Xna Game Creator

[tonyxna 0]

I have not downloaded the program mentioned above. But if anyone knows how easy it is to make games with it, can someone explain to me the basics. I am not sure of it's strong points and it's weak points. Would it need a full knowledge of programming.

[roooss 0]

in a nutshell you need to know how to program pretty well to get anywhere with it. but if i remember rightly Torqe created like a point n click game creator that you can buy for it or something, i wouldnt bother with it personally, xna and c# are not hard to learn at all i figure with a couple of hours a night you could get something up within a week and it'll go from there. theres so much documentation for xna! a little googling and youll have an immense amount of resources, and with it being a microsoft thing you have support and a massive community to help you! all in all there is a learning curve but not a difficult one

[fffanatics 0]

From my understanding as a DirectX programmer, XNA is basically a SDK that works with DX so that you can create games for the Xbox. If you are writting a game, you need to have a much better understanding of game structure and how to plan a game than coding since coding tends to be the easy part. I have written games before for class and even for fun and the most important step is planning how the game parts will work together because without it, you have no way of getting all the parts to work together.

[roooss 0]

i agree with fffanatics, a good, logical design knowledge is imperitive when making games, going on in there like a bull in a china shop just doesnt work! but after a while programming you should have a decent library of code that you can re-use for instance collision classes and other classes like animation. this again saves you alot of time and also allows you to evolve as a developer by building on what you already have

[harshnisar 0]

in a nutshell you need to know how to program pretty well to get anywhere with it. but if i remember rightly Torqe created like a point n click game creator that you can buy for it or something, i wouldnt bother with it personally, xna and c# are not hard to learn at all i figure with a couple of hours a night you could get something up within a week and it'll go from there. theres so much documentation for xna! a little googling and youll have an immense amount of resources, and with it being a microsoft thing you have support and a massive community to help you! all in all there is a learning curve but not a difficult one

i am a kiddo in programming and the only thing i can gurantee is that yes it is to do with programming and its not one of those wysiwig programs. IF you dont know much of game programming then i can tell you something. You could download a free software name game make.Search it on google. Its a very easy one and has a ton of good quality tutorials for you to learn the software in a second. I have made 2 games from the software. One is a game like pac man which is the first game and the easiest to make. Second game i made was a platform game. the char was a football and then reach the goal in the end. I made 3 levels and then left it as it wasnt a flash game. I needed a flash game for a website.
And yes , the thing you mentioned about the google thing . Its so completely right. You can get a ton of information due ot google.

[Gravity17 0]

When I tryed using it, It seemed like it is really only for the xbox, am I right?

[Idolon 0]

Nope. ?You can make either Xbox 360 games or PC games, but I believe you need to have both an Xbox Live account and a Creator's Club subscription to be able to put things on the Xbox. ?You can make PC games for free.Be ready for a lot of programming though, as there are very few visual editors of any sort for XNA and it has (at least last time I looked at it) no built-in collision or animation functions. ?There are a number of game engines built on XNA though, and many of them do have the things that XNA is missing.

[Tombomb318 0]

I have tried to make a cupple games for xna, but im quite a nub at that type of stuff.

[FruitRocks 0]

Nope. You can make either Xbox 360 games or PC games, but I believe you need to have both an Xbox Live account and a Creator's Club subscription to be able to put things on the Xbox. You can make PC games for free.
Be ready for a lot of programming though, as there are very few visual editors of any sort for XNA and it has (at least last time I looked at it) no built-in collision or animation functions. There are a number of game engines built on XNA though, and many of them do have the things that XNA is missing.

not true. if you still go to high school/college, they'll give you a free subscription at dreamspark.com
to find out quick starter tutorials: download C# express and then XNA. After that go to Help>Tutorials (something close to that). or you can search on microsoft "visual studio 2008 sp1 msdn library" which will give you a ton of tutorials for c# (start on that before going to XNA).

edit: yea! my 30th post!
Edited August 5, 2009 by FruitRocks (see edit history)

[ackotheadvertiser 0]

I'm a designer, but I'd like to learn programming at some point. I had a few unsuccessful game projects but I still wanna do something awesome.. I've heard a lot of good stuff how XNA's great, but I think that if someone's serious (and full of money) in game development will but the Torque3D.. It offers so freaking much !

[FruitRocks 0]

I use Torque 2D. It is a GUI editor that plugs into XNA and Visual Studio 2008, and that allows you to write the game without knowing any C# (though it is a good idea to at least know a little bit). There is a professional one, but you need to be a registered developer to be able to get it. Website: garagegames.com

[Nelson Blogs 0]

XNA! Mmmm... Yes you do need previous programming experience. You need to have the knowledge of C#. Many people just right at XNA and get confused because they have no idea how to program. They can program the sample game that you make in the tutorials by copying down the code but when they try to develop their own games, they breakdown. I am not saying that you need to know a lot of C# (just the fundamentals).P.S. I know that this post is old but other people might read this and get an answer.

[deadmad7 4]

Instead of XNA, i bought the DARKBASIC PRO from 'TheGameCreators.com' which is the most advanced games development package built on the BASIC language currently available. No other package out there makes it as easy to incorporate all of the special features and effects you see in todays games and no other package natively offers the benefits of 'Microsofts DirectX 9 technology'. You have full and direct control of these awesome hardware effects from within DarkBASIC Professional. Pixel Shaders are used to alter lighting and surface effects that replace artificial, computerized looks with materials and surfaces that mimic reality.

All games created with DarkBASIC Professional are License and Royalty free.All games can be distributed as a stand alone executable.

You can ALSO DOWNLOAD DARKBASIC PRO FOR FREE NOW , WHICH IS A ADVERTISEMENT EDITION, but it won't bother you that much.

[Nelson Blogs 0]

DarkBASIC Pro is a really good GDK to start with. I have tried it with C++ and I was able to program some stuff. You may want to try download the free version of DarkGDK before purchasing the professional version though.