Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows 1st Edition

by Benjamin Nitschke (Author)

46 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0470126776

ISBN-10: 0470126779

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Professional XNA Programming: Building Games for Xbox 360 and Windows with XNA Game Studio 2.0
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You haven't experienced the full potential of Xbox 360 or Windows until you've created your own homebrewed games for these innovative systems. With Microsoft's new XNA Framework, the only thing limiting you is your imagination. Now professional game developer and Microsoft DirectX MVP Benjamin Nitschke shows you how to take advantage of the XNA Game Studio Express tools and libraries in order to build cutting-edge games.

Whether you want to explore new worlds or speed down a city block in a souped up dragster, this book will get you up and running quickly. You'll learn how to implement 3D models, generate huge landscapes, map cool-looking shaders to your 3D objects, and much more. Nitschke also steps you through the development of your first fully functional racing game. You'll then be able to apply this information as you write your own XNA cross-platform games.

What you will learn from this book

Tricks for managing the game engine and user interface
How to program an old school shooter game and space adventure
Tips for improving racing game logic and expanding your game ideas
Methods for integrating amazing visual effects using advanced shader techniques
Steps for adding sound and music with XACT-bringing your game to life
How to fine-tune and debug your game for optimal performance

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who wants to write their own games for the Xbox 360 or Windows platforms. You should have some experience coding with C# or a similar .NET language.

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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Professional XNA Game Programming For Xbox 360 and Windows®

You haven't experienced the full potential of Xbox 360 or Windows® until you've created your own homebrewed games for these innovative systems. With Microsoft's new XNA Framework, the only thing limiting you is your imagination. Now professional game developer and Microsoft DirectX MVP Benjamin Nitschke shows you how to take advantage of the XNA Game Studio Express tools and libraries in order to build cutting-edge games.

What you will learn from this book

Tricks for managing the game engine and user interface
How to program an old school shooter game and space adventure
Tips for improving racing game logic and expanding your game ideas
Methods for integrating amazing visual effects using advanced shader techniques
Steps for adding sound and music with XACT—bringing your game to life
How to fine-tune and debug your game for optimal performance

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who wants to write their own games for the Xbox 360 or Windows platforms. You should have some experience coding with C# or a similar .NET language.

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.

About the Author

Benjamin Nitschke ( Hannover, Germany) is a professional game developer at exDream entertainment, creators of "Arena Wars", and Armies of Steel. Benny is well known as the creator of the first .NET 2.0 Game Rocket Commander which is the featured gaming project on Microsoft’s Coding4Fun website and includes 10 video tutorials for aspiring game programmers. Benjamin is a Microsoft DirectX Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and writes a popular blog about game development located at http://abi.exDream.com.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wrox; 1st edition (April 30, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 504 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0470126779
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0470126776
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.5 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.4 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #10,211,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,455 in Game Programming
- #7,688 in Computer Graphics
- #16,288 in Video & Computer Games

Customer Reviews:
46 ratings

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2 star		12%
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The Professor

Disappointed with the book!

Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2007

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As a professor I have been teaching XNA game development as part of our curriculum since January 2007 without the use of a textbook. Had high hopes for this book and the first pages were great! But as the book continued two problems appeared. The first major issue is the author's focus on "unit testing". This concept introduced so early in a book offering to teach beginners greatly complicated the learning process of XNA. Would have much clearer to teach XNA and then later in the book introduce another technology. The second issue is the use of advanced C# programming techniques into the code without explaining the reasoning. I have been programming for decades, been teaching programming for more than two decades, teaching C# since 2001 and even then some of the programming approaches had me looking in "help" explanations.

So I am still in search for a beginning textbook on XNA!!!!

Professor Terrance "Terry" Simkin
Program Coordinator Animation and Graphic Game Programming
Professor Computer Engineering Technology
New Hampshire Technical Institute

3 people found this helpful

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MikalC

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2018

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good

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T. Sanders

Excellent introduction to XNA

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2007

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Professional XNA Game Programming is an excellent introduction to XNA. The book starts out with some 2D games (Pong, Breakout and Tetris clones) to teach the foundations of game programming and moves into 3D from there. Along the way, the differences between writing a game for Windows and the Xbox 360 are discussed and the author provides some debugging tips for the Xbox. Benjamin Nitschke's writing style is clear and easy to follow and he promotes good programming practices. Some of the code examples printed in the book aren't completely consistent with the text that discusses them, but downloading the code from the website resolves any problems.

2 people found this helpful

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Frederick Welsh

Probably a good book just not for beginners

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2007

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I've only made it up through ch 2 and have decided that I will probably have to come back to this book after I get some more game programming experience. The introduction says that the reader should have knowledge of C# but experience with C++ or Java will suffice. I have "2nd semester" level experience in all of these languages and still have difficulty following the author. In the small bit that I read there were a number of times where the author does things like tells the reader to enter certain pieces of code but doesn't mention where to insert them nor is it obvious based soley on the context of the discussion. I also became frustrated when he said to drag some particular texture files into the IDE but didn't mention where they originate from. The book contains no CD and as it turns out he does in fact mention somewhere in the first chapter that all the files mentioned in the book are located on the publishers website. Still, it would have been nice if that point had been reiterated. Also, as this is a book targeted at professionals and not beginners don't expect many explanations about how some lines of code work. This is probably a good book if you're a game programmer with a couple of years experience and looking to add XNA to your repertoire. If you want to learn the basic nuts and bolts of game programming you may want to look elsewhere first. I'd recommend the book "Game Programming for Teens." Don't let the title mislead you, I'm 32 and learned lots! It doesn't go beyond 2D but it's very straight forward.

8 people found this helpful

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Brian R. Forquer

Not what I was looking for

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2007

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While not exactly the books fault it is not what I was looking for. I guess what I was looking for was something that explains not only XNA frame work but also some of the theory or practices of the programming side of game development. The book uses a lot of helper classes built by author. This is good if you wanted to see how people write helper classes but I was looking for more of an indepth view of XNA Framework and game development. If you are looking for a book that teaches the basics of game development using XNA I would not suggest this book. When I have a better understanding of XNA this book may get a second glance.

3 people found this helpful

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T. DOYLE

good but

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2008

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the only fault I found in this book in that it tells you to use sprites that you dont have. on the front of the book theres a web site were you can download source code, but no sprites. as for the rest of the book I found it to be very good for beginers, witch i am, I just had to make the sprites myself.

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Cecilia Marcano

You will need another XNA book

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2007

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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.

41 people found this helpful

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Mr Reviewer

Tell me about XNA not Agile Project Management Methods

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 22, 2007

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Pointless book where the author has used it as a soapbox to promote completely unrelated subjects like Agile project management. The text is error prone and hard to follow. Wait for a better book.

3 people found this helpful

Freebird

Für DirectX-Entwickler

Reviewed in Germany on July 4, 2007

Verified Purchase

Traditionsgemäß richten sich Bücher mit dem Titelzusatz "Professional" an bereits durchschnittlich erfahrene Leser, auch hier: Schon mit "Pong" führt Nitschke nebenbei noch Agile Methodology und Unittests mit Funktionszeigern ein: 886 Zeilen Code mit sieben überladenen RenderSprite-Methoden.

Zu welchen Klassen Codeschnipsel hinzugefügt werden sollen, ist oft unklar. Erst kurz vor Kapitelende folgt ein "By the way: You added all this code to". Mancher vorgestellte Methodenrumpf bleibt ungefüllt und der Leser muss unaufgefordert improvisieren. Die Kapitel liefern allenfalls Hinweise, auch werden nur einzelne Klassendiagramme bebildert, aber keine Frameworks. Wissen um Vererbung, Überladung und Polymorphie ist Voraussetzung für das Quelltextstudium (Download nötig) und wird nicht vermittelt.

Dieses Buch sollten Sie kaufen, wenn
...Sie bereits DirectX programmiert haben und auf XNA umsteigen wollen
...Sie OOP-Entwickler sind und XNA kennenlernen möchten
...Sie Pipelines, Shader, Engine Design, Landscapes und Physics in XNA verwirklicht sehen möchten
...Ihnen schon Brainstormings ausreichend Informationen liefern

Dieses Buch sollten Sie nicht kaufen, wenn Sie
...ein Lehrbuch oder Nachschlagewerk zu XNA erwarten
...schon immer wissen wollten, was Pipelines und Shader überhaupt sind
...gerne schrittweise und lückenlos durch ein Thema geführt werden

Fazit: Ein dickes Begleitbuch zu den offiziellen Tutorials "Rocket Commander", "XNA Shooter" und "Racing Game" mit vielen wertvollen Insider-Informationen über professionelle Spieleentwicklung. Wer ein didaktisch gut gegliedertes Lehrbuch zu XNA sucht, greift zu Stephen Cawood oder Chad Carter.

7 people found this helpful

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Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows 1st Edition

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