Well with game programming physics is one thing that people want to learn and to know about, or want done for them.  Well, I am taking a physics class in college and my professor isn’t all that great on explaining theory, neither is my book, so I have to hit the internet.  I did find a site that actually does a good job explaining things, at least I think so.

I hope this site helps someone.

http://physics.webplasma.com/physicstoc.html

I have recently been working quite hard trying to learn XNA following a bunch of tutorials and working on my own not to mention Working on a FAQ and reading all over the community.

After looking at everything as a whole I realize I have a long way to go until I am a compentent programmer espcially a competent Game programmer. For example i barely got a crappy space invaders done in about 10 hours total and here brownbot got a more complete space invaders in 5 hours.

Another good point is people are putting together graphically amazing games that are complete in a matter of days that are almost exact replicas of past games and I couldn’t even get my ship to a laser for a few hours. Heck a guy spent 2 days coding and got a multiplayer game going you can see more info about at XBOX 360 Homebrew HERE.

Also being about 12 days out since release there are already tons of tutorials for learning XNA quite a few came out within 2 to 3 days and more come everyday. Here are a few links.

http://xbox360homebrew.com/content/XNATutorialMasterList.aspx
http://learnxna.com/files/folders/videotutorials/default.aspx
http://xnaresources.com/pages.asp?pageid=8
http://ziggyware.com/articles.php?cat_id=6

And a book:
http://learnxna.com/pages/XNABook.aspx by Mike Fleischauer

I mean just looking at the sheer amount of info in such a little time makes me relize I don’t know crap. However, I will stick with it and who knows maybe someday I can make a good contribution to the XNA community all I have done now is provide menial support in the MSDN XNA Forums and started a Development FAQ that seriously needs updating and formatting. This does show that maybe my thoughts of being an XNA MVP the first year of XNA’s release was a bit to high of a goal and that maybe I need to just sit back learn and go for next year, but make sure that I am still active.

We will see what happens though.

Thanks,
Buddy

That is the name of the first game ever I have made

I finally finished it let me tell you it was pretty hard. I have never thought in the logic sense that is needed for making a game. However, I am over joyed that I have it working and it is playable. I learned a lot doing this and have a new appreciation for arrays. I used to think they were useless, but now I know they are pretty useful. For my next game I might actually do more OOP stuff, i need to. I just don’t know what I am going to make next it will come to me though.

Well without furthere adue (sp?) here is the screen shot then the project files.

http://www.buddylindsey.com/XNA/InvadersScreenShot_1.JPG
http://www.buddylindsey.com/XNA/SpaceInvaders.zip
Happy Coding
Buddy Lindsey

I just wanted to say I have not gone away.  I have run into a snag on my game basically a huge logic error that for personal development I need to work out on my own.  Hopefully, I will have that worked out soon.

I am also working on a ginormous FAQ for XNA that once done I will constanly update.  I will keep a copy of it here and over at http://learnxna.com 

Be looking for a better update soon.

XNA FTW,
Buddy Lindsey

Well I spent basically all day working with XNA and I must say IT ROCKS. I have never written a game before in my life and I almost have a basic space invaders done. Some of the logic got hold of me, but that was the coolest part of the whole process I only really needed spend time on the logic. I didn’t have to worry about much of anything else like createing a device and a good render loop etc. I just opened up the Template for XNA game and started coding I had to do some preliminary stuff to add the sprite to the scene and render it about 5 lines per sprite is all. The rest was all code for game logic.

Now, you can tell XNA is still beta because there is a lot of stuff missing. There is not networking or the usual excellent documentation. However, the MSDN forums are making up for the lack of documentation on XNA because they guys there learn faster than me and all of us are posting and helping. Like they have bouding boxes for collision detection for 2d and 3d objects well I for the life of me couldn’t figure out well some else did and I luckily got the code for it. Now after looking at the code I felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner, but hey what can i say I am not the strongest coder and have a lot to learn so I can give myself a little bit of slack.

So, the two things I have left for my space invaders game is to actually be able to shoot and doing the Collision detection. So all in all I should be done tommorow evening. My biggest problem about my goal of getting a game done tonight was lack of knowledge. However, I plan to rectify that by spending quite a bit of time with XNA so I can help others and maybe they won’t have to go through what I had to go through.

I also plan to write up a mini-tutorial over my game after I submit it for review by more experience programmers because to me I am doing things overly complex there has to be an easier way to do my game code. We will see what happens.

If you want to learn more here are some resources:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=20&SiteID=1
http://learnxna.com/
http://www.XNASpot.com/
http://xbox360homebrew.com/
http://www.dev360.de/
http://www.xnaproject.com/
http://www.xnadevelopment.com/

Happy coding,
Buddy Lindsey