Making Games with Microsoft XNA Game Studio

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

Hi, i'm thinking of doing some tutorials for learning how to makes games with Microsoft XNA Game Studio, a package that allows you to make games with Visual Studio.

I was thinking about a step by step tutorial on how to make a simple space invades type game. I think a few people would be interested, you don't really need that much experience.

Also there not really much of a hobby game development community, I would like to see more people interested in it and I think this would be a good way to start.

Post if your interested.

Getting Started
First install Visual C# Express (Or a full copy of Visual Studio if you can get hold of it)
Visual C# 2008 Express

Then download and install
XNA Game Studio 3

That should be all you need, for now.

[HyperBlade]

I would be keen, but i've got a shit load of little jobs to do so not sure how much effort i can put in, but will give it a go.

Already have visual studio, downloading xna now.

[Virtuality]

http://www.naturalmotion.com/morpheme.htm when you get to that stage, if you do

if any of you guys ever move onto 3d projects i'd be interested in doing some modeling

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

http://www.naturalmotion.com/morpheme.htm when you get to that stage, if you do

if any of you guys ever move onto 3d projects i'd be interested in doing some modeling

That would be awesome.

You can do some pretty cool stuff with XNA in 3d, even program your own shaders stuff like that. When I get time i'll post some of the stuff i've done.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

Sorry for the long wait, ran into some trouble writing the code, but got it working.

Just a warning, this is one way of doing it, there are lots of different ways (and probably better ways then this) to approach the same problem.

Also if there is anything in the tutorial which is wrong or confusing, please tell me and i'll try my best to fix it up.

Part 2: Creating a new Project
Open up your Visual C# Express (or Visual Studio).

Click 'File' -> 'New' - > 'Project'

Open up the C# menu on the list and select 'XNA Game Studio 3"
'Windows Game' is the one we want for now, so go ahead and select that.
Give you project a name, then click 'OK'

Making Games with Microsoft XNA Game Studio

You will get the basic code for an XNA game, if you have a look at your solutions explorer you will see a list of parts in your project.

Making Games with Microsoft XNA Game Studio

'Game1.cs' is the main file that will contain your c# code, later we will add additional classes.
'Program.cs' runs your game class, don't need to worry about this.
'Content' is a folder that will contain art assets for you game, things like pictures etc.

Part 3: Adding content

Now we'll add some pictures for the game, I've attached a zip file called pictures, however feel free to make your own, they'll probably be much better then mine.

Unzip the pictures, then in Visual Studio, right click on the 'Content' folder and click add. Browse to where to unzip the pictures to and select them. The pictures will be copies to your project.

Now select one of the pictures under the content folder, it's properties will be show in the properties window (usually in the bottom-right).
Left Click the plus sign next to the word 'Content Processor'

I made the background of the pictures black, The 'Color Key Color' value will change whatever colour it is set to to transparent. In this case open up the 'Color Key Color' by clicking on the plus sign, then type '0' in the R, G and B field to indicate black.

Making Games with Microsoft XNA Game Studio

Part 4 will be coming soon

[HyperBlade]

I've completed Step 2, nice work on the tutorial so far, clear and concise.

[Tiwaking!]

I am surprised at the number of XNA games made that simply do not work. Even more surprising is the number (which is almost all of them) which do not run in full screen and are totally unrescaled for higher/lower resolutions

[Pyromanik]

I'm surprised XNA is still a thing.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

I suspect MS is working on a replacement to XNA, which will be supported by the nextbox and metro.

[Tiwaking!]

I'm surprised XNA is still a thing.

MechCommander 2

In 2006, Microsoft released a portion of the source code along with most game assets (i.e. everything needed to compile the game without networking support and without all the art) under a Shared Source licence in order to demonstrate its XNA Build system.[1] The source release documentation warns developers that not all code necessary to produce a complete build has been included.

"Source files are not provided for all of the output files from the MechCommander 2 build. For these output files, the built file itself exists in the source folder and is simply copied from there to the FinalBuild folder. Be careful not to delete .fst or .pak files that exist in the source directory at the time of installation because you will not be able to rebuild these."

Currently, the game is under mod by several projects.