Coding4Fun

Windows Version

Let's start by building the Windows version of the game. In general, when building an XNA game, you will start by developing a Windows version of the game and then "port" that game to an Xbox 360 or Zune project. This is done simply to ease debugging and deployment over the course of development.

Start Visual C# 2008 Express or Visual Studio 2008, and create a new Windows Game (3.0) project named AlienAttack from the Visual C#→XNA Game Studio 3.0 project types, as shown in Figure 1-2.

Figure 1-2. Creating a Windows Game (3.0) project

A default Windows Game project will be created. Go ahead and either press F5 or click Debug→Start Debugging to run the application. The game will run and you'll be presented with a window filled with the color CornflowerBlue. All you need to do is fill in, well, everything.

Start by renaming the Game1.cs file to AlienAttackGame.cs. The IDE will ask you if you wish to rename all project references to the new name. Select "Yes" when prompted.

If you look through this class, you will see the basic architecture of any XNA game. There are five methods you need to worry about as you progress. They are outlined in Table 1-1.

Table 1-1. Base XNA methods

METHOD	DESCRIPTION
Initialize	Set up anything related to your game that's not content-related.
LoadContent	Load sounds, music, graphics, fonts, or anything else.
UnloadContent	Unload anything ...