XNA Game Studio Express (GSE) simplifies game development, making it more approachable to beginners and providing enhanced productivity for the experienced. However, creating a game with XNA GSE requires you to know how to program. So what do you do if you are interested in making games, but you don't know how to program?

Here's a link to Microsoft's Beginner Developer Learning Center. It provides instruction and tutorials for beginners, teaching them how to program and how to use the C# Express Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Beginners interested in XNA GSE will want to follow the Windows development tracks.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/

Welcome to the world of programming!

--Stephen

 

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Stephen Styrchak | XNA Game Studio Developer

IDE = Integrated Development Environment.

 

Use TorqueX. That, or learn C#. 

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Life's a game, let's play.

Red Ring Rico:

IDE = Integrated Development Environment.

 

Use TorqueX. That, or learn C#. 

You realize that Stephen was not actually asking the question "How do I learn to program" for himself. He's a Microsoft employee on the XNA team that was just posting a resource post right?

 

Stephen, here's a thread I put together over in the MSDN forums collecting a ton of beginning programming resources. The community offered a ton of great suggestions for new programmers (or existing programmers that are new to C#). It's become quite a good resource and I thought I would re-mention it here for this thread.

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George Clingerman - Microsoft XNA MVP
XNADevelopment.com

Red Ring Rico:

Use TorqueX. That, or learn C#. 

You won't be able to do fancier stuff in TorqueX without knowing C#

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Visit my blog at http://waru360.codesan.com/

Yeah, sorry about that. I was having some blood glucose problems, so I became delarious throughout the day and don't remember writing that.

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Life's a game, let's play.

Red Ring Rico:

Yeah, sorry about that. I was having some blood glucose problems, so I became delarious throughout the day and don't remember writing that.

delirious + hilarious = delarious?

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skasoftware.com

I'm also dyslectic.

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Life's a game, let's play.

I have also put together a small list, but will need to update it with the latest videos from MSDN and this site.

Here is the link.

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Glenn "Mykre" Wilson - (XNA / DirectX MVP)
Virtual Realm :- XNA News and Resources from Down Under

Looks like someone didn't read the topic body.

I see this happen time, and time again. Silly people only read the topic title, but skip over the actual content of the body.

Don't do that. Read before you post.

Red Ring Rico:

IDE = Integrated Development Environment.

 

Use TorqueX. That, or learn C#. 

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Red Ring Rico:

Yeah, sorry about that. I was having some blood glucose problems, so I became delarious throughout the day and don't remember writing that.

^^^ Vile lies!

Bapabooiee:

^^^ Vile lies!

 

Oh how I wish it were, diabetes sucks :(. 

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Life's a game, let's play.

Thanks for this Righteous!  I had no idea where to get started but am very interested.  Hopefully I can learn it without to many problems :P

Took a course in Programming in Grade 11 and I found it kinda interesting (I made a calculator). I'll definitely take a look at those begginer links though. Thanks!

i Have a question about the XNA books, are they any good for learning C#, How come nobody on here ever reccomends them and do they help once you get into XNA so basically what im asking is are they worth it

None of the XNA books will teach you C# or programming in general.

This post should help you get started http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=974438&SiteID=1

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The ZBuffer - News and information for XNA and Managed DirectX

Thanks for the posts guys.  I was wondering this exact question and now I have a direction to go.  Thanks again.

Thanks for the link. As someone who's studied a bit of C++, a lot of this is review and seeing how it's done in a different language, but still useful. I'm just wrapping up the last few lessons of tier 1 of the development track, so now's a good time as any to ask; what do you recommend I move onto after I've completed all three tiers?

thanks for this thread, never prgrammed, always thought i would really have to go to a night class or something...  I think the XNA studio is a create opportunity for people like me.

 

Thanks again

This thread has helped me out a lot.  The most useful tutorial that I found was linked in the MSDN forum thread that was linked here, so I thought it would be a good idea to post the link to the actual site (sorry, that was a lot of links).  The tutorial can be found at xnatutorial.com  This site is great.  I knew absolutely nothing about programming prior to watching the tutorials and am starting to get a decent idea about what is going on.  Another good thing about the tutorial is that it is focused on making a game, which is something that I hadn't really seen in the other tutorials.  If you haven't checked it out and are trying to learn how to make a game I highly recommend it.  As a side note, the site might be down this weekend (Feb.29 - Mar 3) so don't panic if the link doesn't work.

 

Mike

I have followed the links that you guys have put in, but personally, i don't honestly like the tutorials for one reason alone, and that is that the tutorials don't teach console applications, and only teach windows applications. does anyone know of any tutorials that involve console applications and the programming language itself? Preferably video tutorials? Thanks for any help given.

It seems that you just need to learn to program first then learn to use the different "User Interfaces" or UI that are available to for your use.

Since you do not like the links to tutorials that have been supplied by the previous posts I will give you a link to a training disk that you will need to buy. This DVD is designed for the complete beginner to c# and XNA.

You will find about 30 hours of training in vol 1.

You start out designing and building a text based game that uses the console and then you move on to winforms and then finally into a true XNA game.

Being relitivly new to any programing language stronger than gwbasic, I found this DVD to be priceless.

Enough talk here is the link XNA Xtreme Vol. 1

I really am liking murach's C# 2005. It is a good self paced book that really takes you from the ground up. If you know nothing about programming, and want to dive into xna, I would say pick this book up and get a good grasp on C# first.

 

TheMagicalRock:

I have followed the links that you guys have put in, but personally, i don't honestly like the tutorials for one reason alone, and that is that the tutorials don't teach console applications, and only teach windows applications. 

Why should they teach console applications?

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Jim Perry
Here's what I'm up to.