Learning XNA 3.0

Creating Your First XNA Application

Now that you've got XNA Game Studio 3.0 installed, it's time to create your first XNA application. In Visual Studio, select File → New → Project. Under "Project types" on the left side of the window, select Visual C# → XNA Game Studio 3.0.

On the right side of the window, in the Templates section, you'll notice several different options. In this case, you'll want to create a Windows Game (3.0) project. Name the project Collision, select the directory in which you want the project saved (creating the project in the default location is perfectly fine), and click OK (see Figure 1-4).

Figure 1-4. New project creation screen

After the project has loaded, select Debug → Start Debugging in Visual Studio. The project will compile and then run, displaying a screen similar to the one in Figure 1-5.

Figure 1-5. Running your Collision project

Congratulations! You've just created your first game in XNA! It may not be the most exciting game you've ever played, but make no mistake, this is a 100% genuine XNA 3.0 application—and there's a lot more going on here than meets the eye. While the project doesn't make use of graphics, sound, or any other cool content, the application is using the XNA Framework to draw, update, and manage resources exactly the way that everything ...