Professional Windows® Phone 7 Application Development: Building Applications and Games Using Visual Studio, Silverlight®, and XNA®

Chapter 19. Gaming with XNA

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding the game loop

• Adding and rendering content

• Accepting input using the accelerometer, keyboard, and touch

• Using 3D models and shapes to create a scene

In the opening chapter of this book, you learned that there are two frameworks that you can use to develop Windows Phone applications. So far you have taken a deep dive into the world of Silverlight development for Windows Phone applications. However, for more game-oriented projects, the XNA Framework may be a more suitable development platform. Unlike Silverlight, which is primarily driven by XAML markup and events, XNA starts and ends with a game loop.

This chapter provides an overview of the XNA Framework and its associated development tools. You'll learn how to load and display sprites, as well as learn how to use transforms and lighting within your game. This is a teaser, and if you want to really get into building games for Windows Phone, you should look to some of the other great online resources dedicated to covering XNA development.

GETTING STARTED

In the previous chapters of this book, you have been building applications for Windows Phone using Silverlight, which combines a sophisticated layout and rendering system with an event-driven approach to logic. With Silverlight you can use Expression Blend to design the layout of the application and then wire up the event logic using Behaviors or more traditional event handlers in the code-behind file. Such applications are ...