Professional XNA(r) Programming
Building Games for Xbox 360(r) and Windows(r)with XNA Game Studio 2.0, 2nd Edition
This improved and updated edition of the bestseller will get you up and running quickly with building games for Xbox 360 and the Windows platform. Professional game developer and Microsoft MVP Benjamin Nitschke begins by explaining how to install the free XNA Game Studio 2.0 and then goes on to share essential advice for using it in a productive way.
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Review by Cecilia Marcano for Professional XNA Programming: Building Games for Xbox 360 and Windows with XNA Game Studio 2.0
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I just want to warn the reader before buying this book. Certainly the author knows how to code games, but this book did not worked for ME for the following reasons:
*) You will need to be in front of a computer and have the samples downloaded if you want to learn something. I read 200 pages from this book while traveling by plane and since most of the code is not printed, and the author relies on the reader to try things on the computer, I did not learned much. If you are like me and love to read books in the beach, on the bed, or waiting on the dentist, you will not learn much.
*) Some of the games were written with the beta version and then ported, and some with the release version, but none with the refresh version. So the information may be already outdated. For example, the author states that XNA does not support fonts, and that was true, but no anymore.
*) The book can not be used as a reference book, it was written to be read from the beginning to the end.
*) The games presented on the book relies on helper classes written by the author, so sometimes you feel more like learning how to use this helper classes and less like learning XNA.
I feel bad writing this because the author has contributed so much for the XNA community, he deserves better, but this book is just not for everyone. If you feel like sitting in front of the computer and analyze code to learn by yourself, I suggest trying the samples from the XNA site first.
Review by A. Citeli for Professional XNA Programming: Building Games for Xbox 360 and Windows with XNA Game Studio 2.0
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I am Direct X / C++ programmer and been working with DirectX ever since DirectX 8, now I have tons of books about advanced topics in Direct X. However, When I got this book , I realized that the code for this book was very messy. Xna is not as complicated as Direct X neither you have to write as many lines of code. In fact, many things are already taken care for you.However, This book made XNA look a lot more difficult than my other Advanced Direct X , C++ books. Here is why :
1) The Author uses so many messy lines of code just to render/show something in the screen with just a simple shader. The same thing can be done in XNA with just a few lines of code.
2)We , most of the readers, want to learn how to use the XNA API and made that transition from Direct X to XNA not looking necesarely for a beginners book. XNA is simple.Thru most of the book This Author wants the reader to learn about messy Helper Classes that he Made.
What works for him , does not mean it works for everyone. Not to mention that his code is not even optimized.If his messy extra code is not even optimized then why make XNA more complicated it than a C++ Direct X shaders book.Some people don’t have the time to go thru his own custom code (Not xna,Shaders) that he wrote for his personal use. Readers want to
use XNA to lear or write their own clases.
3)) The code from the Book is from a Beta version of XNA, this book came on April and XNA was released on December. All he had to do is spend just one more week to update his code so that it would compile with the Final version of XNA and the reader would get accurate code from the book or wait a little longer to release his book. Even with the latest source code from the Book’s website, some of the code does not even compile.Why? not because of XNA , but because of his messy code. In forums the Author himself says that he does not know what is going on simply because he has not gotten a copy of his own book yet. The book has been out for a month and he does not even know what his readers are being exposed to. Not to mention that besides the fact that this book does not give accurate code which won;t compile in the final version of XNA, some readers mention that the book has several grammar errors.
There are more Advanced 3D math,Graphics,Direct X, shaders books out there and none of them would give you as much pain as this book.Not because XNA or C# is hard, is SIMPLE! compared to others. It’s his own custom made code he wrote that is just a mess and is Unnecessary, unless you want to make your life more complicated. Advanced books introduce the subject, explain it focus on their topic (API) and have accurate code that runs. Is just too bad, the Author of this book has Programming experience, but not the potential to explain and help the reader digest the info about his unesesary extra code that takes a big portion of his book. Since code can be downloaded and does not need to write more pages on his book, all he had to do is make 2 versions of this chapter demos. One with his messy code and another just using XNA. All he had to do in the chapters was: Please view the two versions of this demo. It only takes a sentence to write it on the book and have the code to be downlodable thru the Books Website.
Note: Even Microsoft, removed some of his Unit test,messy code when they tried to use his code.Funny thing is that the Author of this book was not very happy about that he mentions that on his website.
Review by M. Galindo for Professional XNA Programming: Building Games for Xbox 360 and Windows with XNA Game Studio 2.0
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Being a C# developer for a few years now, I find many online tutorials much easier to follow than this book. I’d say about 95% of the programming books out there usually go with the show a chunk of code, and then go on to explain what it’s doing and why it does what it does. This method works and is reflected by the fact, most programming books have done, and continue to do it this way.
This book just tells you one thing and then it’s source code is completely different, for example in Chapter 2, it states to “Load some content in the ‘Initialize’ method” so you type some code in there and then later when you compile and things don’t work, you go back and try to figure out why and when you look at the downloaded source code, all of the code you typed in the Initialize method lives somewhere completely different, along with dozens if not hundreds of lines of code not even mentioned in the book?? It becomes so frustrating trying to follow along the book, and then ignoring all of it and just reverse engineering the download coded – it really begs, why use the book at all? Just download the code and walk through it line by line and figure it out.
Flipping through the book looked so promising, I liked the projects in each of the chapters feeding off of each other, but honestly, I have a dozen web sites of online tutorials that I feel will teach me better than the book does.
I think I’m more confused about the audience for this book more than anything else – if you are advanced enough to figure out everything on your own, then you don’t need this book and reviewing the code would be MORE than enough (plus you wouldn’t need all of basic unit testing for every single task), but if you aren’t advanced, the book is too difficult to follow and isn’t worth your time…
Review by Frederick Welsh for Professional XNA Programming: Building Games for Xbox 360 and Windows with XNA Game Studio 2.0
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I’ve only made it up through ch 2 and have decided that I will probably have to come back to this book after I get some more game programming experience. The introduction says that the reader should have knowledge of C# but experience with C++ or Java will suffice. I have “2nd semester” level experience in all of these languages and still have difficulty following the author. In the small bit that I read there were a number of times where the author does things like tells the reader to enter certain pieces of code but doesn’t mention where to insert them nor is it obvious based soley on the context of the discussion. I also became frustrated when he said to drag some particular texture files into the IDE but didn’t mention where they originate from. The book contains no CD and as it turns out he does in fact mention somewhere in the first chapter that all the files mentioned in the book are located on the publishers website. Still, it would have been nice if that point had been reiterated. Also, as this is a book targeted at professionals and not beginners don’t expect many explanations about how some lines of code work. This is probably a good book if you’re a game programmer with a couple of years experience and looking to add XNA to your repertoire. If you want to learn the basic nuts and bolts of game programming you may want to look elsewhere first. I’d recommend the book “Game Programming for Teens.” Don’t let the title mislead you, I’m 32 and learned lots! It doesn’t go beyond 2D but it’s very straight forward.
Review by W. Mckay Warnick for Professional XNA Programming: Building Games for Xbox 360 and Windows with XNA Game Studio 2.0
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More often than not you are learning to use the author’s helper classes instead of the API. And after each concept, he spends a few grueling pages drawing out a unit test for it. I bought the book to learn the API and found everything but.
Don’t buy this book if you’re trying to learn the API because you won’t find it. However, I like to think he’ll change his approach in the 2nd edition to be released in March.