Bush Mackel

This past weekend I tweeted that I had finished with the XNA Beginner’s Guide to 2D Games. If you have no idea what XNA is, here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

Microsoft XNA is a set of tools with a managed runtime environment provided by Microsoft that facilitates computer game development and management.

Got it? You can use it to help you make games for Windows and on the 360. Now if you’ve always wanted to make games but never thought you could, this probably isn’t the thing for you. Because even if you have the desire -Without the technical skills to back it up, you’re really not going to be able to gain an understanding of anything from the videos since they build on the fundamentals programming.

And from an XNA standpoint, you get only the glimspsiest of glimpses into XNA and all it can do. For instance, as far as certain effects being built into the system, how to do music, etc etc… That’s just not covered by the Beginner’s Guide. But you know, they probably shouldn’t be because then the guide would’ve taken me 2 weeks to get through. (#):)

What I Made
So what I made was nothing to write home about, that’s for sure. But as far as it goes to get my feet wet in XNA game programming, I’m pretty happy with the Beginner’s Guide overall. It basically steps you through how to make a 2D shooting game where enemies scroll in from the right and you can rotate a turret to aim at them and fire. So while what I made was pretty basic, there are lots of “extra credit” videos linked from the site that show you how to do cooler things like particle generators and stuff. BUT, I haven’t touched those vidoes yet.

Will I Do More?
Really not sure. This was a really fun diversion this past weekend, but I seriously don’t know that I have any desire at the moment to make games. They take up a lot of time and by the time I really finalized something as an Indie developer, Microsoft would probably be launching their 720 or something. ha ha.