These are the compiled games, source code and content files for the Professional XNA Game Programming Book by Benjamin Nitschke (Wrox Press). To play these games you need to install the .NET 2.0 Framework, C# Express, XNA Game Studio Express with bundled XNA Framework, and the latest DirectX runtimes. More information and links to these files can be found at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/xna/default.aspx If you have not installed anything yet, this is the order you should install these tools: 1. Install Visual C# Express, which will also install the .NET Framework 2. Install XNA Game Studio Express, which will install the XNA Framework and notify you if you need an updated DirectX version Other Links ----------- Here are some links from the book: * http://www.wrox.com Offical home for Wrox where you can find the support forum and code downloads for this book (when it's published) and many others. * http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/ XNA Developer Center on Microsoft’s MSDN page with the XNA Game Studio Forum and the XNA Framework Forum, which are the most active XNA forums you will find on the internet. You can also download the latest XNA version here, read the FAQ and see what’s new. * http://XnaProjects.net/ Website by the author where you can find all the latest XNA game projects, source code, game installers and much more! * http://abi.exdream.com Official website of the author. You can find more games I made here, as well as Rocket Commander XNA, the XNA Shooter or the Racing Game from this book and all the documentation and video tutorials I made for them. Additionally I suggest checking out the Rocket Commander Video Tutorials, which were pretty popular on Coding4Fun. * http://www.rocketcommander.com This is the official website for Rocket Commander, which was released in the beginning of 2006, which was written for Managed DirectX originally. A new version running completely on XNA to support the Xbox 360 was released at the end of 2006. * http://www.xnaracinggame.com Official website for the racing game we talk about at the end of this book. * http://www.xnashooter.com This is the official website for the XNA Shooter game from chapter 11 of this book. All the other games of this book can also be found on my blog. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_XNA Entry on Wikipedia about XNA, constantly updated and contains many links to other topics. On the bottom of the page a few useful external links are listed. * http://www.thezbuffer.com/ Managed DirectX and XNA Framework news. The best and biggest site about Managed DirectX and XNA with lots of news and uesful articles as well as tons of links. * http://xnadevelopment.com Nice new site with many links, tutorials and tips to get you started in the XNA world. * http://xnaresources.com Another new site with lots of news and some really useful tutorials on tile engines. Also contains a lot of game components you might like. * http://learnxna.com XNA news site in form of a blog, also contains some video tutorials and focus on learning XNA and tips and tricks with graphic tools. * http://martinfowler.com In chapter 2 Unit Testing and Agile Methodologies are discussed. If you want to read more about Unit Testing I recommend reading this website of Martin Fowler, one of the founders of this whole idea. * http://www.nvidia.com Home of the Nvidia homepage and many free tools like the FX Composer, which is used in chapter 6. You can also learn a lot about graphic card architecture, special rendering techniques, shaders, etc. from the many samples, tutorials and documentation that can be found in the developers section.