Microsoft XNA Game Studio Creator's Guide: An Introduction to XNA Game Programming

by Stephen Cawood and Pat McGee

Gaming is a $35 billion industry. This text includes C# tutorials tailored to XNA game development, and also offers details on the new Xbox 360 creators' club. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 007149071X
• ISBN13: 9780071490719
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media
• Length: 456 Pages
• Weight: 1.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

excellent intro to 3D programming - easy to understand

This is an excellent step-by-step approach with many short chapters that are easy to read. The examples are complete and I can plug the code into my own projects with hardly any effort. I recommend this book for any beginner or for any experienced programmer who doesn't know how to program games. I've been programming for three years but I don't want to work hard when I'm learning...this book delivers.

Excellent to enter in the games programming world

I think that this book is a perfect introduction to the new Microsoft Platform. To Develop a game is not a simple task but this book cover all the important feature needed to build a modern 3D game in an easy way. This book is ideal for beginner game programmer. The only prerequisites is the knowledge of the C# programming language and basic concept of Microsoft .NET Framework.

So Far So Good (UPDATED!!!)

I dont know what other people are saying about this guide, but i can tell you, from my personal experience, that this is a GREAT book. When you first get the book, the opening chapter was confusing to figure out, after 2 hours of monkeying around i got it. After that, everything else went smooth. And i am learning really cool things. The end of the chapter exercises are fun, not to challenging, but enough to make you learn. How to Hate this Book: Know about XNA when you buy it, and also have a good grasp on particle systems, controls, cameras, vectors, matrices, primitives, adding models, animation, hit detection. How to Love this book: Dont know anything about XNA, But have some knowledge of what a vertex is. Or what a Color is, Drr?, and most of all.... Dont just expect to know how to be a bomb programmer just by reading this book. Books are just instruments to give you insight into a complex machine. Most of the learning should be done by experimentation. Example: Page 73: "Spend the time you need to ensure that you understand transformations. It is not an overly complex topic, but it can be challenging for beginner graphics programmers who do not give transformations the learning time the topic deserves." So if you keep a self learning mentality, you should find this book VERY VERY VERY VERY HELPFUL, I would recommend it to any who does not know a thing about programming 3D, but has a pretty decent knowledge of physics, math(calculus), and 2D programming skills. This is what is going to boost me to the top. ;) -------------------------------Update----------------------------------- So its been a while, and i am just finishing up Chapter 17 "Ballistics." This is still an excellent book. I only have one beef with the book, and that is, it has awesome explanations of matrices and such, but when doing the camera tutorial, the auther assumes you have fully mastered matrices, and understand all. With that said, it still deserves the rating it received. This is a beginners book, and should be treated as one. My advice would be to buy this book if you do not understand anything about 3D programming. This could be the start that helps you become a Game programmer, rather than just a hobbyist. (as in someone who can make a cube move around the screen).

Basics of XNA

This is a good book as an introduction to programming XNA. I have tested the examples code in all chapters and they all work fine. The code is very easy to understand but not that much commented. I wish there should been at least one complete game programmed by the end of this book. The author shows us loading a Quake model which does some crazy things when we press "space" key multiple times on your keyboard, i am not sure what the problem would be, but loading a animated mesh is done perfectly no issues about that. It would have been better if the book describes how to load a animated mesh file in .fbx format or a .x format which are supported by XNA framework. Overall the book gives a good introduction to the XNA Framework and many other topics like billboards, particle effects, cameras, shaders etc. I would recommend this book to all beginners who wish to start learning XNA framework. This is a good resource to start game programming.