Just wanted to let you know that this is another book I’ll be using in my quest for XNA greatness.

-WakeUpInFlames

The first one I got is “Professional XNA Programming: Building Games for Xbox 360″ by Benjamin Nitschke.

I believe that was written for XNA 2.0, but it most of it should still apply to version 3.0. I also believe that it is a more advanced book than the other two beginner ones that I’ve already got, so it will probably help me further down the road when I’ve got a pretty good grasp on C# and XNA. Not only that, but I personally want to create  360 game, so this will probably help me out in that area.

The second book I went ahead and got is Programming C#, Third Edition by Jesse Liberty.

Despite the fact that there are newer versions of this book, I figured that it could still be beneficial.

The nice thing about getting books on Ebay is that they are cheap as fuck. Normally these books would have been around $30-$35 a piece, but on Ebay I picked them both up for $10.71 including shipping.

That’s all for now, just wanted to let you guys know what books I’m going to be using. Have a good one.

-WakeUpInFlames

If your interested in trying it out, you’ll need the latest version of XNA Game Studio (which is 3.1 as of now) which you can get right here.

You will also need Visual C# 2008 Express Edition which you can download here.

Once you’ve got XNA Game Studio and Visual C# 2008 EE downloaded, you’ll probably need some help figuring out what the hell you need to do now. That’s why I picked up a few books.

The one that I’ll mainly be using is called Learning XNA 3.0: XNA 3.0 Game Development for the PC, Xbox 360, and Zune by Aaron Reed, and you can pick it up from Amazon here. The cool thing about this book is that it is also available as an Ebook on the iPhone for only $4.99, so if your not sure if XNA is for you, you can give it a go without dropping $30 on a book.

The second book that I picked up is called Microsoft® XNA® Game Studio 3.0: Learn Programming Now! by Rob Miles. You can also get this one from Amazon here.

Other than that, on the XNA website, there are a lot of helpful tutorials and a forum if you need any assistance. (I know I will)

That’s pretty much all that I’m going to use to start with, if I end up having to get some other books or whatever I’ll be sure to to let you know.

-WakeUpInFlames

I’ve been an avid gamer ever since I can remember, and have always wanted to create games for a living.

I’m just about to start college next Spring and am preparing on starting the long road to my game development dream career. But then I realized that I haven’t ever really coded anything in my life.

What would happen if I take an introduction to programming course in college and realize that I hate it?

I’d be fucked. That’s what would happen.

So I decided that instead of waiting until I’m in a college classroom, I’m going to start now with Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio and Visual C# Express Edition.

Why did I choose XNA? Well because from what I’ve heard it’s fairly easy to use, it can be used to create games for the PC, Xbox 360, and Zune, I’ve also heard that C# is a pretty good introductary programming language, and because it’s free.

The main reason for this blog is so that I can document what I’m doing, the tutorials/books I will be learning from and using, my progress, and the problems that I will surely run into during my XNA adventure.

This way, if anyone out there is in the same situation as I am, they can read this and decide for themselves if programming and game development is for them or not.

Not only that, but I will occasionally talk about gaming news, what I’m playing, and stuff like that.

Now before we go any further, I want you to know that while I am very eager to learn and jump right into this, I am also a co-owner of a small business, which takes up a lot of my time. That means that updates probably won’t be an everyday thing. Realistically, (if your really interested) I’d say to expect new updates a few times a week, but anytime I do anything XNA related, it will be posted right here in full detail.

Overall, I just wanted to welcome you to my blog and I am looking forward to the adventure ahead. If you are an experienced programmer or a complete noob like I am, feel free to leave comments and any questions you might have and I’ll be sure to answer any and all that I can.

Also if your a gamer with a 360 feel free to send me a friend request to WakeUpInFlames if you want to and if you use Twitter, follow me if you want, my username is the same as my Gamertag.

Other than that, I think that’s about it for now. Thanks for checking out the site, and I apologize that it looks like shit right now, I created it on my iPhone.

Have a good one and expect to see my first actual update, the beginning of my journey, and a better looking site later on today.

-WakeUpInFlames