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XNA Game Studio Express: Developing Games for Windows and the Xbox 360 1st Edition

by Joseph B Hall (Author)

15

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XNA Game Studio Express: Developing Games for Windows and the Xbox 360 is the ultimate resource for hobbyists and students who want to write games for Windows and the Xbox 360 game console. Learn how you can create your own games using the amazing tools of XNA and Game Studio Express, the free game development tools and APIs from Microsoft, based on the incredibly popular Visual Studio IDE. You'll begin with an introduction to the XNA platform and the Game Studio Express development environment. From there, you'll examine many different game genres and will develop your own working games. You'll also cover writing components and libraries and will develop reusable code that can be plugged into your game projects. Wrap things up with a collection of more advanced topics. To get the most out of this unique guide you will need a working knowledge of programming, but readers with a variety of backgrounds will still benefit from the comprehensive coverage found inside.

ISBN-10

9781598633689
ISBN-13

978-1598633689
Edition

1st
Publisher

Cengage Learning PTR
Publication date

September 6, 2007
Language

English
Dimensions

7.25 x 1.5 x 9 inches
Print length

800 pages
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joseph Hall has worked as a software developer for more than 15 years. He has worked for IBM and Microsoft, and was a member of the original Xbox team. He has managed and created native code for web, desktop, and mobile devices, and is an avid game development hobbyist. He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD.NET/MCAD.NET/MCTS/MCP) and is currently obtaining Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) credentials.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1598633686
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cengage Learning PTR; 1st edition (September 6, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 800 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781598633689
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1598633689
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.9 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 1.5 x 9 inches

Customer Reviews:
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Joseph Hall
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Joseph Hall has been a professional software developer for more than 20 years. He worked as a programmer for Microsoft and IBM, he was the software architect for a Fortune 500 bank, he was the CTO of a ticket sales and servicing company, and he started his own consulting company in 2006.
Joe makes his living writing desktop, web, and mobile device applications for businesses, but game programming is his passion, and it was gaming that got him into programming in the first place. He was a member of the original Xbox team and he joined the Visual Studio .NET team just after the Xbox was released in 2001. Joe is the author of XNA Game Studio Express: Developing Games for Windows and the Xbox 360, which was published in 2007.
Joe also dabbles in sketching, cartooning, and creating 3D models. When you see his artistic creations, you'll understand why he makes his living as a programmer.
See more on the author's page
Joseph B Hall
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Joseph B. Hall has been a professional software developer for more than 30 years. He worked as a programmer for Microsoft and IBM, he was the software architect for a Fortune 500 bank, he was the CTO of a ticket sales and servicing company, and he started his own consulting company in 2006.
Joe makes his living writing desktop, web, and mobile device applications for businesses, but game programming is his passion, and it was gaming that got him into programming in the first place. He was a member of the original Xbox team and he joined the Visual Studio .NET team just after the Xbox was released in 2001. Joe is the author of XNA Game Studio Express: Developing Games for Windows and the Xbox 360, which was published in 2007.
Joe also dabbles in sketching, cartooning, and creating 3D models. When you see his artistic creations, you'll understand why he makes his living as a programmer.
See more on the author's page

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

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Mondomeyer Buyer

Beginner game creator

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2013

Verified Purchase

Just what I was missing. Great book and software for the right price! I think I got exactly what I paid for and needed to make me some games. Great shopping experience and choices to choose from.

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Backlog Battle

Easy to read, very concise book about XNA

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2008

Verified Purchase

Just real brief - this book is a must for developers who are familiar with programming concepts (i.e. conditions, loops, etc), and who wish to dabble in XNA. XNA's a different beast in itself, as the book will explain - and the author will strive to explain every single detail about the code he uses and the formulas he places in them. Reason why I only rated this book a 4 out of 5 is because all the code in the book is based off of XNA 1.0 - and the current version, XNA 2.0, deprecates some of the programs in the book. You can download the code from his site, however - but often times I want to be able to just thumb through the code in the book and not worry whether or not the code's deprecated. Otherwise, it's a highly recommendable book.

2 people found this helpful

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Zachary S

Great- But Major Pitfalls

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2008

Verified Purchase

I'm sorry to go against the grain here and write a review that doesn't praise this book like the bible, but really, it doesn't deserve the reviews it has gotten thus far.

The first few chapters are easy going enough, no problems there. But then when you get to the actual code, you're in for one hell of a ride.

- The code isn't highlighted in any way, making it hard to read.

- The author doesn't even explain the code- just gives brief summaries on what to expect.

- More irritating (and the reason I rated it a 3/5) is the fact that you won't know where the code goes. At all. The author just gives you the code and expects you to know XNA well enough to know where it should go. (It doesn't even show you where the code should go in correlation with other bits of code). The solution? The CD has the code on it. If you get this book, you will NEED the CD if you want to learn anything at all.

- The CD barely functions under my installation of Vista. The auto-install feature for XNA/C# didn't work, leaving me to find the downloads on my own (which wasn't so bad, really)

- The author's sense of humor is really stale. I pictured the author as one of those dungeons and dragons geeks. If you read this book, you'll know what I mean.

- This book puts a heavy emphasis on math. And guess what: it isn't explained. Be prepared to learn more about trigonometry from Google, because you won't learn it here. (Sine waves functions, radians, functions for degrees, angles, etc etc)

- The author states that the code isn't optimized, since he wants the reader to understand the concepts. This is just an easy way out for him! Not only does he use TRIGONOMETRY where it DOESN'T need to be used, but he does it in a fashion that isn't, in his words, "optimized."

But what I can say about the book is the examples are nice. The code compiles cleanly. I did learn a lot, albeit I needed Google to help explain it.

Overall I'd say I've had more success learning from examples on the Microsoft Knowledgebase and user-created sites. I only look at this book when I need to.

14 people found this helpful

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SS

This is a very nice book

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2013

Verified Purchase

Easy to use, but you need to know how to use C# language otherwise you have to studies this language before starting the XNA.

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Gary Spillman

Flawed from the Start

Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2009

I'm going completely against the grain of the previous reviews and giving this book 1 star. This book had a lot of promise that was unfortunately ruined by a lack of organization and forethought on the part of the author and editor(s).

The book attempts to teach the reader how to program games using XNA however repeatedly skips fundamental concepts (e.g. telling you to load textures into the game without explaining how to import graphic files into Visual Studio for use as a game resource).

This problem is compounded by a lack of thought put into the order the book's content is presented to the reader, which at times is rather awkward (you better understand how to use MathHelper by chapter 4 but sprite fonts won't be covered until chapter 21?).

Ultimately, this book was seemingly written for reader who already understand how to program games in XNA - which rather defeats the purpose of the book.

I found the Beginning XNA 2.0 Game Programming book from Apress to be a far more useful book. If you're going to spend ~$40 on an XNA textbook, you would be better off with the Apress book than this one.

3 people found this helpful

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lissajous

it's great thanks

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2013

Verified Purchase

it's great thanks, blah, blah. it's great thanks, blah, blah. it's great thanks, blah, blah.it's great thanks, blah, blah
Cool!

One person found this helpful

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AD

Beginner Book

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2008

Verified Purchase

Great for new person to XNA. General OO programming knowledge required, but the basics of game design are there.

One person found this helpful

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Daniel K. Ray

Probably the easiest programming book to learn from

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2007

I originally bought the book because it was one of two that I was thinking about buying that came with a CD. I've dabbled in C# over the last two or so years (C++ guy turned Java guy - turning C# guy - turning older...) and became curious about the whole XNA hype, so I settled on this book.

I am simply amazed at how easy it is to read, how clear the code base is, and I can't help thinking that the author is sitting next to me eager to show me something new. This is an author who thinks like a reader.

It is my intent to purchase further books by this author. I'm sure they will find a home near my laptop and sit next to the greats like Andre Lamothe.

12 people found this helpful

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