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XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide – Visual Basic Edition Paperback – December 23, 2011

by Kurt Jaegers (Author)

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This book is a step-by-step tutorial that includes complete source code for all of the games covered. It adopts an engaging style to teach all the game development concepts. Each block of code is explained, and game development concepts are diagrammed and covered in detail. Each game begins with a concept description and concludes with suggestions for expanding on the finished game. If you are an aspiring game developer who wants to take a shot at creating games for the Microsoft Windows platform with the XNA Framework, then this book is for you. Using this book, you can get started with creating games without any game development experience. A basic knowledge of Visual Basic would be needed to kickstart your game development.

Print length

424 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Packt Publishing
Publication date

December 23, 2011
Dimensions

7.5 x 0.96 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

1849692408
ISBN-13

978-1849692403
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Packt Publishing (December 23, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 424 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1849692408
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1849692403
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.6 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 0.96 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #7,912,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,722 in Computer & Internet Game Strategy Guides
- #4,811 in Game Programming
- #13,122 in Introductory & Beginning Programming

Customer Reviews:
20 ratings

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2 star		11%
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W. WALLACE

Good start for game dev but aweful for learning XNA

Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2013

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While many have rated this book high (mostly people new to game dev) which I can understand wanting to since the author takes you through some very fun and engaging examples, he does a terrible job of teaching you anything about XNA and how XNA works. His examples show no regard for the XNA framework nor does reach you any important things you will need to understand to build a 'good' XNA game. It barely uses XNA and teaches you bad habits that you will have to unlearn if you want to build a real game. If you are a hobbyist , it is a great book because it will get you started quick and is quite fun. If you are a pro developer wanting to build a commercial products you had better learn XNA from different book.

One person found this helpful

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Matthew

High speed book!

Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2013

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The pace of this book is incredible. Step 1, build a game to click on a randomly teleporting box. Step 2, build a puzzle game with rotating blocks, sprite fonts and animations. The pace is similar to someone showing you a picture of a missile, and then the next step is showing you how to program the guidance systems to target anything the color red. Very well laid out, very fast paced, very goal oriented. You learn a lot in a very short amount of time.

3 people found this helpful

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Roderick C. Dixon

Learn XNA

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2015

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Great tool for learning XNA. Highly recommend it

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2015

Verified Purchase

Loved it!

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2014

Verified Purchase

Irrelevant these days

Helpful

unveils easy simulations using maths and physics

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2012

Jaegers describes the expansion of ability of Microsoft's XNA from being restricted to coding in C# to now letting Visual Basic programs access its libraries. XNA is roughly a wrapper around essential but low end functionality for controlling graphics and sound. The appeal of this book is that you can now leverage your VB expertise into games that can run under the Xbox, Microsoft Windows and cellphones running Phone 7.

All the essentials of game programming are treated. Like using a game loop in some games, where the program waits for user input. A different style from more traditional linear start to end approaches. The book also demonstrates the ease of use of Microsoft's Visual Studio 2010 version. This SDK comes across as well polished and robust. A solid background against which to code.

The text demonstrates different types of games. None are too intricate. A beginner's guide, after all. Common techniques like defining tiles for the screen are gone into. A key idea is the Draw() routine, which updates the screen graphics. Object oriented code is possible, though the text does not seem to explicitly use this term.

Another game example is Asteriods. A venerable lineage that goes back to the early 80s at least. One take home idea is that you get to model the collision between two asteriods. This only hints at what is really an arbitrarily deep means of simulating real or artificial worlds. Where you model actual or imaginary physics at the lowest level, and use this to drive many interactions. Readers with a background in undergraduate physics can appreciate the vistas that this section of the book offers.

Yet another chapter delves into path finding algorithms. Used in games where you need to find an optimal path between two points, or for collision avoidance.

In all of the above, the book deprecates any maths. A high schooler could follow all the code. But the more maths and physics you have, the more potential the book unveils.

One thing I should add. The book ab initio assumes that you have decided to code games in Visual Basic. If you are equally facile in C#, seriously consider learning game programming in it, rather than VB. C# has higher level syntax, giving more compact expressive power. Notation does matter, a lot. And C# was configured from the get go as fully object oriented. Turns out that Jaegers has a companion text that does it all in C#, XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide .

Helpful

C. Moeller

Great book for beginners to game programming!

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2012

The book is aimed towards beginners starting out in game programming. Visual basic is one of the easier languages to get started in, and XNA is a well known game framework, so it is an excellent place for beginners to start.

The book starts out with an introduction to XNA, and how to set it up on your machine for development. The author explains everything he adds to the code, which makes it easy to understand what each addition does.

The first game is created in chapter 2, so the author quickly gets into actually creating games fairly quickly, while introducing important concepts such as sprite sheets and tile based games.

The following games continue to introduce important concepts, from collision detection to the A* pathfinding algorithm, and even using a map editor to make levels for a side scrolling mario-esque game!

I would definitely recommend this book to beginner and intermediate game programmers. The amount of important concepts introduced in this book would give you a great start to developing more advanced games in the future, and the concepts will still be useful for any 3d games. It doesn't matter so much what language you start out programming, just learning the game programming concepts will get you started regardless of what language you eventually choose to develop in.

One person found this helpful

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Dave Voyles

Great for novices and experiences game devs alike

Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2012

Despite C# being the leading development language for XNA, it was about time that a book came along to deliver some examples of how to integrate Visual Basic, now that it has been implemented within the framework after the 4.0 release.

Despite having a C# backgorund, I found the developers lessons to prove invaluable. Each chapter is broken up so that you are building a game, and the chapters which follow will build on those concepts. For example, the second chapter had us developing an NES style "Pipe Dreams" of sorts, where the player must drop pipes into place to allow for water to continue to flow throughout the plumbing.

A later chapter explores an asteroid space assault game, where you'll learn how to implement physics and collisions, thereby allowing objects to bounce off one another and carry the force along from object to object.

The author assumes that the reader has a general knowledge of Visual Basic and XNA, but still does an excellent job of never talking down to the reader, all the while keeping them motivated for more.

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Amazon Customer

Great value

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 3, 2020

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Really useful

Dave

Great book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 1, 2013

Verified Purchase

Great game examples with theory paced just right. The basic principles introduced in each game serve as a useful set of core 2D techniques to build upon. Very enjoyable to work through.

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