Microsoft XNA Game Studio Creator’s Guide, Second Edition by Stephen Cawood and Pat McGee

I have been looking to learn XNA for a long time. So I checked reviews on this book and it looked like a good start for me. First I would like to state that I am in no way a beginner, I started programming several years ago in vb.net and recycled myself in C# a few months back. I’m pretty confident with my abilities but in all honesty I never cared about 2D or 3D graphics. So I bought this book and I was appalled with my purchase after only the first chapters.

This book takes into account you have a fair knowledge of techniques like using vectors and textures. The first few chapter sums up what they are and what they do but it does not tell why you should use it and its core uses. It just shows you a bunch of code with keywords you might now even know and expects you to nod and keep reading.

The first two chapters tells you how to set up the XNA framework, which is probably irrelevant since you need to be a fairly advanced user in order to read this book and I’m guessing such users already have it setup and could redo it with eyes blindfolded. Chapter 3 shows you the basics of XNA code. Then chapter 4 comes and hits you in the face with vectors, spritebatches, user input, rectangles, animated sprites in a huge game sample with little explanation. As a beginner you have absolutely no idea what the code means, the author gave you a quick sentence on what it does at the beginning of the chapter but thats it. When you get through the sample skipping parts because you think this might be a joke, the next chapter happens to be talking about 3D animation. I stopped at that chapter because I can’t even follow the author’s explanations. I glanced at the next chapters : shaders, skyboxes, 3 models.

I know this book will be of use to me later on, but right now I suggest beginners stay with online tutorials, or another book, until they are ready for bigger challenges.

I teach XNA to undergrad game designers and have assessed almost every XNA book on the market since XNA 1.0. I will shortly be adopting this book for use in the classroom because this is the best XNA book I’ve seen yet. It covers the basics that are hit by most beginner XNA books, but goes into far greater detail on each subject, so it really takes the learner a lot farther than those books. For example, I’m a huge fan of Aaron Reed’s XNA3 book from O’Reilly, but this book goes a lot farther with the same subjects.

Probably the single best feature of this book are the additional learning exercises tacked on to the end of each chapter. I actually like the fact that the answers to these extra exercises are not given, because in each case they’re easy to figure out and the learner isn’t tempted to just open the answer files. These extra exercises are very well thought out and nicely compliment each chapter. My only complaint is that I wish there were more of them.

Another good idea here is to take a direct, non-class-based approach to most of the code examples. In most 3D chapters, all the code is implemented in Game1.cs, with a separate Camera.cs file being the only external (allowing you to move around the object you’ve built). This is really helpful to learners, because examples that are separated by class have to be broken down and then rebuilt into new class arrangements to suit their own projects. Here they can focus on the code, then break it down into their own class structures right away.

The downloadable code collection is extensive and very well organized, and handily provides each sample in both Win and Xbox formats. There is an errata sheet at the author’s site that seems to be actively updated. There aren’t many mistakes in this book (another big plus), but I’m glad to see that they’re correcting them.

Note: This book is not for beginning programmers, and has nothing about the basics of programming, such as classes, variables, data types and so forth — it assumes you already know about the basics of OOP, which I think is appropriate. It does have a very handy intro to debugging and editing in Visual Studio (with some good tips). Rob Miles’ “Learn Programming Now: XNA GameStudio 3.0” is a little better for raw beginners, and also a very good book, and a nice compliment to this one.

Recommendation: More experienced users should combine this purchase with “XNA 3.0 Game Programming Recipes” by Riemer Grootjans. That’s a one-two punch that will get any new programmer a very, very long way. Less experienced users should combine this purchase with the Rob Miles book mentioned in the paragraph above, which covers much of the same territory but will give you many additional examples and other kinds of problems to work on.

I purchased this book specifically because it was the second edition and it seemed as though the authors’ credentials exceeded the average book on XNA. Also, I was interested in the math behind game programming. I was not disappointed. You will need some knowledge of trigonometry and linear algebra (matrices, dot products, cross products, and quaternions). The examples were clear and concise. Most of the examples worked as advertised. And the sample code built on previous chapters’ sample code in order to drive home the current points without boring you with the implementation details from previous chapters.

I think the 2D collision detection algorithm in chapter 4 could have used a bit more explanation. I think the chapter on input devices could have been moved toward the beginning of the book. And in a couple of places the sample code didn’t do what was described in the chapter. For me this was an additional exercise because I made the sample code do what the book said, and learned something in the process.

This book will be a great resource for me in the future.