XNA3D101

Introduction

Welcome

Welcome to XNA3D101. This site is dedicated to teaching beginning XNA programmers to build virtual realities using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio 4.0 and MonoGame.

Switching to MonoGame

As I am sure you have heard, MicroSoft is no longer supporting XNA and it has been taken over by MonoGame.

At this point, I think I've decided to convert all the tutorials on this website for XNA over to MonoGame for more recent versions of Visual Studio (probably 2013) and maybe even Linux at some point. I've converted a couple already to MonoGame for VS2013.

I probably will not continue to do MonoGame or XNA tutorials as I am more focused on DirectX and OpenGL at this point. But I would like anyone doing 3D in MonoGame to have access to these tutorials still and plan on continuing to maintain this old XNA website for the foreseeable future.

How the Site is Laid Out

The "core" of the site is the Tutorials section. There you will find tutorials that teach XNA programming and design concepts. The tutorials are designed to teach many concepts in each tutorial with each lesson building on what was learned in the previous lesson. You could dive straight into the latter lesson, but you may be missing important concepts taught in the earlier lessons. Unless you feel like you know the concepts in the earlier lessons, it's generally best to go though them one at a time and in order.

Additionally, if you are new to XNA, or new to 3D programming, you should probably back up even further and go through all of the lessons in the Fundamentals section. The Fundamentals section contains lessons on basic concepts that you will need to have a solid understanding of, but that many of the more experienced game programmers, or people with a very strong math background, may already know.

And before you begin, you should probably check out the Prerequisite section to make sure that you know everything and have all the tools that you should have to go through the tutorials. For one, XNA is built with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and you will find a link to download it under the Prerequisite section.

The Content Files section should eventually be filled with art work used in the tutorials, such as Textures, Sound files, Models, and other game assets. Currently, there is nothing there, but I hope to have quite a bit there as the tutorials get built.

The Musings section is a place for me to rant and just discuss things, such as my philosophy on the site and XNA, for example. It also is currently mostly blank as I consider it one of the least important sections of the site and need to get several tutorials posted before worrying about that section. Honestly, it's partially there to fill out the menu bar and make it go all the way across the page. There's a possibility that I may replace it entirely with a different section, if the need arises.

And then the Links section contains hyperlinks to various sites that I think you might want to check out at some point. Currently, the links for most of the software that you will need for the tutorials is actually in the Prerequisites section. In that section, I talk about how each piece of software is used, and whatnot, in addition to just providing the download link.

Under Construction

The site is still largely under construction. It's been under construction since I started it. First the news of XNA's death came and I stopped doing new tutorials and now I've finally found a direction for the site and I'm in the middle of a major remodeling project. Anyway, I'm getting ready to post several new tutorials. So, things should be rapidly changing soon.

It's All About You

The purpose of this site is to teach beginning students of XNA, C#, 3D programming, and game design, how to use XNA to produce the types of virtual realities seen in most of the top games on the market today. Hopefully, you will learn a whole lot of stuff that you never knew and weren't able to find out about anywhere else.

Enjoy the site! It's all about helping you along the path of learning how to use XNA to build the 3D worlds of your own imagination.