World Famous Comics: Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows
Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows
By: Benjamin Nitschke Publisher: Wrox Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Wrox Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 504 Publication Date: April 30, 2007
Product Description: 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.
good but 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.
A frustrating experience As others have said, this book is exceptionally frustrating. Flipping through the book, it looks like there are tons of code examples - which is great! Then, you sit down with the book, expecting to be able to type along with the examples from scratch, and find out you can't. Everything from typos (second chapter there are a few flip flops of a variable confusingly named GameLifes being called the more obvious GameLives), to variables being used but never defined. Huge chunks use variables that aren't mentioned until several paragraphs later, in a paragraph basically starting with, "By the way, you need the following variables to get the preceding code to compile." Thanks! That's not confusing or anything!
The kicker was when I got to the first big chunk of input handling code for the Pong game. Apparently the author felt the chunk was too long, and it literally ends with a // ...etc - and doesn't finish! He tells you to look at the sample code which you can download! No! I don't want to copy/paste your sample code, I need to learn by doing, not by copying and pasting.
When I did look at the sample code, I found that it was completely different from the code in the book; lines were there that weren't in the book (this.IsFixedTimeStep = false in the constructor of your PongGame, which magically made my initial program not take 100% of my CPU for some reason). The input handling code for the Pong game which is written in one chunk (one unfinished chunk) in the book is actually broken into multiple functions in the sample code.
Clearly the author knows the subject matter, but I don't feel he has a grasp on how to teach others.
Good book but not for beginners When I first started this book I was completely new to programming and had a horrible time trying to follow along. Since then I have taken a class teaching Java which is very similar to C# and I have a much easier time with the book. The author does not write down all the necessary code in the book which is disappointing but if you have some experience coding, especially in c# or java, then you will be able to figure out what is missing fairly easily and be able to find it in the source code. The best way to go about reading this book is to read what he says, look at the code he wants you to write, find that code in the source code, then write the code yourself in the same location as you found it in the source code. I am still only about 3/4 of the way through chapter 2 so I can't really comment much on how much he focuses on xna but he does use a lot of unit tests. I find the book fairly helpful overall and I find it better than using similar tutorials online because most of the tutorials I found online are just straight code without any explanation of what it means or what order it should be written in. I recommend this book if you have some experience programming and prefer to learn by diving right into making games rather than reading a bunch.
Awful book! I agree with all the other dissatisfied buyers of this book. I have had this book 1 day and will either pray I can resell it or just plan give it away. I am on chapter 2 and can't even get it the Pong game going because more than 50% of the code needs to be downloaded. The writing style is all about the authors practices in game development and not the XNA technology. He does not teach you the XNA Development platform but rather how to right unit test and about 25% game development. I agree he is probably and outstanding game programmer and should stick to that. Very, Very bad buy and I have read alot of programming books in my day and have to say this is the Number 1 worse. Pllleeeaaase I beg that you save your money and buy a different book and don't set yourself back $40.
Already Returning This Book I've spent a couple hours with this book and I'm already decided to return it. I am just a step above "beginnger" when it comes to coding and I realize just enough that this book is completely outdated. The published date says Feb 26, 2008 which is exactly two months ago, however, version 2.0 of the Game Studio Express is fully out in the public and there are TONS of differences between it and what is presented in this book; so much so that it is actually confusing me to read this book INSTEAD of learning something.
Furthermore, a big reason I purchased this book was to read more about the Dungeon Quest game mentioned in the book. The author makes it sounds like this will be a fairly fleshed out example game by the time the book is released. However, what I find online is merely the example that was created in his 4 day GDC stent and nothing more. To make things worse, I cannot get it to compile in v2.0 of Game Studio Express.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
