Chris Bowen's Blog : XNA

Learning XNA: A Guide for .NET Rocks Show 501 on XNA Game Development

cbowen — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:29:24 GMT

If you’re a listener of .NET Rocks! (“The Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers”), you may have heard Show #501 on XNA that Michael Cummings and I recorded last week.

You can download the show here (59 minutes – MP3/WMA/AAC).

We mentioned a lot of things on the show, so here are core resources to help you create that game you’ve always wanted to try making.

So, What’s XNA?

XNA is the name for resources, software, and frameworks for creating games for the PC, Zune, and Xbox 360.

The XNA Framework makes game creation easier by abstracting gaming concepts to help you be more productive. What’s great is that you can put your existing .NET skills to work since the XNA Framework is based on the .NET Framework.

While games are of course about fun, developers may find making a little money can be fun, too. If you think your game has what it takes, look into Xbox LIVE Indie Games (now one year old), which can place approved XNA games on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for purchase.

Getting Started with XNA

First, head to the XNA Creators Club, which is a central place for working with XNA:

Downloads
Learning & Help
Resources
Community

XNA Game Studio is what you’ll use to create your masterpiece. Head to the Download page and get XNA Game Studio 3.1 (for free). It’s based on Visual Studio, so you’ll also need either the free Visual C# 2008 Express Edition, or Visual Studio 2008 installed.

Creating games for the PC and Zune is free, but if you’re interested in creating games on the Xbox 360, then you’ll need a Premium Creators Club membership. Read the Creators Club tour for more.

XNA Screencast

I recorded a screencast on getting started with XNA that features a bit of background, then dives into a demo of creating a (very) basic 2D game:

XNA Game Development Screencast

Learning XNA

If you’re new to game development, I recommend you try your hand at 2D game creation to learn the basics, then expand from there. There’s plenty to help you get started.

Tutorials

The Getting Started page features two tutorials to get you going:

2D Tutorial (start here or with a Starter Kit below)
3D Tutorial

These feature code, assets, documentation, and step-by-step videos to walk you through.

Starter Kits

One of the best ways to learn XNA is to look at how existing games work.

Take the time to download a couple of XNA Starter Kits, full games to help you learn. Play right away, then explore the code and assets – it’s all included and ready for you to modify to help you learn XNA.

Games include a 2D RPG, 3D racing game, a puzzle, and others.

Education Catalog

There’s a ton of help available on the Creators Club site, and it’s collected together in the Education Catalog. Content is organized by dev area and type:

Physics, 2D, 3D, AI, Gameplay, Graphics, Audio, Storage, and more
Samples, Tutorials, Articles, Utilities, etc.

Boston Area Game Community

If you’re in New England, here are some ways to connect with the area game development community:

Boston XNA Developers Group – Run by Michael Cummings, offers a monthly look at different game development topics. No experience necessary to join.
Cape Cod XNA Group – For those of you near the Cape, this group is run by Tom Kennedy, also offering a chance to learn XNA.
Boston Post Mortem – Meeting monthly in Waltham, MA, this is for professional game developers to meet, share, and network. It is also the Boston chapter of the IGDA.

Thanks!

Thanks to Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell for their incredible work on the .NET Rocks! series, passing an amazing milestone of 500 shows!

And I hope you enjoyed listening to the show as much as we enjoyed being guests!

If you have any questions, just let me know.

-Chris

New Cape Cod XNA Group – First Meeting Friday 10/23

cbowen — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:56:50 GMT

The new Cape Cod XNA user group will offer a chance to learn and share knowledge about creating games with XNA (which builds on .NET to make games for the PC, XBox 360, and Zune.)

The group’s first meeting is this Friday, October 23rd, at Venture in Hyannis:

      Cape Cod XNA
      October 23, 6:30 PM
      Venture
      Suite 14, 540 Main St, Hyannis, MA [map]

If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at making a game, then drop by and put those .NET programming skills to work (er, play)!

-Chris

Kodu (Game Programming Environment) Now Available

cbowen — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:11:18 GMT

On an earlier Roadshow (winter 2008), I gave a preview of a great environment from Microsoft Research for making game programming friendly and accessible to a wider audience, and especially children. At the time it was called “Boku”, but was since renamed “Kodu”.

As of yesterday, Kodu is now available on XBOX Live Marketplace as a free trial or purchase for 400 points (about $5) and lets you create games using only the XBOX controller (though the chatpad is useful, too.)

I’ll be downloading it soon and showing our daughters. I just might even let them have a turn!

-Chris

P.S. Other useful links:

Kodu Blog

http://community.research.microsoft.com/blogs/kodu

Kodu Research Home Page

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/

IGN Coverage (with videos from CES and elsewhere)

http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/100/1000340p1.html

Boston XNA Developers Group June 24 Meeting – XNA Game Studio 3.1

cbowen — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:06:42 GMT

Tonight’s meeting of the Boston XNA Developers Group (6:00 in Waltham) will feature Michael Cummings speaking on what’s in the newly-released XNA Game Studio 3.1. XNA Game Studio helps you create games that can run on PCs, XBox 360, and Zune, all on top of the .NET Framework.

Some of the new features in 3.1 include:

Avatar Support
Xbox LIVE Party Support
Video Playback
Audio API
Content Pipeline Enhancements
XACT3 Support

Resources:

New Channel 9 Screencast on XNA Game Development

cbowen — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:04:32 GMT

I’ve created a new screencast on creating games with XNA and, thanks to my teammate Brian Johnson, it’s now available on our Northeast page on Channel 9!

Northeast Roadshow - XNA Game Development

Based on the Spring Roadshow session, this is an introduction to the world of XNA and game development. You’ll learn how XNA fits in with .NET and Visual Studio, see how the XNA Creators Club Online site will help you download what you need to create games and find resources to learn about your options.

The bulk of the screencast focuses on creating a very (oh, so very) basic 2D game with XNA Game Developer Studio 3.0. The code is available on the Northeast Code Gallery.

Just don’t forget to send me a note once you become a famous game developer!

-Chris

January Boston XNA Meeting Postponed

cbowen — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:34:43 GMT

Due to the threat of significant snow this Wednesday, the January 28th Boston XNA Developer Group meeting has been moved out one week to February 4th at 6:00 (in MPR-B).

The Boston XNA Developer Group normally meets on the 4th Wednesday of each month at he Microsoft office in Waltham, MA. It is open to anyone interested in learning about creating games for the PC, XBox 360 and/or Zune with .NET and the XNA Framework. All skill levels are welcome!

-Chris

Boston XNA July 23rd Meeting on 2D Role Playing Game Development

cbowen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:33:15 GMT

The Boston XNA Developers Group is an open user group for anyone interested in learning about game development with the .NET-based XNA framework. Attendance is open and everyone is welcome, including students and parents with their programming-interested children.

Tomorrow night (July 23rd at 6:00 in Waltham), we're kicking off a multiple month look at the 2D Role Playing Game starter kit that's freely available from the XNA Creators Club site. We'll look at some of the approaches and practices used by the initial version of the game, then walk through adding a few new extensions to the game.

We'll keep this topic going as all or part of each meeting going forward, encouraging anyone in the group to add new features and to give an informal show-and-tell of the new feature and how it was done.

Who knows what kind of magic we'll have created after a few months?

-Chris

Giving Two User Group Talks on XNA This Week!

cbowen — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:10:12 GMT

Some coincidental scheduling has given me a chance to speak with both the Boston .NET and Beantown .NET user groups this week, both on XNA!

You'll have two chances to get up to speed on how to create games easily for Windows, XBox 360, and the Zune using XNA and .NET.

The Boston .NET meeting is on Wednesday (7/9) in Waltham and the Beantown .NET meeting is on Thursday (7/10) on State St. in Boston, both are from 6-8 PM.

If you're interested in the Beantown .NET meeting, send an RSVP email as indicated on the group's site. (I expect we'll also head across the street for a beer after that meeting.)

Here's the description for both sessions:

"Introduction to Game Development with XNA"

Summer is upon us, so what better excuse to break away from the norm and discuss games? This meeting is for people who enjoy games, and have always wanted to know more about how they’re made… and maybe how to make their own.

XNA is a game development platform based on the .NET Framework that helps to make it easy to develop games for Windows, Xbox, and now the Zune as well. Using the free XNA Game Studio, you can use those same C# skills that pay the bills by day for creating your own games by night (or really whenever you'd like.)

We'll introduce XNA, show you around the XNA world, then create a simple 2D game from scratch to give you a feel for game mechanics and the architecture of XNA.

This session requires no game development experience, only a passion for coding and for games!

I encourage students to attend and also parents to bring sons and daughters who are interested in gaming and programming.

Hope to see you one of these evenings!

-Chris

P.S. If you're unable to make these meetings or are already up to speed on XNA, you can come to the next meeting of the Boston XNA Developers Group on July 23rd in Waltham.

June Boston XNA Meeting Canceled

cbowen — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:06:22 GMT

Unfortunately, tonight's (6/23) meeting for the Boston XNA Developers Group will have to be canceled. A last-minute scheduling problem has come up, so we're going to punt on this month's meeting.

We'll continue as usual with the July meeting.

If you're new to the group, the content of these meetings remains very approachable even if you're brand new to XNA and games development, so come on down!

-Chris

Northeast XNA Game Developer Featured on CNN

cbowen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:18:10 GMT

[Thanks to Lindsay for the heads-up!]

Currently featured as the lead Tech story is an article featuring the Northeast's own James Silva and the story of his creation of a game called "Dishwasher: Dead Samurai" using XNA (coming later this year to Xbox Live Arcade.)

Way to go, James!

Hailing from Utica, NY, James has received some recognition before this. His game tied for first place in last year's "Dream. Build. Play." competition and he demoed it on stage at 2007's GameFest in Seattle.

If you're interested the larger story, James has an article, "How I Became A Game Designer" (and part two) over on bit-tech.

Now, let's see if we can get him to visit the Boston XNA Developers Group in the coming months. It's only a few hours east on route 90, James. :)

-Chris

Boston XNA Developer Group Wednesday

cbowen — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:44:08 GMT

Just a reminder that the Boston XNA Developer Group will be having a meeting at its usual day/time (fourth Wednesday of the month), tomorrow, May 28th at 6:00 at the Microsoft office in Waltham, MA.

Michael Cummings will be presenting. The content level is still introductory, so if you're new to XNA, please do stop by!

Head to the group's site for resources and information.

-Chris

XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP Released

cbowen — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:40:25 GMT

Been waiting to try your hand at creating XNA games for the Zune? Want to use Visual Studio 2008 (express, standard, or higher) as well?

Check out the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP)!

The XNA Team Blog has the details:

http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2008/05/07/announcing-xna-game-studio-3-0-community-technical-preview-ctp.aspx

Some important notes:

All versions of Zune players are supported
Zune's ad-hoc networking and in-game access to non-DRM music are supported
XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP requires a version of Visual Studio 2008 (express, standard, or higher). Also, it does not currently allow XBox deployment (the final version will, of course). However...
It works side-by-side with Game Studio 2.0 as well as Visual Studio 2005.
As mentioned in the Readme, if you have trouble installing, make sure you've removed the "Games for Windows - LIVE Redistributable". (Also, close any open instances of Visual Studio 2008.)

David "Let's Kill Dave!" Weller also points out that the sound process has been streamlined in version 3.0. The content pipeline can directly load sound files without having to use XACT (Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool). Of course, if your scenario needs the advanced features of XACT, it's there for you as always.

Boston XNA Developers Group Update

cbowen — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:53:15 GMT

The Boston XNA Developers Group is dedicated to learning and using XNA to create games for Windows and Xbox 360 (and later on, the Zune!) No game development experience is required!

Next Meeting

Our next meeting will be on April 24th, 6-8 PM at the Microsoft offices in Waltham. Note that this is a Thursday, not a Wednesday as we normally prefer.

Check out the Boston XNA Developers Group website for more details. (Great if you can join the site, but it's not required to attend.)

Michael Cummings and I will continue the survey of beginner-level game development topics. If you missed the first meeting, don't worry, we'll keep things heavy on explanation and reinforce the concepts from the first session so new people won't feel lost.

The Previous Meeting

The March meeting was our second official meeting, but the first time we looked at any code. We had a strong turnout of over 40 attendees, including a number of college and younger students as well!

Throughout the meeting, we created an thoroughly addictive game, okay, well - *a* game, well - Pong. It's actually a great place to start, slowly introducing the concepts of an XNA game and setting the conceptual foundation for what we'll build on in future meetings.

I've posted the completed sample game to my SkyDrive account, so please download it, run it, and even better - improve it!

More Information

For links to resources and some discussion threads, come to the Boston XNA Developers Group site, create an account, and join in the XNA and game chatting.

-Chris

Learn XNA at the Next Boston XNA Developers Group Meeting

cbowen — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:48:32 GMT

On March 26th at the next Boston XNA Developers Group meeting, we're starting the process of learning XNA. (The first meeting was a non-technical overview of the world of XNA.) Join Michael Cummings and me as we walk through creating a basic 2D game with XNA from scratch, zilch, zero.

No game development experience is required, just a passion for playing games and a desire to make them.

The meeting will be from 6:00-8:00 on Wednesday, March 26th (we're aiming for the fourth Wednesday of each month) at the Microsoft offices at 201 Jones Road (6th floor) in Waltham.

See you there!

-Chris

Boston XNA Meeting Resources

cbowen — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:55:54 GMT

Thanks to everyone who came to the first meeting of the Boston XNA Developers Group! It was a casual evening to talk games and down Pop Rocks. We introduced the concepts behind XNA and Game Studio, took in some of the news from GDC, and had a look at some of the games that you can create with XNA.

Michael and I will get things up on the group site, but in the meantime, I wanted to share links to the things we discussed and watched:

http://bostonxna.org
- Join the group! We'll fire up the discussions shortly.
http://creators.xna.com
- Where you should start for XNA. Period.
http://bostonpostmortem.org
- The professional game developers group that features half presentation half networking each month. Features a nice list of area game development companies.
http://xnagamefest.com/presentations.htm
- Free content from the last GameFest in Seattle. Great sessions on all things game development.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/gdc2008/videos.htm
- The XNA/Xbox related videos from February's GDC - keynotes, interviews, demos, etc.
http://www.g4tv.com/g4originals/videos/20417/XNA_Community_Games.html
- Shows the community games created with XNA that have been features on Xbox LIVE for download and playing
http://gizmodo.com/359374/video-tour-and-details-of-zune-games-and-sdk
- Demonstrates and XNA game running on the Zune!
http://dreambuildplay.com/main/winners.aspx
- Showcases the latest crop of winners from the Dream.Build.Play contest
http://www.codeplex.com/FarseerPhysics

A nice 2D physics engine for use with XNA and Silverlight
Demo (in Silverlight) at http://www.bluerosegames.com/farseersilverlightdemos/

http://www.turbosquid.com/XNA
- Models and textures, ranging from free to paid, for use in XNA games. Some very cool stuff here that (as we'll see in future meetings) XNA helps to pull in pretty easily!

If you missed the meeting, don't worry, we didn't get into the how-to's of XNA just yet. The next meeting will feature a straightforward 2D game that we'll create from scratch in Game Studio using everything you can download for free.

(The next meeting will likely be March 26th, but keep an eye on the group site for details.)

-Chris

Chris Bowen's Blog : XNA

Learning XNA: A Guide for .NET Rocks Show 501 on XNA Game Development

So, What’s XNA?

Getting Started with XNA

XNA Screencast

Learning XNA

Tutorials

Starter Kits

Education Catalog

Links

Other Topics

Kodu Game Lab

Microsoft Gamefest

Boston Area Game Community

Thanks!

New Cape Cod XNA Group – First Meeting Friday 10/23

Kodu (Game Programming Environment) Now Available

Boston XNA Developers Group June 24 Meeting – XNA Game Studio 3.1

New Channel 9 Screencast on XNA Game Development

January Boston XNA Meeting Postponed

Boston XNA July 23rd Meeting on 2D Role Playing Game Development

Giving Two User Group Talks on XNA This Week!

June Boston XNA Meeting Canceled

Northeast XNA Game Developer Featured on CNN

Boston XNA Developer Group Wednesday

XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP Released

Boston XNA Developers Group Update

Learn XNA at the Next Boston XNA Developers Group Meeting

Boston XNA Meeting Resources