Reddit reviews XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginners Guide
We found 10 Reddit comments about XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginners Guide. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Try these sites:
Riemers,
XNAResources,
RBWhitaker.
As for books I've found this one to be the most helpful.
This is not Unity, but it is C#. In my opinion, it is one of the better XNA books out there. XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide by Kurt Jaegers
I'll start off with some titles that might not be so apparent:
Unexpected Fundamentals
These 2 books provide much needed information about making reusable patterns and objects. These are life saving things! They are not language dependent. You need to know how to do these patterns, and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to implement them in your chosen language.
 
Good General book
 
This book is great if you're going to make a browser based game
 
General Knowledge books
 
Provide a working moveable 3D model with C++ and DirectX, Very cool.
 
More general game base building
 
Working product results books, little if any modification needed
Releasing in a couple months (hopefully) 2 Very good books using C++ to develop by.
 
Not presented in the best manner but still noteworthy:
 
I used to love XNA...but now it's not feasible for commercial development. If you're a beginner to game design...starting out with XNA might actually be useful. It's easy to pickup and put out a working product. XNA is C#
 
 
Working product books, modification needed to make run on current systems
Provides a working FPS game in C++ on DirectX 9. Good for some starting out knowledge for an FPS
 
Good for 3D Terrain rendering in DX9...however much of this is outdated...some concepts still apply, and it's not the worst idea to see a working example.
 
TLDR: Click links starting at top, buy, read, profit
I personally just recently started learning C# after using GameMaker for some years. It's actually been a bit easier to understand than I thought (it may be because I have past experience with the GML and DarkBASIC languages).
Java is also very similar to C# and is more portable as it is directly supported by millions of devices, where as with C# you need something like Mono to port games to other operating systems or devices.
I have no experience with C++, but from what I've heard it is probably one of the (if not the) most powerful language available, but I've also heard that it is harder to learn than other languages.
The reason I personally went with C# is because it's (generally) easier to learn than Java from what I've heard, and I don't really mind the non-portability, and also a switch from C# to Java is easy because their syntax is pretty much identical.
Also, here's the C# book I'm currently using
http://www.amazon.com/XNA-4-0-Game-Development-Example/dp/1849690669
I can't really recommend any books for other languages because I haven't read any.
Hope this helped :)
This is probably the most comprehensive and complete tutorial on making a platformer that you will find but you will need to pay a subscription to watch. Check out the first video anyway and you might get an idea if its worth while.
This book has a pretty decent platformer tutorial as well. Also goes through making a tile based editor for your levels.
I second the recommendation for XNA 4.0: Game Development by Example. It helped me out greatly and keeps things fresh by having the reader build multiple mini games, instead of one larger game.
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
Programming Language Pragmatics
XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example - One such example in the book takes you step by step in making a scrolling 2d tank shooting game.
It's in C# using (obviously) the XNA framework, so it's real easy to pick up.
This one for basic C# and OOP.
Beginning Visual C# 2010
O'Reilly has great reference books.
C# 4.0 in a Nutshell: The Definitive Reference
From there you can learn Mono for Android (and iOS)
Professional Android Programming with Mono for Android and .NET/C#
While learning XNA game development by example,
XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide
And by detail...
Learning XNA 4.0: Game Development for the PC, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone 7
They're receiving updates to implement what XNA already has (plus a little extra). Books like this exist for XNA and the knowledge is 95% transferable to Monogame. Beginning out, books like these help a lot and will help drive success.