Hello everyone,

I've decided that i would love to learn XNA (and game creation) and i was just looking for some pointers on where to start, what to do etc.

The first place I stopped was amazon to find some books, and this seems like the best option. My biggest concern is how much of C# (or is is C++ or C? :| ) do I need to know, and has anyone used that book who can give me a rough guide.

I've never done anything in C before which is why i'm worried, but i do have a background in HTML, Java and VB.net which i think should help.

Any pointers would be appreciated :-). Thank You

You need to know C#, but you don't need to be an expert with the language to begin writing games. With your background in VB.NET picking up C# should prove relatively easy for you. The IDE is the same and the languages work similarly. Just need to learn the syntax and you're good to go. I would recommend reading through the information in this FAQ for some resource to get you started with learning C#.

Once you have a pretty good grasp on the syntax, you can browse around through the links in this FAQ to find some good resources for getting started with XNA. (there's a lot of other good information about XNA in the FAQ forum just in general that you might want to browse through).

There are a few books out there for XNA game development, but at this point, they are going to be a little behind the times. Most were written for the XNA 1.0 framework and with the release of the XNA 2.0 framework just recently, you're going to find some differences. They still have a lot of other great information and material in them, but you may have to do some extra work to get projects and examples they are showing to work with the most recent release of the framework.

Hope that helps get you started and good luck!

Thanks a lot. I'll have a good read on them :)

I have read that book, and put together a review on it. You will find that it is perfect for the begginner. You will not need to know too much programming to go through it, but it will help.

I would also suggest the faq on this site, as there are some good links on starting out located there.

Hi,

I started learning C# and XNA about 10 days ago and although I no Zero about the 3D manipulation side of things managed to get sprites up and running and even psuedo Isometric, I am a programmer having come from a VB background and didn't realy want to go near C# as I thought it would be to difficult as I had dealt with some C coding in the early days but have actualy found to my amazement its not to bad at all, even a basic programming knowledge I.E if you can speak english and formulate if then else statements is enough to get started.

Enjoy its great fun. :)

 I think first you need to understand the basics of C# 2.0 languge.

i think this will help you.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336766.aspx

then you can begin learning XNA.

I just started XNA recently as well. The biggest hurdle for me, and many others I've seen in forums, is finding good material to help you learn. What helped me was to find and complete the very basic XNA tutorials and learn the terminology. My experience is that when you know what you need to look for next, it is much easier to find. If I try to find vague information on XNA, I can search for hours and turn up nothing.