Like the title says, I'm totally new to XNA, but I am proficient in C#. My prior graphics experience is in OpenGL, an I'm a bit rusty on that as I have not coded in OpenGL in several years. I searched around the forums for a good starting point, but the answers seem to be a bit dated for the most part. I was wondering what has worked for those that were new to XNA, but already familiar in C#. Is there a book out there that is better than the rest. I know some people like the Joseph B. Hall book (http://www.amazon.com/XNA-Game-Studio-Express-Developing/dp/1598633686/ref=pd_sim_b_2). Others say that the Online resources are better than the books out there. I would like to start out with a book because I like a structured starting point designed for dummies like me. If Online is what you suggest, then where? If any of this helps, the game I'm going to write is an isometric turned-based tactical strategy deal like Jagged Alliance 2. I hope to have a small prototype environment consisting of a couple of rooms completed in a couple of months. Anyway, thanks in advance.

If you want to go with a book, I would recommend either XNA Unleashed or XNA Game Studio Creator's Guide. The latter has a second edition coming soon [I'm tech editing :)] and I believe Chad has an updated XNA Unleashed coming soon as well. You can search Amazon for those and probably preorder if you wanted to get updated versions of the books.

For online resources, I'd say start out with the Getting Started section of the XNA Game Studio help (also available through the installed Help inside of Visual Studio). From there, there's the Education Catalog at creators.xna.com. You will also find lots of tutorials listed on Ziggyware.com.

And don't forget there are some official XNA forums that are pretty popular and well monitored by lots of MVPs as well as a few of the XNA team themselves, so if you have any questions and can't find answers, feel free to try there.

Wow! I did not expect such excellent responses in such a short amount of time. I'll definitely check out those books and online resources. Reading through the reviews on Amazon, the books you recommended seem to be exactly what I need. I would of course like to get the latest edition, depending when they are released. I may have to just go and get one of them, I don't know if I can wait. :)

Thanks again!!
-Deep

Quote:Original post by gameXcore
I started learning XNA about a week ago, experience under my belt at this point was a few years C++, recently using SDL and a small amount of OpenGL (Read: very small, i really really didnt like using it).

....

Those two have taken me from a complete novice in C# and XNA to feeling rather confident to make my first 2D game in XNA and then move onto 3D stuff.

Thanks for the advice. This is pretty encouraging for me. I don't have a lot of time outside of my fulltime job, so I think XNA is the right choice since it seems to have enough tools to get me started quicker.

If you don't want to spend too much money on books then I'd second the recommendation for the Riemers XNA tutorials. I just learned XNA using this site and the samples/tutorials over at Ziggyware and of couse the official samples over at the XNA Creator's Club

hope this helps