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You're reading from XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide The best way to start creating your own games is simply to dive in and give it a go with this Beginner‚Äôs Guide to XNA. Full of examples, tips, and tricks for a solid grounding.

Product type Paperback

Published in Sep 2010

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781849690669

Length 428 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Tools

Microsoft XNA

Concepts

Game Scripting

Author (1):

Kurt Jaegers

View More author details

Table of Contents (15) Chapters

XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

Preface

1. Introducing XNA Game Studio FREE CHAPTER

2. Flood Control – Underwater Puzzling

3. Flood Control – Smoothing Out the Rough Edges

4. Asteroid Belt Assault – Lost in Space

5. Asteroid Belt Assault – Special Effects

6. Robot Rampage – Multi-Axis Mayhem

7. Robot Rampage – Lots and Lots of Bullets

8. Gemstone Hunter – Put on Your Platform Shoes

9. Gemstone Hunter – Standing on Your Own Two Pixels

Index

Time for action – installing XNA Game Studio

Visit http://www.microsoft.com/express/Phone/ and download the Windows Phone Developer Tools package. Run the setup wizard and allow the installation package to complete.
Open Visual Studio Express. Click on the Help menu and select Register Product. Click on the Register Now link to go to the Visual Studio Express registration page. After you have completed the registration process, return to Visual Studio Express and enter the registration number into the registration dialog box.
Close Visual Studio Express.
Download the Font Pack from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=104778.
Extract the ZIP file contents to a temporary folder (leave this folder open).
From the Start Menu, select Control Panel. Under Classic View, choose Fonts.
Drag the fonts from the temporary folder to the Fonts folder.
Close both Explorer windows.
Launch Visual Studio Express, and the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) will be displayed as seen in the following screenshot:

Tip

Other versions of Visual Studio and XNA

Different versions of Visual Studio and XNA can be installed on the same PC without interfering with each other. If you wish to target the Zune platform, you will need to install Visual C# 2008 Express and XNA 3.1. Additionally, Visual Studio Express and Visual Studio Professional can coexist on the same PC, and XNA will integrate with both of them if it is installed after Visual Studio.

What just happened?

You have now successfully installed the Windows Phone Developers Tools, including XNA Game Studio 4.0 and the Redistributable Font Pack provided by Microsoft for XNA developers.

Tip

The redistributable fonts package

To use its integrated text drawing methods, XNA games need to convert normal Windows fonts into an internal format called a SpriteFont. These SpriteFonts get distributed with your game, which means you will not be able to use most of the fonts on your computer due to licensing restrictions. For this reason, Microsoft has provided a selection of fonts that XNA developers can freely distribute without purchasing an individual license to do so.