XNA Game Studio makes it possible to create games for the popular Xbox 360 video-game console system! This is the most significant platform of note. When XNA Game Studio 1.0 was released to developers in 2006, it marked the first time a video-game–console manufacturer released development tools for their system free to the public, without requiring an expensive license agreement. XNA Game Studio also targets the Windows platform. This might seem like a no-brainer, a foregone conclusion, to those already experienced with XNA. But it’s not at all common for a console-development tool to support both the console and the development PC platform! What this means is, you can compile and run your game code on your Windows PC for Windows or for Xbox 360, and then run it on either platform.

But that’s not all! Not to sound like an infomercial, but the latest version of XNA Game Studio, which is now up to version 4.0, also supports the mobile platform called Windows Phone 7. This is a hot new device that’s comparable to (and competitive with) Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android mobile smart phones. Both Apple and Google provide free developer tools for the iPhone and Android, respectively, so Microsoft is on board with support for Windows Phone 7 in the new XNA Game Studio 4.0. Admittedly, this is the most significant reason for the new version, since XNA Game Studio 3.1 was released just about a year and a half earlier (in mid-2009), and 4.0 leverages Windows Phone 7 rather heavily. As a result of this new mobile device, the XNA team decided to sacrifice support for the Zune mobile media/music player. This is somewhat understandable, because Windows Phone 7 trumps Zune by supporting the same media playback capabilities in addition to smart-phone features comparable to the iPhone. There’s no compelling reason on the technical side to abandon Zune, so it must have been an issue of marketing, branding, and product placement, as well as slagging sales for the Zune platform.

Although the code in this book in general will compile and run on all platforms, we do cover the specific features available only on the Xbox 360. These features (such as Xbox Live Avatars) are not available on the other platforms such as Windows Phone 7.

On the Xbox 360 platform, you can compile and run your code on a retail Xbox 360! This is extremely exciting for game developers and video-game fans! Imagine seeing your own game running on your friend’s Xbox 360! Of course, there is a cost, because this is a huge benefit, but the cost is meager compared to the price of a full-blown Xbox Development Kit (XDK), which is used by professional game studios. To make this happen, you will need a membership for the XNA Creators Club, which has been renamed to App Hub. The cost is approximately $100 per year. You will also want an Xbox Live Gold account for best results, which is an additional cost of approximately $60 per year. These prices might be high for a student, but they are more than reasonable for an indie developer since the development tools are free!

This membership fee gives you the ability to publish your game online for others to purchase using Microsoft Points—the same currency used to buy expansions and other downloadable content (DLC) on Xbox Live! As an App Hub developer, your game will be listed in a special section of the Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) called the Xbox Live Indie Arcade (XBLIA). Anyone on Xbox Live can download your game, presumably first as a demo version, and if they like it, they will buy your full version at the price you set. (Typical cost for a quality indie game is about 400 points, or about $5.) This is a great way to share your games with the world and make a decent living at it—if you have the talent and technical know-how to make a great game. The former is up to you, but this book will certainly help you with the latter!

We don’t get into account management, licensing terms, uploading games for review, and receiving royalties in this book, because frankly, the terms and conditions of those things change often. If you make your way to the last chapter and have a great idea for a game, then getting it up on XBLIA will be the easy part.

This book teaches the beginning to intermediate C# programmer how to use XNA Game Studio 4.0 with Visual C# 2010 to create games primarily for the Xbox 360. Although most of the source code presented in these chapters can be adapted for the other platforms supported by XNA, the emphasis is on the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. The first two chapters will help the reader get started with the new versions of these tools. Numerous chapters provide reference information for the XNA Framework. The latter chapters culminate in a networked multiplayer game called Tank Battle. This game, featured in the last chapter of the book, includes the networking code to allow two players to host or connect to each other (repeatedly) to drive their tanks around and shoot at each other. Granted, it’s not a highly polished game, and could use quite a bit of creative souping up, but it’s a good technical example of networking a sprite-based game with the most important features you will need to make your own game.

It’s true that we don’t spend much time on 3D rendering in this book. The reason is simple: We are focusing on the XNA Framework as a whole, and the Xbox 360 features in particular, which means coverage of the Xbox 360 controller, playing audio, and using features of Xbox Live—especially networking via system link and online. Chapter 12, “Avatars,” shows how to render a gamer avatar, which is a 3D character representing the player online. We also explore the loading and rendering of meshes in Chapter 15, “Meshes,” with the associated 3D camera and lighting code needed to make it work. These are very lightweight issues in rendering—just the absolute basics really—but then this book is not focused on rendering. Because XNA Game Studio 4.0 is based on DirectX 9, any book or reference on High Level Shader Language (HLSL) 3.0 will provide useful shader examples that will also work in XNA—including the same FX files.

There are scores of such books on DirectX 9 available. If you like this author’s writing style, I recommend his Multi-Threaded Game Engine Design (Course Technology PTR, 2010). This book covers basic shader theory, per-pixel lighting, surface detail effects like bump mapping and specular reflection (which add realism to a textured surface), heightmap terrain, skyboxes, and more—and the FX files in this book will work in your XNA projects. If you are looking for additional references, see Appendix, “Resources for Further Study,” for a list.

The goal of this book is to teach you how to use the latest version of XNA Game Studio. You will benefit from a basic knowledge of Visual C# in advance, because we don’t really cover the language at all. Programming a game for the Xbox 360 is a challenge for an experienced developer, let alone a beginner. But by paying attention and studying the examples, even a beginner should be able to get through the book without too much difficulty, because the examples are on the small side for the most part.

This book supports Visual C# 2010, which should be installed first—before XNA Game Studio 4.0. I recommend that you download the free version of Visual C# 2010 Express Edition. The URL is http://www.microsoft.com/express/Windows/. Because Web links change frequently, you may need to Google for “Visual C# 2010 Express download.” There may still be links to the 2008 version as well, but 2010 is required for XNA Game Studio 4.0.

Another option is to install the Windows Phone 7 developer tools, which include both Visual C# 2010 Express and XNA Game Studio 4.0. Although some extra tools are included that you may not need, such as Silverlight, these are good tools to have anyway should you wish to delve into Windows Phone 7 development. The URL is http://www.microsoft.com/express/Phone/.

My Web site is at http://www.jharbour.com. There is information about this book and links to the sources that you may download. Most visitors join the forum to discuss their game projects and ask questions. If you have any problems working through this book, stop by the forum to chat. Since the book ships without a CD, you will need to download the resource files, which includes the source code for all of the projects in the book. The URL is http://www.cengage.com/downloads. The aforementioned Web forum also provides links to the sources at http://www.jharbour.com/forum.

The book is divided into three major parts:

Source code is presented in fixed-width font for easy readability.

// This is how source code will be formatted in the text
public void Hello()
{
     Console.WriteLine("Hello World");
}

The following styles are used in this book to highlight portions of text that are important. You will find note boxes here and there throughout the book.

You may download the companion Web site files from www.courseptr.com/downloads. Please note that you will be redirected to our Cengage Learning site.