Datasheet

and tricks, such as how to get XNA running in Visual Studio 2005 Professional, which is not supported

out of the box, but quite useful if you use Visual Studio plug-ins or tools such as SourceSafe or Team

Foundation (to work better in a team, for example).

Requirements

XNA Game Studio Express targets Windows XP SP2 (SP means Service Pack) and Windows Vista. SP2 is

important because of the requirements of the .NET 2.0 Framework. Other platforms such as Windows 2003

or older Windows platforms that support .NET 2.0 are not officially supported, but run fine, too. XNA is

also tested only on 32-bit platforms, but it works fine on Windows XP x64 and Windows Vista, too, even

as a development platform.

Because XNA Game Studio Express is based on Visual C# Express, it has the same basic requirements.

You basically need a computer, nothing fancy. But for game development, you have much higher basic

requirements anyway, which I discuss shortly. Visual C# Express runs on Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP

SP2, Windows 2003 SP1, Windows XP x64, and Windows Vista. As you can see, the older the operating

system, the more service packs you need.

And finally, you also need the most current DirectX runtimes, and if you are serious about game devel-

opment, better get the full DirectX SDK. The DirectX SDK is not required by XNA Game Studio Express

because the dlls just call the underlying DirectX dlls, but it is always useful to have some more docu-

mentation on your system, and DirectX contains many samples and tutorials, which are useful if you

run into trouble. For example, the DirectX SDK contains tools to help you generate DDS texture files,

which are optimized for the best graphic card texture formats available today.

Because XNA does not support the fixed function pipeline anymore, as DirectX or Managed DirectX do,

it is important that you have a graphic card that supports at least Shader Model 1.1 or even better, Shader

Model 2.0. The first graphic cards with shader support were shipped back in 2001 (GeForce 3 and ATI 7000);

the next generation with Shader Model 2.0 (GeForce 5x, ATI 9x00 Series) was introduced in 2003 and made

popular by the many games in 2004 that made good use of shaders (Far Cry, Doom 3, Half-Life 2). Shader

Model 3.0 (GeForce 6x, ATI x1000 Series) was the standard in 2006 and new cards with Shader Model 4.0

(GeForce 8x) were shipped late 2006/early 2007. The Xbox 360 uses an extended version of Shader Model 3.0.

So this is what you need at a minimum before attempting to install XNA Game Studio Express:

❑ Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista

❑ 512MB RAM, but better to have more — 1 or 2 GB

❑ 1 GHz CPU, the faster the better, using the IDE and compiling your projects is faster and more fun

❑ Shader Model 1.1 graphic card (Nvidia GeForce 3 or 4, ATI Radeon 7x) or Shader Model 2.0

(GeForce 5/FX or ATI Radeon 9x00)

Installing

Get the latest version of XNA Game Studio Express for free at http://msdn.microsoft.com/

directx/xna/

Part I: XNA Framework Basics

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