So, I'm a game developer, and I've been using XNA for about 8 months now for programming games. When I started, I also heard a lot of about DirectX, and was considering going with that, and might've if it weren't for the advice of a friend. I also have a decent amount of skill with C++, which is why I was leaning toward DirectX. My questions are: at this point, is there any point in learning DirectX? What are the benefits of learning DirectX over XNA and vice versa? Thanks Paste

XNA for Windows is built on top of DirectX 9. Basically it is a managed wrapper on top of the native DirectX libraries. In a sense, you are already working with DirectX and learning the basic concepts of how it works.

XNA takes care of alot of the tedious grunt work you generally need to manage yourself when creating a DirectX application from scratch (Such as window creation, loosing the device context, etc). If your confortable with XNA already, you will probably be able to pump out a game much more quickly.

It really comes down to what you want to learn about. XNA is currently based on DirectX 9. Therefore, you will not be able to take advantage of the new features that have been included with DirectX 10 & 11. So if you want to learn about geometry shaders, or some of the other new features, it may be worth diving into DirectX or OpenGL. Personally, I'd recommend sticking to the manage route and check out the SlimDX library if you interested in next gen API's.

So here's a question for you. What do you intend to do with XNA, DirectX, etc? What kind of games are you interested in creating?

There honestly is no right answer to your question. If your comfortable with XNA, I'd suggest sticking with it and at least finish the development of a game before moving onto something else. Finished projects look better then unfinished projects :)

Quote:Original post by Billr17
So here's a question for you. What do you intend to do with XNA, DirectX, etc? What kind of games are you interested in creating?

Well I've been using XNA in the fellowship I'm in because it's sponsored by Microsoft and that's what they want us to use. I want to learn the intricacies of graphics programming, but I'm going to be taking a graphics class next semester that teaches and makes use of OpenGL. Outside of school, though, I want to make some games independently, primarily 2D, some small-scale, some larger.

I think part of the reason I wanted to explore other avenues (e.g. DirectX) was because XNA seems somewhat inflexible in some things. For example, DirectX run-times come packaged with Windows, right? I don't like making people have to install the XNA framework redistributable for some reason. It makes the game seem unprofessional maybe. It also makes it a little harder to install than just download-and-click.

Quote:Original post by Daaark
Every program is built on top of something that has to be installed.

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Any game installer will need to make sure that the correct C#/C++ runtime version, DX version, etc... is all there, and handle them in case they are not. It's all the same, and the ClickOnce installer set up in the IDE is set up to handle this for you.

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So API doesn't matter much. XNA isn't unprofessional, it's just bindings to use D3D9 in C#, with a few helpful extras.

Yeah, I realized later that I don't find the necessary installation unprofessional; it's more that I just get slightly annoyed whenever I run a game I made in XNAGS and it displays that little window that says "Verifying application req's..." when I'd really rather prefer that if there was a load screen, it was one that I made. Any ideas on that one, or is a topic for a different thread?

Also, thanks to everyone for their input.