C# allows you to use both fields and properties, so naturally the designers saw merits to both in your code. Neither one is intended to be used exclusively. If you want to use properties for kinematics data, you might consider making a set of them as floats; PositionX, PositionY, and PositionZ. You can also have more than one property per field in ...

You can't just use a boolean variable like that to get the correct effect. A boolean can only be true or false and there are three states in effect here: before, during, and after the scrolling animation. With the boolean code the way you have it, you're only ever in the before empty string state because whenever the code tries to ...

Also keep in mind that sometimes when we toss out the term Best Practices we may actually be referring to the .Net Framework Developer's Guide Best Practices or a similar available resource: more concrete and less wishy washy. But I guess that also falls under the domain trap since those practices weren't written specifically for XNA ...

There's no reason to create a thread just to sleep it most of the time. The Update method provides you with a GameTime reference so that you can measure time. You can calculate how much to show using simple math. Elapsed Seconds since Start / Elapsed Seconds at End. So if a linear scrolling text effect is 8 seconds long and you're 4 ...

It does seem to me like you're trying to recreate the experience of playing a machine at the local arcade. I can only imagine the response if Xbox Indie Games offered games that instead of buying you used MS Points to buy credits or lives. I think for a game that would take 40 minutes to play through, you would want to offer a ...

I think a better question would be "How would you design the AI for a game like Carcassonne?" because I don't think you're going to hear an official answer on this from anyone who was involved in its development. Minimax is a poor choice in my opinion because you can't predict what the other player will do because their ...

You could try using a Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. 1. ModelThe classes involved in creating the actual maze-y traffic simulation grid, with the information about where the intersections and cars are. Including the Car, Grid, and Intersection types. 2. ViewOne or more classes capable of describing the model in a format suitable for ...

That way's perfectly fine. An improvement I can think of would be to make the ScreenManager a generic class and put the properties on your game class itself. So basically instead of the ScreenManager having a reference to its owner Game, it references the generic type T where T : Game. You get to keep the Manager.Game.MyComponent semantic ...

There's an Education section on the navigation bar. The Education Catalog has lots of tutorials about taking care of the basics of multiplayer. Go ahead and take a look at those and let us know if you're having any trouble adapting the code samples to your project.