jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Tue Nov 24 10:53:21 CST 2009
> When is American Thanksgiving? We already had ours last month. Not sure exactly. IIRC it is the last Thursday in November so it is not a fixed date. > What is XNA, anyway? It is a Microsoft gaming framework. VERY COOL if you like to (or always wanted to) write a windows game. It runs under C# in Visual Studio, even the express version. The framework provides a game class that has a method for loading the "content" - video, sound, sprites etc. It has a method automatically called X times / second that is then used to perform updates and display the content. And it has a draw method that is called to draw the game. LOTS of game specific classes including math classes, 2d and 3d classes for doing game specific kinds of things, sprite classes, point classes, rectangle classes. You get the picture. REALLY really cool for the child in all of us. If you happen to have an XBox, you can write games that can run on the XBox as well as Windows (XP, Vista and Windows 7). I don't own an XBox so I am just running the game on Windows, but any game CAN be written to run on either, and apparently SENSE which it is running on. You can even use the XBox joystick / button controller on your Windows machine! There is a step by step video series that walks you through building a "space invaders" game, with cannon, cannon balls, UFOs. All graphics provided, all code stepped through in short videos. I did that and I have to say it is really easy. It was so cool as each step comes together, displaying the background, displaying the flying saucers moving across the screen, the cannon swiveling, then cannon balls firing, and finally cannon balls destroying the UFOs. Of course doing it all by myself would be not so easy but it gives a great feeling for what can be done and how it is done. And of course there are after market books on it. I have always wanted to write my own "Empire" replacement, and have even started doing so. I played Empire all of my life (still do) but it is long in the tooth and not updated any more. Plus the multi-player stuff never really worked very well. This will set me back to ground zero on that attempt but it will also provide a framework for doing it the right way. I just don't have enough to do with my time, as I am sure you can understand! John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com Arthur Fuller wrote: > When is American Thanksgiving? We already had ours last month. > > What is XNA, anyway? > > Arthur > > On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 4:57 PM, jwcolby <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>wrote: > >> I have to say that this is darned fun. I have worked through much of the >> tutorial I posted a link >> to. I have ships flying and cannonballs firing. Woohoo! >> >> Very very cool! I know what I will be doing over the Thanksgiving holiday. >> > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > >