of editing and quality control.

For example, on page 46 it tells you to include a line of code that doesn't seem to make sense (private SpriteBatch spriteBatch = null;) in the Game1 code. This of course is redundant and cause the game not to compile. And.... naturally, the downloaded source code runs fine. Why? Because this line of code is not in the project. I imagine the XNA guru they had reviewing this book (how come they don't hand the book to a total newbie and say 'here, follow this book exactly and tell us when the code examples dont work') fixed the errors he seen on the fly without thinking ..oh, a total newbie won't know this is an obvious mistake..

But I can honestly say I have NEVER read a 'teach yourself' programming book with flawless code examples. And of course the downloaded source always works and you just have to compare your file with thier file and see what is different. The only positive note I can say about the poor state of quality control with newbie programming books in general is that in a way it teaches you to troubleshoot code. But, for someone who is completely new and doesn't pick up on these things it is very frustrating. I'm lucky now in that I have learned enough that I can fix these errors, but a few years ago I would have just tossed this book out of frustration when I do exactly as instructed and it still doesnt work.

To the people who write these books I have a suggestion....

If the person in charge of quality control has ever written a single line of code they are not qualified to review a book targeting newbies. Give the book to your spouse, neighbor, 12 year old, etc. who will quickly hand it back to you 5 times every chapter and say 'hey, I did what it said and got a bunch of errors', or 'hey, it assumes here on page whatever I know where to type this'.

Now, all that being said, this is a darn good book. The authors make XNA and XBOX programming about as simple as possible... the examples are explained very well and easy to follow. If you have gone through another C# teach yourself newbie book you should minimal trouble getting a game up and running in just an hour or so!