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XNA 2.0 Game Programming Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Books for Professionals by Professionals) | 
 enlarge | Author: Riemer Grootjans
Publisher: Apress
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $19.26
You Save: $20.73 (52%)
New (35) Used (10) from $19.26
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 142228
Media: Paperback
Pages: 648
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7 x 1.4
ISBN: 159059925X
Dewey Decimal Number: 794.81526
EAN: 9781590599259
ASIN: 159059925X
Publication Date: July 11, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Join the game development revolution today! XNA greatly simplifies the development of your own games, lowering the barrier for programmers to get into game development. In XNA, you can start coding your games from the very start, a true revelation compared to other game programming environments. XNA doesn't sacrifice power for this ease of use - it is built entirely on DirectX technology. XNA expert Riemer Grootjans brings together a selection of the hottest recipes in XNA programming for the Windows PC and Xbox360 console. Advanced XNA programmers, experienced coders new to games development, and even complete beginners will find XNA 2.0 Game Programming Recipes an invaluable companion when building games for fun or as commercial products. What you’ll learn XNA 2.0 Game Programming Recipes covers virtually every feature of the XNA 2.0 framework. It focuses primarily on 2D and 3D graphics programming, but other game programming features such as Audio playback and Networking are also discussed in detail. These are some of the topics that are being covered in-depth: - How to create 2D graphics
- 3D rendering techniques at various levels of difficulty
- Loading, rendering and animating 3D Models
- To read input devices: Keyboard, Mouse, Xbox360 Controller
- Use Audio to spice up your game
- Add Networking to your game to challenge your friends
- Learn about the architectural XNA features, such as GameComponents
- The Content pipeline: one of the 3 major components in XNA Game Development
- A whole list of HLSL techniques!
Who is this book for? This book is for everyone! Whatever your experience, you will find a recipe to suit your need and skill. Great care has been taken to ensure the easier recipes provide a great deal of detail so they can be followed by readers without a great deal of programming experience. Each chapter gradually builds in difficulty so you will be able to progress through it as your XNA coding improves and you want to move on to more sophisticated techniques. A brief look at the table of contents Chapter 1: Getting Started with XNA 2.0 (24 pages) Installing XNA 2.0 Game Studio and starting a new XNA 2.0 Project. Timing, GameComponents, GameServices and the StorageDevice. Chapter 2: Setting Up Different Camera Modes in Your 3D World (120 pages) Setting up a first-person and a Quaternion camera. Smooth camera fly-bys, octree and quadtree culling, setting up a HLSL post-processing framework. Chapter 3: Working with 2D Images/Textures in XNA 2.0 (102 pages) How to use the SpriteBatch to render 2D images. 2D-in-3D techniques such as billboarding, explosion particle systems and mirroring. Chapter 4: Working with Models (108 pages) Loading, rendering and animating 3D Models. Combining World matrices, multiple kinds of collision detection. Defining your own TypeWriters and TypeReaders. Chapter 5: Getting the Most Out of Vertices (144 pages) Rendering lines and triangles, storing them on the graphics card. Bilinear interpolation, pointer-to-terrain picking and bump mapping. 3D ocean and racing track generation. Chapter 6: Adding Light to Your Scene in XNA 2.0 (60 pages) Lighting basics, shadowing and deferred rendering for multiple lights. Chapter 7: Adding Sounds to Your XNA 2.0 Project (12 pages) Adding sounds to your XNA 2.0 game, both for 2D and 3D games. Chapter 8: Networking in XNA 2.0 (28 pages) Adding networking to your XNA 2.0 game. Development environment costs The software you need to develop your own games in XNA 2.0 is completely free. You'll need both the Visual Studio Express C# edition and XNA 2.0 Game Studio, which you can download for free from Microsoft's website. The only cost incurred will be if you want to upload your finished game to your XBox360 console, when an annual subscription is payable to Microsoft. If you're just targeting the PC development environment, you won't have to pay anything.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
The Rare Author Who's Mastered Both Content and Communication December 2, 2008
J. Humphreys (Studio City, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is my first review in almost 10 years of using Amazon. Never have I felt this compelled to share how great a product is. Riemer is, very simply, that rare author who not only fundamentally knows his subject, but understands how to communicate it in ways that make the learning process both intuitive and nearly effortless.
I've been reading software books since I was a kid, and I can say with confidence that most of them fall short in the effective communication department. Sure, there are stacks of books out there packed with useful information, but all the knowledge in the world is useless if you can't understand it. Riemer not only gets the knowledge right, he helps you rightly get at the knowledge. (And this is doubly astounding when you consider that English isn't even the author's first language!)
If you're new to XNA, Managed DirectX, or HLSL shader programming, this book will get you up and running fast. If, like me, you've already had some experience, the tips you'll pick up in this book are a great investment in your programming future. At Amazon's price, this book is a steal.
On a side note, I first came across Riemer's work through his website. (Google for it.) His XNA and DirectX tutorials were the first that actually made sense to me, and I highly recommend them as supplemental material to this book.
Great book for any XNA beginner November 18, 2008
D. FIDGE
This book is basically a series of tutorials (or "recipes"). The tutorials range from the very simple task of displaying an image on the screen to more complicated tasks such as terrain generation with HLSL.
The tutorials are organised well, with a contents section that allows you to quickly scan through and look up the feature you wish to implement in your code. Each tutorial has in depth code in the book itself as well as downloadable code from the author's web page.
This book makes a fantastic complement to the XNA documentation. Things that are explained abstractly or are hidden within the XNA documentation are explained in greater practical detail in this book; you'll save a lot of time and hassle. Highly recommended.
Zither November 16, 2008
Qin Gu
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'd never written a review in Amazon. But I cannot do that for this book! It's simply AWESOME! It almost answers every piece of my question mark in mind after going over several XNA fundamental books. In a nutshell, The book is perfect for those who already has some basic knowlodge of XNA.
 Perfect Reference Book October 20, 2008
Kevin Guggenheim (Houston)
If your an average to expert c# programmer trying to get into XNA or have a little experience already, this book is great for code refrence and XNA class information. However, I dont recommend this book to entry level programmers as it requires basic c# knowledge.
Excellent book for intermediate XNA developers October 14, 2008
Marc Azazgour
This is the best book on XNA.
I like that the book is not focused on beginner topics but rather on intermediary concepts. This book will help you grow once you got the basics i.e. once you are able to create a simple 2D game or setup a basic 3D scene.
The author is very focused and the recipie approach works great.
I surely hope the author will publish other books on XNA.
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