Datasheet

Introducing XNA
Welcome to the world of XNA. As a game programmer you probably know about DirectX and
maybe even the basics of the XNA Framework. This chapter explains how to install XNA Game
Studio Express and how to use it in a productive way. It also contains quite a lot of tips that might
even be useful for anyone who already knows the basics.
In the next few chapters you start developing some cool smaller games. Part I contains the basic
foundation and information about the helper classes you will use later in this book to develop a
full-blown graphics engine for more advanced game projects. To keep things simple you start with
2D programming in Part I and then advance to 3D in Part II.
Let’s get started.
Introduction to the XNA Framework
XNA, developed by Microsoft, was started a few years ago, but kept very secret. At the GDC (the
biggest annual Game Developers Conference) in 2004, Microsoft announced XNA for the first time.
XNA is not just a framework like DirectX; it also contains a lot of tools and even a custom IDE
derived from Visual Studio to make the game programmer’s life easier. Because no tools or bits
were released until 2006, DirectX developers saw only the “XNA” logo in the upper-right corner
of the DirectX SDK documentation from 2004 to 2006 (see Figure 1-1). (XNA just means “XNAs
Not Acronymed.”)
Figure 1-1
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