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Home > Game Development > 3D Game Development > XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide
XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide
XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide

XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide: Create action-packed 3D games with the Microsoft XNA Framework with this book and ebook.

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₹4096.99
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XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide

Chapter 2. Cube Chaser – A Flat 3D World

Our first 3D game will feature a very straight forward design: the player is trapped in a randomly generated maze, and must seek out the great green cube! Every time the player reaches this goal, they are awarded points for how quickly they found the cube and it is relocated to a different portion of the maze.

While simple in design, building Cube Chaser will cover a number of important topics related to 3D game development. In this chapter, we will look at:

  • Building an FPS (First Person Shooter) style camera

  • Drawing surfaces using triangles in the 3D world

  • Generating a floor as a base for our maze

  • Detecting input and allowing first-person movement through the maze

Designing the game

Cube Chaser will take place in a randomly generated 3D maze. We will use triangle lists to build the floor and walls of the maze and instruct the graphics card to draw them to the screen.

The maze itself is actually a 2D construction, with the walls being rendered in 3D. The floor of the maze will be laid out along the X-Z plane, with the walls extending upwards along the positive Y axis. The player will be able to move in the X and Z plane, but will be restricted to a single, pre-defined elevation along the Y axis.

3D coordinates

You may have noticed in the previous statement that the player will move along the X-Z plane. If you have spent any time developing 2D games, you will likely be used to working with X-Y coordinates, with X running across the screen from left to right and Y running down the screen from top to bottom.

When we move into 3D, we no longer have a fixed viewing angle on our action. In a 2D game, we typically describe actions in the X-Y plane for a side...

Creating the project

We will begin the construction of Cube Chaser by creating a new XNA 4.0 Windows Game in Visual Studio.

Time for action – creating the Cube Chaser project

  1. 1. Open Visual Studio 2010 and select File | New | Project... from the menu bar.

  2. 2. Open the Visual C# tree in the Installed Templates portion of the New Project window, and open the XNA Game Studio 4.0 tree under it.

  3. 3. Select the Windows Game (4.0) project template from the central portion of the window.

  4. 4. Under Name, enter Cube Chaser and click the Ok button.

  5. 5. After Visual Studio has created the solution, right-click on the Game1.cs file in the Solution Explorer window and select Rename.

  6. 6. Change the name of the file to CubeChaserGame.cs. When asked if you wish to update the references to the file, click Yes.

What just happened?

We now have the shell for our Cube Chaser game. We could have left our main game class as Game1 as we did for the Speller game, but giving the class a more descriptive name helps to keep our code as self-documenting as possible.

Our view of the world

Before we can place objects and geometry into our virtual representation of a 3D world, we need to come up with a way to describe to XNA how we are going to control the viewpoint of the player. In many 2D games, a simple Vector2 value is often enough to cover the requirements of the camera – assuming the 2D game needed a camera at all. The camera viewing a 2D world might only need to know how far across and down the game world the current view should be located. Other aspects of the view, such as the distance from which the player is viewing the action, may be fixed due to the size of the pre-drawn sprites representing the game environment and objects.

In contrast, we need a bit more information to define the camera in a 3D game. The fact that we need a third coordinate (the Z coordinate) should not be surprising; since we have moved from 2D to 3D, it only stands to reason that we need three coordinates to define a point. What may be less obvious, however, is that we...

Time for action – beginning the Camera class

  1. 1. Add a new class to the Cube Chaser project by right-clicking on the project in Solution Explorer and selecting Add | Class....

  2. 2. Ensure that the Visual C# | Code is selected under Installed Templates and select the Class template.

  3. 3. Enter Camera.cs as the name of the class file.

  4. 4. Add the following using directive to the top of the Camera.cs file:

    using Microsoft.Xna.Framework;

  5. 5. Add the following fields and properties to the Camera class:

    #region Fields
private Vector3 position = Vector3.Zero;
private float rotation;
#endregion

#region Properties
public Matrix Projection { get; private set; }
#endregion

  6. 6. Add a constructor for the Camer a class:

    #region Constructor
public Camera(
    Vector3 position, 
    float rotation, 
    float aspectRatio, 
    float nearClip, 
    float farClip)
{
    Projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(
        MathHelper.PiOver4, 
        aspectRatio, 
        nearClip, 
        farClip);
    MoveTo(position...

The Projection matrix

On a physical camera, you might have a selection of various lenses with different properties – a wide angled lens for wide shots, or a telephoto lens for zooming in close. The Projection matrix is the way we describe such properties to the XNA rendering system. The Projection matrix describes to the graphics card how to translate (or project) 3D objects onto the 2D viewing area of the screen. The following image illustrates the parameters used to construct the Projection matrix:

The Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView() method accepts four parameters that define how our virtual camera will view the 3D scene. The first is the field of view, or viewing angle, that the camera covers. The larger this value is, the wider the angle the camera will display. In this case, we specify MathHelper.PiOver4, which translates to a 45 degree angle.

Note

Angles in XNA

XNA handles all angles in radians. In a full circle there are 2*pi radians. Half of a circle is 180 degree, or pi radians...

Looking at something

While we have a rotation value already associated with the Camera class, it does not mean anything to the class currently. An angle only exists in one plane in our 3D coordinate system, so we cannot simply specify an angle at which to point the camera. We need to convert the angle into a point in 3D space that lies in the direction we wish the camera to face relative to its current location.

Time for action – implementing a look-at point

  1. 1. Add the following properties to the Fields region of the Camera class:

    private Vector3 lookAt;
private Vector3 baseCameraReference = new Vector3(0, 0, 1);
private bool needViewResync = true;

  2. 2. Add the following region and method to the Camera class:

    #region Helper Methods
private void UpdateLookAt()
{
    Matrix rotationMatrix = Matrix.CreateRotationY(rotation);
    Vector3 lookAtOffset = Vector3.Transform(
        baseCameraReference, 
        rotationMatrix);
    lookAt = position + lookAtOffset;
    needViewResync = true;
}
#endregion

  3. 3. Define the MoveTo() method that is called in the constructor. This method should be placed inside the Helper Methods region you just created:

    public void MoveTo(Vector3 position, float rotation)
{
    this.position = position;
    this.rotation = rotation;
    UpdateLookAt();
}

  4. 4. Add two new public properties to the Properties region of the Camera class:

    public Vector3 Position 
{
    get
    {
        return...

The View matrix

The last bit of information we need our camera to provide in order to be able to draw a scene is called the View matrix. This matrix defines the position and direction from which the camera views the 3D world. In other words, we combine our camera position and the point we are looking at, to create the structure that XNA needs, to interpret how we wish our camera to view the 3D scene.

Time for action – the View matrix

  1. 1. Add the following variable to the Fields region of the Camera class:

    private Matrix cachedViewMatrix;

  2. 2. Add the following property to the Properties region of the Camera class:

    public Matrix View
{
    get
    {
        if (needViewResync)
            cachedViewMatrix = Matrix.CreateLookAt(
                Position, 
                lookAt, 
                Vector3.Up);

        return cachedViewMatrix;
    }
}

What just happened?

We could simply recalculate the View matrix every time the Camera class was asked for it, but doing so would incur a small performance penalty. Because we do not have a lot of action happening in Cube Chaser, this penalty would not impact our game, but we can avoid it altogether. We are building a caching mechanism into the camera code in the event our game develops to the point that this optimization is helpful. Any time the View matrix is calculated, we will store it in cachedViewMatrix and simply return that matrix if the View...

From the ground up

Even if we were to go ahead and implement the code to allow us to utilize the Camera class, there would be nothing to display at this point, as we have not defined any objects in our 3D world other than the camera, and it is invisible.

There are several different ways we could approach drawing the floor of the maze. We could draw the whole floor as a single square in a particular color. We could draw the same giant square using a texture that was repeated over the whole thing.

Both of these methods are quite valid, but we are going to take a slightly different approach. We will build a square for each cell of the maze floor, alternating the colors of the squares to create a checkerboard-like pattern. We will draw all of the floor tiles in a single operation, sending all of the geometry to the graphics card at once.

Time for action – creating the Maze classes

  1. 1. Add a new class file called Maze.cs to the Cube Chaser project.

  2. 2. Add the following using directives to the top of the Maze.cs class file:

    using Microsoft.Xna.Framework;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics;

  3. 3. Add the following fields to the Maze class:

    #region Fields
public const int mazeWidth = 20;
public const int mazeHeight = 20;

GraphicsDevice device;

VertexBuffer floorBuffer;

Color[] floorColors = new Color[2] { Color.White, Color.Gray };
#endregion

  4. 4. Add a constructor for the Maze class:

    #region Constructor
public Maze(GraphicsDevice device)
{
    this.device = device;
    
    BuildFloorBuffer();
}#endregion

  5. 5. Add the following region and helper methods to the Maze class:

    #region The Floor
private void BuildFloorBuffer()
{
    List<VertexPositionColor> vertexList = 
        new List<VertexPositionColor>();

    int counter = 0;

    for (int x = 0; x < mazeWidth; x++)
    {
        counter++;
        for (int z = 0...

Drawing the floor

Now that we have defined all of the triangles that will make up the checker-boarded floor for our maze, let's go ahead and complete the code necessary to draw the floor to the screen.

Time for action – drawing the floor

  1. 1. Add the Draw region and the Draw() method to the Maze class:

    #region Draw
public void Draw(Camera camera, BasicEffect effect)
{
    effect.VertexColorEnabled = true;
    effect.World = Matrix.Identity;
    effect.View = camera.View;
    effect.Projection = camera.Projection;

    foreach (EffectPass pass in effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes)
    {
        pass.Apply();
        device.SetVertexBuffer(floorBuffer);
        device.DrawPrimitives(
            PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 
            0, 
            floorBuffer.VertexCount / 3);
    }
}
#endregion

  2. 2. In the CubeChaserGame class, add the following declarations to the declarations area of the class:

    Camera camera;
Maze maze;
BasicEffect effect;

  3. 3. In the Initialize() method of the CubeChaserGame class, initialize the camera, maze, and effect objects, placing this code before the call to b ase.Initialize():

    camera = new Camera(
    new Vector3(0.5f, 0.5f, 0.5f), 
    0, 
    GraphicsDevice.Viewport...

Moving around

Now that we have a floor to walk on, we need to implement the code necessary to allow the player to move about within our environment. In order to facilitate this, we will first expand on our Camera class to add a couple of new helper methods.

Time for action – expanding the Camera

  1. 1. In the Helper Methods region of the Camera class, add the following new methods:

    public Vector3 PreviewMove(float scale)
{
    Matrix rotate = Matrix.CreateRotationY(rotation);
    Vector3 forward = new Vector3(0, 0, scale);
    forward = Vector3.Transform(forward, rotate);
    return (position + forward);
}

public void MoveForward(float scale)
{
    MoveTo(PreviewMove(scale), rotation);
}

What just happened?

PreviewMove() accepts a distance we wish to move along the direction that the camera is facing. It then calculates a matrix which is used to rotate a vector by the current camera rotation. Recall that an unrotated camera will always be pointing in the 0, 0, 1 direction, so we replace the 1 in this vector with the distance we wish to move, creating vector forward. We then apply the rotate transform to this vector, resulting in a vector that points in the direction the camera is actually facing, with a length equal to the distance we want to...

Time for action – letting the player move

  1. 1. Add the following fields to the declarations area of the CubeChaserGame class:

    float moveScale = 1.5f;
float rotateScale = MathHelper.PiOver2;

  2. 2. Add the following to the Update() method of the CubeChaserGame class:

    float elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds;
KeyboardState keyState = Keyboard.GetState();
float moveAmount = 0;
            
if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right))
{
    camera.Rotation = MathHelper.WrapAngle(
        camera.Rotation - (rotateScale * elapsed));
}

if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left))
{
    camera.Rotation = MathHelper.WrapAngle(
        camera.Rotation + (rotateScale * elapsed));
}

if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up))
{
    //camera.MoveForward(moveScale * elapsed);
    moveAmount = moveScale * elapsed;
}

if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down))
{
    //camera.MoveForward(-moveScale * elapsed);
    moveAmount = -moveScale * elapsed;
}

if (moveAmount != 0)
{
    Vector3 newLocation = camera.PreviewMove(moveAmount...

Summary

Cube Chaser is well under way! Even though it currently has no walls, we can draw the beginnings of our 3D world and move around using an FPS style camera. We have looked at the 3D coordinate system and the various components of the camera used to view the world. We now have the basic mechanism in place that we will build upon to limit the player's ability to move through walls once we have constructed them.

In the next chapter, we will continue to build the Cube Chaser game, creating the maze walls and detecting player-wall collisions.

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Key benefits

  • Learn the structure of a 3D world and how to implement a variety of 3D techniques including terrain generation and 3D model rendering.
  • Build three different types of 3D games step-by-step, including a first-person maze game, a battlefield tank game, and a 3D sidescrolling action game on the surface of Mars.
  • Learn to utilize High Level Shader Language (HLSL) to add lighting and multi-texturing effects to your 3D scenes.

Description

Move beyond the world of flat 2D-based game development and discover how to create your own exciting 3D games with Microsoft XNA 4.0. Create a 3D maze, fire shells at enemy tanks, and drive a rover on the surface of Mars while being attacked by alien saucers."XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide" takes you step-by-step through the creation of three different 3D video games with Microsoft XNA 4.0. Learn by doing as you explore the worlds of 3D graphics and game design.This book takes a step-by-step approach to building 3D games with Microsoft XNA, describing each section of code in depth and explaining the topics and concepts covered in detail. From the basics of a 3D camera system to an introduction to writing DirectX shader code, the games in this book cover a wide variety of both 3D graphics and game design topics. Generate random mazes, load and animate 3D models, create particle-based explosions, and combine 2D and 3D techniques to build a user interface."XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide" will give you the knowledge to bring your own 3D game creations to life.

Who is this book for?

This book is intended for readers who want to create 3D games using the XNA Framework. Basic knowledge of the C# programming language and 2D XNA concepts are helpful, but not required.

What you will learn

  • The core concepts of 3D graphics and how XNA describes the 3D world
  • Build a 3D maze that the player can explore in search of the mysterious spinning cube
  • Create 3D terrain based on a 2D height map image, adding texturing and lighting to the terrain s surface
  • Load, display and animate 3D models
  • Build a button-based user interface overlay for your 3D game
  • Create a billboard particle system to produce dynamic explosions
  • Build a skybox to give your worlds full 3D backgrounds
  • Detect collisions between 3D objects and have your game react accordingly
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Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Sep 25, 2012
Length: 322 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849687089
Vendor :
Microsoft
Category :
Game Development
Languages :
C#
Concepts :
3D Game Development
Tools :
Microsoft XNA

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Publication date : Sep 25, 2012
Length: 322 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849687089
Vendor :
Microsoft
Category :
Game Development
Languages :
C#
Concepts :
3D Game Development
Tools :
Microsoft XNA

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Table of Contents

10 Chapters
Introduction to XNA Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Introduction to XNA
System requirements
Installing the Windows Phone SDK
Time for action – installing Windows Phone SDK
Speller – Our first XNA game
Time for action – creating an XNA project
Managing content
Time for action – creating content assets
Member variables
Time for action – declaring new member variables
The Game1 constructor
Initialization
Time for action – customizing the Initialize() method
Loading content
Time for action – creating a square texture
Updating
Time for action – customizing the Update() method
The Draw() method
Time for action – drawing Speller
Helper methods
Time for action – words and letters
Time for action – completing the Speller project
Summary
Cube Chaser – A Flat 3D World Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Cube Chaser – A Flat 3D World
Designing the game
Creating the project
Time for action – creating the Cube Chaser project
Our view of the world
Time for action – beginning the Camera class
The Projection matrix
Looking at something
Time for action – implementing a look-at point
The View matrix
Time for action – the View matrix
From the ground up
Time for action – creating the Maze classes
Drawing the floor
Time for action – drawing the floor
Moving around
Time for action – expanding the Camera
Time for action – letting the player move
Summary
Cube Chaser – It's A-Mazing! Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Cube Chaser – It's A-Mazing!
Maze generation
Time for action – defining a MazeCell
Time for action – generating the Maze class
Constructing the walls
Time for action – building walls
Time for action – drawing the walls
Solid walls
Time for action – bouncing off the walls
Summary
Cube Chaser – Finding Your Way Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Cube Chaser – Finding Your Way
The cube
Time for action – placing the cube
Time for action – rotating the cube
Matrices – big scary math things?
Positioning the cube
Time for action – randomly positioning the cube
Catching the cube
Time for action – catching the cube
Summary
Tank Battles – A War-torn Land Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Tank Battles – A War-torn Land
Creating the project
Time for action – creating the Tank Battles project
An arc-ball camera
Time for action – the ArcBallCamera class – part 1
Time for action – finishing the ArcBallCamera class
Building the playfield
Time for action – generating the terrain
Time for action – adding the ReadHeightMap() method
Time for action – adding the BuildVertexBuffer() method
Time for action – the buildIndexBuffer() method
Let's see the terrain already!
Time for action – drawing the terrain
Adding texture – a gentle introduction to HLSL
Time for action – HLSL declarations
Time for action – Vertex Shader Input and Output definition
Time for action – the vertex shader
Time for action – the pixel shader
Time for action – utilizing Terrain.fx
Moving the camera
Time for action – moving the camera with the mouse
Summary
Tank Battles – The Big Guns Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Tank Battles – The Big Guns
Adding the tank model
Time for action – adding the tank model
Building tanks
Time for action – building the Tank class
Time for action – terrain heights
Time for action – tank animation
Time for action – positioning tanks
Summary
Tank Battles – Shooting Things Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Tank Battles – Shooting Things
Interface components
Time for action – creating the UIWidget class
Time for action – creating UITextblocks
Time for action – creating buttons
Time for action – adding the UIHelper class
Time for action – creating the UI
Time for action – responding to events
Time for action – ShotManager-part 1
Time for action – the Particle class-part 1
Time for action – finishing the Particle class
Time for action – the ParticleManager class
Time for action – building Particles.fx
Time for action – implementing particles
Summary
Tank Battles – Ending the War Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Tank Battles – Ending the War
Managing game states
Time for action – implementing a title screen
Time for action – detecting hits
Managing turns
Time for action – managing turns
Visual improvements
Time for action – computing normals
Time for action – HLSL for lighting
Time for action – using ambient light
Time for action – multitexturing
Summary
Mars Runner Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Mars Runner
Design of Mars Runner
Getting started with the GSM sample
Time for action – creating the Mars Runner solution
Time for action – customizing the BackgroundScreen class
Time for action – updating the menu
Time for action – creating the MarsRunnerPlayScreen class
A new camera
Time for action – the stationary camera
Creating the background
Time for action – creating a skybox
Building the Martian surface
Time for action – beginning the MarsTrack class
Time for action – generating the track
Time for action – drawing the track
Summary
Mars Runner – Reaching the Finish Line Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Mars Runner – Reaching the Finish Line
Abstracting support for 3D models
Time for action – the GameEntity class
Building the rover
Time for action –building the rover
Time for action – accepting user input
Animating the planet
Time for action – moving the world
Animating the rover
Time for action – animating the rover
Crashing into craters
Time for action – detecting craters
Adding an enemy
Time for action – the basic flying saucer
Time for action – flying the saucer
Shots and collisions
Time for action – Shot classes
Time for action – the ShotManager class
Time for action – enemy shots
Time for action – player shots versus aliens
Time for action – enemy shots versus the rover
Scoring
Time for action – scoring
Time for action – the GameOver screen
Sound effects
Time for action – building the SFXManager class
Time for action – playing sound effects
Summary

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Customer reviews

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Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.1
(7 Ratings)
5 star 42.9%
4 star 42.9%
3 star 0%
2 star 14.3%
1 star 0%
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jp sousa Jun 12, 2013
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
First I should say that I AM skilled in 2D animations using Silverlight but have never used XNA. I HAVE done a little Silverlight 3D programming and mainly I wanted to improve my Silverlight 3D animations skills.I followed through the entire book by initiating my own Projects. I did not, however, type in all the code. Instead, I just copied the regions one by one for each class file, making only minimal effort to understand each region. All the while I thought that my laziness would jump up and bite me. But, after I finished, I was surprised to find out that I was able to easily add sound to the Tank Battles game and to add explosions to the Mars Runner game. I think the author succeeded wonderfully in progressing his readers through many levels of XNA programming. I also liked the way he made most of the classes generic so that they will be usable in my own projects.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
M. Loretti Dec 11, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I have recently bought two books about game development with Microsoft XNA Framework from Packt Publishing, one of them being "XNA 4 3D Game Development". Both of them are written by the same author (Kurt Jaegers) and are a great read for beginner game developers.I come from a web development background where I work with both front and back-end technologies. Before reading this book I had almost no experience with C# and none with XNA or game development in general. Author does a great job throughout the book at explaining all the basic concepts about game development, including C#, how XNA works and basic game theories.First chapter is introductory chapter about programming with XNA and it walks you through creating a very simple 2D game - yes, a 2D game because a lot of basics about 3D game programming come from the 2D world. The rest of the book is about 3D games and increase in difficulty building upon the concepts that you have learned in previous chapters.I really enjoyed reading XNA book series by Kurt Jaegers because his writing style is extremely easy to read and he does a great job at explaining all the concepts to the reader, even though the book itself is written in "learn by doing" style. This book assumes that you know a little bit about programming already, however it does give you a quick 101 about C#. I am really happy with my purchase and recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about basic 3D game programming with Microsoft XNA Framework.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Michael Liddy Dec 27, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I am completely new to 3D, C# and .NET but at one stage in my career I was a programmer so I understand programming concepts.With this context the book really worked for me. It might be a stretch for a complete beginner but anyone with rudimentary programming skills that learns by example and doing, rather than text book theory should really get a lot out of this.The code examples are easy to follow and the fact that they are in a real, even if a little simple, game situation really made it easy for me to follow.Against a couple of other more detailed and comprehensive XNA books that I purchased at the same time, this is the one that got me the furthest in the shortest time.Seeing progress 'on screen' almost immediately really helped me keep motivated to keep working through the book.I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Wessam Bahnassi Dec 17, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
The book comes in two flavors, C# and Visual Basic (there is also a 3D vs. non-3D edition, this is the 3D edition, watch the title). I have read the C# edition from cover to cover assuming that I'm a new comer to programming and games altogether.Overall, it's a good read, and I think a considerable number of readers will like the way it presents information. A good book offers what it promises in its title, and that is the case with this beginner's guide. Four example games are used as a vehicle to demonstrate basic game functionality such as world updates, user input, box collision detection, generating simple geometry and 2D drawing. It also touches on a few more complicated tasks such as terrain generation and lighting, skeletal hierarchies and particle effects.It is difficult to say for certain, especially that different people learn in different way; this book sticks really to the "by example" clause. Each chapter starts by telling you what you are going to achieve, then displays code snippets followed by a "What just happened?" section that explains the rationale behind the code. Personally, this is opposite to how I would like to receive new knowledge. I'm a guy who likes to know the story behind so I can come up by my self with the conclusion of what should be done, and I do not know how many people agree with me on this.The book does not say much about what knowledge is required from the reader so he can use the book. After reading it, I can say it assumes basic knowledge of C# (there is no focus at all on teaching the programming language, which is just fair in my opinion). It avoids using advanced C# code constructs, so having read a C# primer before this book should be sufficient.When talking about games (especially 3D games), you are faced with the challenge of using terms that would take a long time to explain the story for each of them (e.g., normals, textures, matrices, vertex/index buffers, HLSL). The author makes an attempt to explain the term when using it the first time, but I find the explanations too brief and leave much to be desired. Giving a reference for further exploration could have helped a bit here. Without such understanding it would be difficult to be able to innovate something beyond what is given in the examples. Some books show on the back cover the level you will reach after reading them. In our case I think this book takes you from Beginner 0 to Beginner 2. Not much beyond.To wrap up, from my perspective, Kurt Jaegers' XNA Beginners' Guide is a useful read, with nice and clever games used as driving examples. It helps the reader break the hard startup barrier and opens his appetite for wider and deeper knowledge on the various facets of game programming with XNA.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
RB Nov 20, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
This is a very good book!I've read several books on developing XNA games (and even some websites) but none give such a straightforward presentation to games development.I have been waiting for a book that just gets to the "meat" of the issue and Kurt Jaegers' book does just that.Highly recommended for those who want to dive right into to games development.FYI, if you read this book on Kindle, be aware that Kindle might hyphenate some of the code blocks, making it appear there are minus-signs in the code when there should not be. I had a couple of bugs because of this; I recommend widening or rotating the page view to see if the code block changes.
Amazon Verified review Amazon

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About the author

Profile icon Kurt Jaegers
Kurt Jaegers
Kurt Jaegers is an Oracle Database Administrator and Windows Network Administrator, as well as a long-time hobbyist game developer. He has built games for everything from the Commodore 64 to the Xbox 360. He is the owner of xnaresources.com, and the author of XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide (C# edition) and XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide &ndash; Visual Basic Edition, both of which were published by Packt Publishing.
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