Building XNA 2.0 Games: A Practical Guide for Independent Game Development (Books for Professionals by Professionals) | 
 enlarge | Authors: James Silva, John Sedlak
Publisher: Apress
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $24.80
You Save: $15.19 (38%)
New (27) Used (6) from $19.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 349837
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 450
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 1430209798
Dewey Decimal Number: 794.81526
EAN: 9781430209799
ASIN: 1430209798
Publication Date: September 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
Building XNA 2.0 Games: A Practical Guide for Independent Game Development is written by James Silva, who recently won the prestigious Microsoft Dream Build Play game competition with his award–winning title, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. Building XNA 2.0 Games: A Practical Guide for Independent Game Development is an in–depth and exclusive look into the entire XNA game development process and includes the creation of a software game masterpiece. James Silva guides you through the process he took to build his award–winning title from concept to reality. He reveals tips and techniques for creating a polished, high–quality game with very few resources, while bridging the gap between coding and art. This title shows software developers the following: - The creation of a polished game from start to finish
- Design philosophies
- Next–gen 2D graphics, including shaders
- Techniques for fast, fluid game play
- XACT Audio and XInput
- Eye–catching particle effects for visual stimulation
The book is packed full of code, pictures, and valuable insights into XNA game development. What you’ll learn - If you are brand new to XNA, you’ll see basic concepts of game development through simple exercises.
- You’ll be able to follow along and see the steps taken to re–create the game that won the Microsoft Dream Build Play competition.
- You’ll learn and enhance artistic skills and artistic design capabilities.
- You’ll learn how to build software games that focus on the same artistic design, game play, and game flow/logic that are also found in commercial games.
- You’ll become more exposed to the exciting world of software games.
Who is this book for? For anyone who has working knowledge of C# and .NET programming and either loves to build software games or is interested in seeing how to create an award–winning game. About the Apress Building Series The Apress Building series teaches application of existing technologies. The book content assumes the reader has fundamental working knowledge of a technology and demonstrates how to build solutions from the technology. The Building series books are characterized by visualizations of the end product and extensive use of examples to build that end product.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Informative and Entertaining October 21, 2008
This book is simply spectacular. Not only was I hooked by the entertaining aspects of the book (kudos to the authors for that), but I was able to extract quite a few great ideas for my own games. I'm no beginner in the realm of XNA, so having a book that really focused on making a game (rather than introducing and teaching XNA like most other books) was really quite a welcome change to the market.
If you have some of the basics of XNA and C# down, I'd highly recommend this book if you are ready to really make a game. It has lots of real world advice and lots of great ideas. I know it's going to improve my future games.
Great book (I agree the title is a little off) October 6, 2008
As has been mentioned, this book is about creating a 2D platform game complete with map and character editor, particle system and shader effects.
If you have seen James' winning game, Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, and would like to learn how to build similar games with all the bells and whistles then this book is definitely for you.
The book takes you through the creation of the game and tools used to build the content, from start to completion; the end result is a fully functional game of a very high quality.
Poor choice of title for an otherwise good book. September 26, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is clearly a series of tutorials on how to build your own game similar to The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. (The author's award winning game.) I think the title is therefore a little misleading. This would be helped a bit if the publisher had included a browsable table of contents here or on their own website.
There's tons of useful information in the book, but it is not a general introduction to building XNA games. For example, there's nothing in this book on 3D programming. So if you're looking for a book that covers that sort of stuff, look elsewhere. If you're looking to learn how The Dishwasher was made, and how you can build your own similar game, this is exactly the book you want and I would recommend you buy it.
Realistic look into our lifestyle September 24, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I can understand why a person would get mad if they didn't get pure XNA tutorial goodness, but this book is more of a realistic look into the lifestyle that independent developers live. We strive to get our work out their and even "finished" at times. Being an independent developer is very hard and can at times makes you question whether or not to even continue. James Silva did give up and attempt to get a real job when he won Dream Build Play. Whether we realize it or not, his victory as an independent developer is going to and has already started paving the way for the rest of us. This book is for people who want a look at the real life view of a game developers lifestyle, not a XNA pure tutorial book.
Read this! September 23, 2008
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
The first two reviews are simply bogus. The people are doing it to de-grade this persons book because they have a personal vendetta against him
Disregard the reviews and Amazon should take them off.
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