Professional XNA Programming: Building Games for Xbox 360 and Windows with XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Paperback)

by Benjamin Nitschke (Author)
Key Phrases: pixel shader, normal mapping, writing multiplayer games, Rocket Commander, Dungeon Quest, Visual Studio (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Professional XNA(r) Programming

Building Games for Xbox 360(r) and Windows(r)with XNA Game Studio 2.0, 2nd Edition

This improved and updated edition of the bestseller will get you up and running quickly with building games for Xbox 360 and the Windows platform. Professional game developer and Microsoft MVP Benjamin Nitschke begins by explaining how to install the free XNA Game Studio 2.0 and then goes on to share essential advice for using it in a productive way.

Before you know it, each successive chapter will have you developing small games that increase in difficulty. By using the chapters as building blocks, you'll evolve from 2D programming to 3D, and you'll ultimately create a full-blown graphics engine that can be used for more advanced game projects. Plus, you'll get an inside look at six fully functional games, including the popular Racing Game and the new Dungeon Quest.

What you will learn from this book
*

Tips for adding music and sound with XACT
*

Techniques for creating unique visual effects through Shaders
*

Ways to access keyboard, mouse, and Xbox controllers with XInput
*

How to write your own XNA graphics engine and create a game engine
*

How to manage content in XNA
*

Myriad ways of fine-tuning, debugging, and troubleshooting
*

How to make sure games run on the Xbox 360
*

Ways to generate landscapes and tracks
*

How to take advantage of XNA's new networking APIs

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who wants to create games on the Xbox 360 and Windows platforms. Experience with C# or a similar .NET language is necessary, but previous game programming is not required.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

From the Back Cover

Professional XNA® Programming

Building Games for Xbox 360® and Windows®with XNA Game Studio 2.0, 2nd Edition

This improved and updated edition of the bestseller will get you up and running quickly with building games for Xbox 360 and the Windows platform. Professional game developer and Microsoft MVP Benjamin Nitschke begins by explaining how to install the free XNA Game Studio 2.0 and then goes on to share essential advice for using it in a productive way.

Before you know it, each successive chapter will have you developing small games that increase in difficulty. By using the chapters as building blocks, you'll evolve from 2D programming to 3D, and you'll ultimately create a full-blown graphics engine that can be used for more advanced game projects. Plus, you'll get an inside look at six fully functional games, including the popular Racing Game and the new Dungeon Quest.

What you will learn from this book

• Tips for adding music and sound with XACT

• Techniques for creating unique visual effects through Shaders

• Ways to access keyboard, mouse, and Xbox controllers with XInput

• How to write your own XNA graphics engine and create a game engine

• How to manage content in XNA

• Myriad ways of fine-tuning, debugging, and troubleshooting

• How to make sure games run on the Xbox 360

• Ways to generate landscapes and tracks

• How to take advantage of XNA's new networking APIs

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who wants to create games on the Xbox 360 and Windows platforms. Experience with C# or a similar .NET language is necessary, but previous game programming is not required.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 2 edition (February 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470261285
• ISBN-13: 978-0470261286
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #326,283 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars You will need another XNA book, May 16, 2007

By	Cecilia Marcano (Caracas, MI Venezuela) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows (Paperback)

I just want to warn the reader before buying this book. Certainly the author knows how to code games, but this book did not worked for ME for the following reasons:

*) You will need to be in front of a computer and have the samples downloaded if you want to learn something. I read 200 pages from this book while traveling by plane and since most of the code is not printed, and the author relies on the reader to try things on the computer, I did not learned much. If you are like me and love to read books in the beach, on the bed, or waiting on the dentist, you will not learn much.
*) Some of the games were written with the beta version and then ported, and some with the release version, but none with the refresh version. So the information may be already outdated. For example, the author states that XNA does not support fonts, and that was true, but no anymore.
*) The book can not be used as a reference book, it was written to be read from the beginning to the end.
*) The games presented on the book relies on helper classes written by the author, so sometimes you feel more like learning how to use this helper classes and less like learning XNA.

I feel bad writing this because the author has contributed so much for the XNA community, he deserves better, but this book is just not for everyone. If you feel like sitting in front of the computer and analyze code to learn by yourself, I suggest trying the samples from the XNA site first.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What's the audience of this book? It's too hard for beginners, no point for advanced..., July 31, 2007

By	M. Galindo - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows (Paperback)

Being a C# developer for a few years now, I find many online tutorials much easier to follow than this book. I'd say about 95% of the programming books out there usually go with the show a chunk of code, and then go on to explain what it's doing and why it does what it does. This method works and is reflected by the fact, most programming books have done, and continue to do it this way.

This book just tells you one thing and then it's source code is completely different, for example in Chapter 2, it states to "Load some content in the 'Initialize' method" so you type some code in there and then later when you compile and things don't work, you go back and try to figure out why and when you look at the downloaded source code, all of the code you typed in the Initialize method lives somewhere completely different, along with dozens if not hundreds of lines of code not even mentioned in the book?? It becomes so frustrating trying to follow along the book, and then ignoring all of it and just reverse engineering the download coded - it really begs, why use the book at all? Just download the code and walk through it line by line and figure it out.

Flipping through the book looked so promising, I liked the projects in each of the chapters feeding off of each other, but honestly, I have a dozen web sites of online tutorials that I feel will teach me better than the book does.

I think I'm more confused about the audience for this book more than anything else - if you are advanced enough to figure out everything on your own, then you don't need this book and reviewing the code would be MORE than enough (plus you wouldn't need all of basic unit testing for every single task), but if you aren't advanced, the book is too difficult to follow and isn't worth your time...

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars WARNING ! - The Code is a Mess don't get this Book if you are not an expert!, June 9, 2007

By	A. Citeli "DIRECT X Programmer" (FL, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows (Paperback)

I am Direct X / C++ programmer and been working with DirectX ever since DirectX 8, now I have tons of books about advanced topics in Direct X. However, When I got this book , I realized that the code for this book was very messy. Xna is not as complicated as Direct X neither you have to write as many lines of code. In fact, many things are already taken care for you.However, This book made XNA look a lot more difficult than my other Advanced Direct X , C++ books. Here is why :

1) The Author uses so many messy lines of code just to render/show something in the screen with just a simple shader. The same thing can be done in XNA with just a few lines of code.

2)We , most of the readers, want to learn how to use the XNA API and made that transition from Direct X to XNA not looking necesarely for a beginners book. XNA is simple.Thru most of the book This Author wants the reader to learn about messy Helper Classes that he Made.
What works for him , does not mean it works for everyone. Not to mention that his code is not even optimized.If his messy extra code is not even optimized then why make XNA more complicated it than a C++ Direct X shaders book.Some people don't have the time to go thru his own custom code (Not xna,Shaders) that he wrote for his personal use. Readers want to
use XNA to lear or write their own clases.

3)) The code from the Book is from a Beta version of XNA, this book came on April and XNA was released on December. All he had to do is spend just one more week to update his code so that it would compile with the Final version of XNA and the reader would get accurate code from the book or wait a little longer to release his book. Even with the latest source code from the Book's website, some of the code does not even compile.Why? not because of XNA , but because of his messy code. In forums the Author himself says that he does not know what is going on simply because he has not gotten a copy of his own book yet. The book has been out for a month and he does not even know what his readers are being exposed to. Not to mention that besides the fact that this book does not give accurate code which won;t compile in the final version of XNA, some readers mention that the book has several grammar errors.

There are more Advanced 3D math,Graphics,Direct X, shaders books out there and none of them would give you as much pain as this book.Not because XNA or C# is hard, is SIMPLE! compared to others. It's his own custom made code he wrote that is just a mess and is Unnecessary, unless you want to make your life more complicated. Advanced books introduce the subject, explain it focus on their topic (API) and have accurate code that runs. Is just too bad, the Author of this book has Programming experience, but not the potential to explain and help the reader digest the info about his unesesary extra code that takes a big portion of his book. Since code can be downloaded and does not need to write more pages on his book, all he had to do is make 2 versions of this chapter demos. One with his messy code and another just using XNA. All he had to do in the chapters was: Please view the two versions of this demo. It only takes a sentence to write it on the book and have the code to be downlodable thru the Books Website.

Note: Even Microsoft, removed some of his Unit test,messy code when they tried to use his code.Funny thing is that the Author of this book was not very happy about that he mentions that on his website.