beginning game development in xna

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Game Development

Using Visual Studio and XNA

{Arvind Raja Yadav

Microsoft Student Partner

Lead Programmer – Neptune, a Half Life 2 Modification

Programmer – Dystopia, a Half Life 2 Modification available on Steam

I also make a lot of small games in various languages for fun

What is a game?

{ {World of Goo = Game MS Word = Software

How do we know the difference?

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Here’s what games have that software

doesn’t :1. Conditions for victory/failure ;2. Testing various qualities of the player ;3. Withholding content from the player;4. Thinking for themselves ;5. Partially under the player’s control ;6. Changing objectives and/or methods;7. They are more fun!

The basic structure of a gameInitialize content

While (exit condition is false){

Get user input

Run input related logic

Run input independent logic

Draw graphics and play sounds}

Shut down

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1. Windows doesn’t allow direct access to it’s display and sound drivers.

2. APIs make coding games much easier

3. APIs also mean that we need not worry about compatibility issues

Why do we need an API to make games ?

{I’m not going to teach you how to make Halo in 3 days.

DISCLAIMER

It took me and my team about 2 weeks to make this level work.

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XNA allows you to make games for both Windows and Xbox 360 platforms using the same code and assets.

Introducing

{1. Open Visual C#

2008 Express Edition

2. Select “File”, then “New Project”

3. You should see a dialog like the one here

4. Select “Windows Game (3.1)” and enter a name of your choice

Getting started with XNA

The skeleton code

Constructor; Initialize; LoadContent;

UnloadContent;

Update; Draw

Contents of the game class

}}

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Getting content from the disk into the main memory + graphics memory

Removing content from the memory

Game logic and drawing

Display text on the screen

Display an image on the screen

Getting input from the keyboard

Changing window size (resolution);

Full screen/windowed mode ;

Changing window properties

{Print a message when the image moves off-screen

Exercise : Make an image move using the arrow keys

Using the mouse

XNA Time Management

Our first game : Dodger

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Congratulations!

If everything went well, you just made a game by yourself !