22nd February 2008

Everyone needs to start somewhere. Now that XNA has been out for a while, there are plenty of resources available on the web, all it takes is a little Googling, and a small amount of time to allow anyone to create a simple game.

The above picture is my result from quickly going through some tutorials I found at Riemer’s XNA Tutorials. Riemer takes a really simplistic approach to the tutorials, making no assumptions about the reader’s previous abilities, short of a basic knowledge of programming and C#. The tutorials start at the basics from setting up your first project and guide the reader, through thoroughly explained theory and practical examples, to a point where they should be able create a simple flight simulator or off-road car game. Riemer covers many topics, such as heightmap terrain, HLSL, basic collision detection, alpha blending, sky boxes and lake water rendering.

The tutorials do a lot of hand-holding, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it simply means that reader’s need to ensure they understand the concepts before moving on to the next tutorial. To help with this, Riemer has even provided the full source code for each step in the tutorials.

Riemer also has a book coming out, which I am highly anticipating, however it was intended to be released in December and appears to have been delayed. I’m guessing this is due to Game Studio Express 2.0’s arrival.

So, go check it out and you too can create a serene mountainous backdrop.