Developing w/ XNA Questions

SkyEye

I'm looking to make my first video game, since I have way more spare time than I know what to deal with, but I have a few questions. How difficult is it to pick up developing w/ the XNA tools? Is that a better jumping off point than Flash? I know the basics of C++ scripting but have always had at least some trouble doing anything involving other peoples' code. Also, is there a licensing fee for the XNA API if I wanted to publish (not that this game would ever make it that far, since it's mostly gonna be a learning experience, but I can dream right?) Thanks for any responses

Jasconius

I've developed 2D games with XNA

I cannot comment on its 3D capabilities


XNA, compared to many more recent game dev tools out there, is simple and bare bones

XNA is about providing you with most of the basic tools necessary to build a game completely from scratch


Where Unity might give you a whole physics suite that you can just drag onto an actor in a scene... XNA gives you some shape structs and helper methods and tells you to do it your own damn self


So "difficult" depends on your background and what your style is


In my opinion, Unity is difficult because you are totally swamped with their methodology and you'll spend weeks just learning the particulars ways they command you to do something

Whereas some people find XNA difficulty because it provides only the thinnest level of infrastructure necessary to call itself a game framework.


If you want to program a game, use XNA, and expect it to take a long time with your level of experience

If you want someone else to program a bunch of pieces, so you can glue those pieces into a game, use something else

Dehumanized

Additionally, you might want to check out the XNA development thread from over in G&T:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/116540/xna-on-make-games-for-xbox-live-xna-4-0-released/p1