Chapter 4 and XNA 2.0

Chapter 4 is now available for download here. It describes how to load images into XNA programs and display them on the screen.

We've been very busy on the book front and made a slight change to the timescale. This is to incorporate the imminent release of XNA 2.0, which adds some very nice features and also tidies up a few parts of the framework slightly. In order to make sure that the book is useful for as long as possible it has been decided to put back the release date so that we can incorporate all the version 2.0 goodness in the text, so you will now be able to get your hands on this deathless prose in book form some time early in 2008.

Update on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 12:33PM by Rob

Please note that this chaper, and all the pre-release chapters in the blog, are written for XNA 1.0.

The actual book is XNA 2.0. You can download two of the final chapters from the book at www.verysillygames.com.

A Writer's Life

The writing process is strange. It is funny how many things you have to think of before you get to the one that is obviously right. I've been grappling with the sequencing of material after chapter 3, and it is proving really tricky. 

The way I see it, if the book is going to lose its audience it is around chapters 5 or 6. This is kind of where the author and the reader are kind of "going steady", the novelty of the new is starting to wear off and doesn't compensate for the foibles that you start to notice in each other, like that particularly nasty laugh, or the way that you eat pickles from the jar without a spoon.

What's worse, around this point I've got to introduce some quite tough concepts (at least I have if I'm going to make this into a proper programming book). This is a bit like finding a new significant other and then discovering that they want to take you camping in the jungle/potholing/on a parachute jump the following week....

So, chapter 3, where our relationship is still going strong, is now up in preview.

http://www.robmiles.com/xna-book-downloads/

Stay tuned for chapter 4, and lets hope that we can all stay the course together.

Second Chapter Up

I've put up the second chapter of the book here. This actually has some code in it. I've also just about finalised the table of contents. This has taken ages, because I have to figure out how much time to spend on different topics and the overall slant of the book. I'm going for "Learn to program properly and have fun writing games while you do it" as an approach. If you can already code you might find it boring, but I'm hoping that you'll stick around for the ride.

Another thing that has taken ages is getting the tone and voice of the book sorted. This sounds silly, but I've written loads of pages trying to find a good "sound" to the material. I'm sure that people who actually know English (for whom I have more and more respect every day) probably have a proper way of describing what I'm doing at this point. I'm relying on editorial people (and you,dear reader) to give me guidance on this.

Anyhoo, the chapter is up and the contents are coming. Let me know what you think.