Book Image

XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide

By : Kurt Jaegers
Book Image

XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide

By: Kurt Jaegers

Overview of this book

Move beyond the world of flat 2D-based game development and discover how to create your own exciting 3D games with Microsoft XNA 4.0. Create a 3D maze, fire shells at enemy tanks, and drive a rover on the surface of Mars while being attacked by alien saucers."XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide" takes you step-by-step through the creation of three different 3D video games with Microsoft XNA 4.0. Learn by doing as you explore the worlds of 3D graphics and game design.This book takes a step-by-step approach to building 3D games with Microsoft XNA, describing each section of code in depth and explaining the topics and concepts covered in detail. From the basics of a 3D camera system to an introduction to writing DirectX shader code, the games in this book cover a wide variety of both 3D graphics and game design topics. Generate random mazes, load and animate 3D models, create particle-based explosions, and combine 2D and 3D techniques to build a user interface."XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide" will give you the knowledge to bring your own 3D game creations to life.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Time for action – customizing the Initialize() method


Add the following code snippet to the Ini tialize() method before base:Initialize():

playerScore = 0;

What just happened?

The only initialization we need to do is set the player's score to zero. Even this initialization is not strictly necessary, as zero is the default value for an int variable, but it is a good practice not to assume that this work will have been done for us.

Note

Initialize() versus LoadContent()

In practice, much of a game's initialization actually takes place in the LoadContent() method , which we will discuss next, instead of the Initialize() method. This is because many times the items we want to initialize require content assets in order to be properly created. One common use for the Initialize() method is to set the initial display area (resolution) and switch into full screen mode.