Highly Recommended if you're interested in XBox360 Programming

[wwswimming]

I've been slowly wading through this tutorial. It's taught by MS "Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist, Dan Waters".

He goes through the process of setting up Visual Studio to work with XNA and the simple 3D modelling tool you use to do the example.

He pretty much guides every key-stroke so you don't really need to know how to do 3D modelling to follow long. But he moves pretty fast and I'm having to listen to each tutorial about 10 times to get it to work.

The example involves a pirate hat object that gets used as a prop in the simple game.

http://blogs.msdn.com/dawate/a...ies-now-available.aspx

All you need if you want to do the tutorial is
* Visual Studio 2005 (from Dream Spark, it's free, i guess you're supposed to be a student.)
https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

* XSI ModTool 6.01 (from Softimage, it's free)
http://www.softimage.com/downl..._Mod_Tool/default.aspx

in order to do the tutorial you also have to be completely up to date on Service Pack's, DX9 Runtime *.dll's, and stuff like that.

it's sort of fun to do. makes me realize how much work goes into a good video game.

 

[tatteredpotato]

If you want to get into game programming, XNA with C# is hard to beat in terms of ease of use and potential.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If only I didn't have a huge stack of unplayed games to play .... mess with XNA, or finish a chapter of Valkyria Chronicles ? C# or Drakensang ?? Textures or Ar Tonelico ???

The last time I did any serious game programming was for the Atari 800 and C=64 🙁

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
If only I didn't have a huge stack of unplayed games to play .... mess with XNA, or finish a chapter of Valkyria Chronicles ? C# or Drakensang ?? Textures or Ar Tonelico ???

The last time I did any serious game programming was for the Atari 800 and C=64 🙁

Depends... Create or Consume?

 

[wwswimming]

http://creators.xna.com/en-US/...gstarted/bg3d/chapter2

XNA Creators Club has another tutorial for a first person shooter.

 

[Markbnj]

I think I have installed/uninstalled XNA three or four times. I'd love to do games again (and I have found a bit of an avenue for that with Silverlight). Like DaveSimmons I did some game programming back in the day. But what always stops me cold now is the daunting challenge of the content pipeline. I can do the dev, but there's no way I can come up with the time or talent to do all the models and textures and shaders and sounds, etc. It's a huge challenge.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Can you actually try out the demo you make on the XBox?

 

[wwswimming]

Originally posted by: Markbnj
I think I have installed/uninstalled XNA three or four times. I'd love to do games again (and I have found a bit of an avenue for that with Silverlight). Like DaveSimmons I did some game programming back in the day. But what always stops me cold now is the daunting challenge of the content pipeline. I can do the dev, but there's no way I can come up with the time or talent to do all the models and textures and shaders and sounds, etc. It's a huge challenge.

there's programs like QuiDam (character generators); i paid $169 for mine.

it comes with about 40 different basic characters.

as far as the XBox, the tutorial by Dan Waters, the first one i listed, yes that will run on the XBox - according to Dan. i'm still dealing with the circumstance where my version of XSI mod tool is not tracking with what he's doing on the screen, putting on textures.

 

[wwswimming]

oops double post

this is a sample of the code from the XNA Creators Club tutorial -

void DrawModel(Model model, Vector3 modelPosition)
{
foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Meshes)
{
foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects)
{
effect.EnableDefaultLighting();
effect.PreferPerPixelLighting = true;

effect.World = Matrix.CreateTranslation(modelPosition);
effect.Projection = cameraProjectionMatrix;
effect.View = cameraViewMatrix;
}
mesh.Draw();
}
}

that line -
foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Meshes)

was so wierd. i typed it exactly, and got the squiggly line indicating some kind of syntax error. i replaced the 'l' in model.Meshes, thinking maybe i mis-typed a '1' (number one) instead of the letter.

meanwhile, i loaded the project on a second computer ... with identical code ... it ran fine (using the source code supplied at the end of each chapter).

after spending an hour going over it line by line, i deleted 'model.Meshes', and simply re-typed it.

Problem Fixed ! it ran.

some of the errors you get are squirrelly.

"trust your intuition Luke, the Force will guide you." now Obi-wan is talking to me.

time to move on to Chapter 5.