Hey, I've been learning DirectX through Introduction to 3D Game Programming by Frank Luna however recently I was having a conversation with someone who said DirectX will become obselete within the next couple of years because of XNA. So I looked up XNA and it seemed that on these boards that the concensus was that it just a tool going to be used in conjunction with DirectX 10 to make everything easier for the programmer/designer/artist etc. But when I asked this guy he seemed fixated on XNA being a completely new API that will be cross platform. I went to the XNA website and it didn't tell me much so I was wondering if anyone knows anythiing else about XNA to save me wasting time learning DX?

As far as i know XNA is a development suite (like Visual Studio) especially designed for game development. What that person most likely referring to might have been WinFX, which if I am not wrong, will replace DirectX and GDI in the future for Longhorn and WinXP. Having said that, Im pretty sure the 3d stuff in WinFX will be just an updated version of Direct3D.

When discussing XNA it's useful to bare in mind that there aren't really any concrete details yet (except maybe internally at MS, maybe the MVP's and XBox people) - just a lot of talk, thus the majority of information you'll find on the net is at best an interpretation of already vague information [smile]

Quote:Original post by Jemburula
the concensus was that it just a tool going to be used in conjunction with DirectX 10 to make everything easier for the programmer/designer/artist etc.

With game development getting ever more complex there seems to be a risk that it'll start to pose a big problem and start to hurt the creative side. XNA looks like it'll try and smooth this over by helping to provide a means by which to get the process working like a well oiled machine.

Quote:Original post by Jemburula
But when I asked this guy he seemed fixated on XNA being a completely new API that will be cross platform. I went to the XNA website and it didn't tell me much so I was wondering if anyone knows anythiing else about XNA to save me wasting time learning DX?

You are **not** going to be wasting your time learning DirectX.

Even if DX magically disappeared overnight and was replaced with XNA they'd be reasonably similar such that in knowing DirectX you stand a much better chance of being able to transfer your knowledge quickly.

Second to that, all available information points to XNA still being years off - I've seen some speculation that it's not even part of the XBox360 development suite (XNA arrived too late) and might appear sometime around the Longhorn/WGF2 timeframe (late 2006 last I heard).


For further reading, there is a good thread in the lounge about XNA: ... XNA ... Microsoft XNA....

hth
Jack