Xna
 

I've dabbled with Direct X and written the odd game here and there and was wanting to get into big-time non-physics game development.

Two things I was wondering about:

Should I start using XNA? Please see this link: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/xna/default.aspx

and an old mentor of mine used DarkBASIC and did a few interesting games. Should I get started with this?

Thanks!

Matt. Ireland

It's hard to find decent tutorials on DirectX (well, it was when I tried searching). There are some, but your best off picking up a book. You might also want to check out the DirectX SDK Examples. There is some very good stuff in there.

Thanks! and sorry i messed up that gui for you.

Can you recommend any specific books - there's so many I just wondered whether any were better than any others?

Couldn't tell you, I don't have any on XNA. You'll have to google it

OK thanks anyways.

A good managed DirectX tutorial I found is here. The author has example code for both C# and VB.NET, so you can use whatever's most comfortable for you. As for XNA, as I understand it, it just encapsulates much of this functionality. I recommend using managed DirectX first (I'd recommend native DirectX, except that it's nasty) so that you'll better understand the 'boilerplate' code pieces XNA uses.

I am not 100% sure but I think they are about to depreciate Managed DX and are going to replace it with XNA. So don't waste your money, books on stuff like this depreciate really fast especially DX. The SDK samples should be enough to get you started, just read them throughly.

Re: Xna
 

If you want, you can call call Microsoft or email someone at Microsoft and ask for a DVD about XNA. I am starting to work with it. From what everyone has been telling me, it seems like the way to go. I can't find any contact information for anyone at Microsoft Academic Relations, though. Here is the site I have been using: Basic XNA Tutorial. It is pretty small now, but gets updated quite frequently.

Re: Xna
 

Thanks guys!

@Harakim - Thanks for the link. Those tutorials seem very good. A person called Riemer (or Reimer) has written a very good book about XNA which he's put online for free and all the tutorials from that are absolutely outstanding with forums to assist.

However, I've also followed the other advice and had a little play around with Managed DX. From what I found, this was better for me to use as it did give me a better understanding of the bits behind XNA. However, if they're going to depreciate this then I might as well use XNA so I'm not sure at the moment.

Re: Xna
 

there is this book:
Microsoft® XNA Game Studio Creators Guide.
a friend told me its a great book.