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Closed 10 years ago.
I am interested at trying my skills at game development. I am a fairly good C# developer. But my current skill set is in application development (WPF, WCF and Entity Framework).
I am trying to figure out how to make a graphical game for Windows Phone 8. But all the examples I see (for games) are using C++.
8+ years ago I was a C++ Game Developer, but I have forgotten most of those skills (I doubt they would be useful now days anyway).
I am not looking for 3D rendering. Just a nice 2D (Tower Defense) game.
I would rather code in C# if possible. Can game development be done using C#?
If so, a pointer on where to start would be appreciated.
This is what I have been able to find out:
There is a library called SharpDX that allows you to call DirectX from C#. It seems fairly good.
But, the Windows Phone makers did not include support for Direct2D. So unless you are planning to make a fully 3D app, you are out of luck (and that is a lot of work let me tell you!).
So, if you just wanted to make a nice 2D app, these are your choices:
Write your game using Xaml and C# (Performance Issues?)
Write your game using C#, SharpDX and 3d (but only draw on one plain) (A lot of work for 2d).
Use the DirectX Took Kit found on codeplex. It allows you to use the dying XNA framework's API for development (This is a C++ option).
Support for C++ has been added in Windows Phone 8. On Windows Phone 7, apps could only be developed using Silverlight or XNA. It didn't prevent developers to publish thousands of games, including mainstream titles like Plants vs Zombies or Angry Birds. Therefore, I believe it's safe to conclude that game development is indeed possible in C#.
According to https://dev.windowsphone.com/en-us the Windows 8 sdk is now available. According to their samples, most are actually done using C#. You can also find some XNA game examples there too.
Related
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Closed 9 years ago.
I have read a lot about the XNA framework going away and Microsoft not openly supporting it any more. I would like to know if there are any similar technologies available keeping in mind that I do not want to pay a lot of $$ for creating a cross platform indie game.. I know that XNA only support Microsoft devices and that there are already a lot of open source game engines available such as Torque, NeoAxis and so on. I am mainly looking for a simplified game engine where I can code in c#. I do not require the Complex 3D rendering component or worry to much about memory management. Just want to get a simplified tool set as a beginner. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated..
Unity3D is the answer to your problem. Although 3D is in the name, you can do just about any type of a game in Unity. It also supports game scripting in other languages like JS. There are plenty of examples, great support, and growing popularity. I believe they also have a free version of their engine. www.unity3d.com
If you want something similar to Microsoft's XNA you can always try MonoGame which is an open-source implementation of XNA 4 and includes support for Windows, Windows Metro, Mac OSX, Linux, Android (with MonoDroid) and iOS (with Xamarin.iOS/MonoTouch)
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Closed 9 years ago.
Ok friends, I'm a C# WPF .net developer and have been working pretty much exclusively with UI development in one language or another for the last 15 years. The last 7 have been with C# and I have to admit that I am spoiled.
So, the question is: How do I get started, and what tools are best to use? I see that MonoTouch is out there, but it looks like it is now called Xamarin. What about PhoneGap, Titanium, Appcelorator? Are there others I haven't heard of yet?
I am just wanting to break into Android Development and/or iPad/iTouch development, but don't want to go native. I would like to leverage my C# skills, preferably WPF, but I have no idea which tools support that for Android/iPad/iTouch development.
Which ones integrate with Visual Studio?
Anybody who has REAL EXPERIENCE with any of the above, or one that I haven't heard of, please chime in and point me in the right direction.
I really appreciate it.
Phonegap works by having a web view loading a html & javascript application, so, you wouldn't be using C#, and the results usually are a far shot from a native app.
In contrast, mono touch compiles your C# code so it can run natively on your mobile platform, and since they implement a wrapper around the native libraries you are suposed to be able to write applications as good as if you had gone native. On your case i think that would be pretty much the best way around.
By the way, Mono Touch doesn't remove the requirement of having a mac to develop iOS applications.
One of the best technologies is the Mono for Android/iOS framework - specifically for the fact that you can target 3 platforms just by coding for the one. Of course UI is independent so you'll still need to learn each platforms Design patterns etc... But here
http://xamarin.com/?gclid=CM_agZWFgLYCFUvHtAodeDYADw
The best place to start
If you're coming from WPF and familiar with the MVVM pattern you will find loads of js frameworks that share the same approach (KnockoutJs is a good one), basically this is what you'll be using if you want to go with a cross platform solution like PhoneGap wich is nothing more than wrapper for a webapp, and a few apis to access your device.
Personally I find PhoneGap a good solution only if you want to access the features of your device within a simple application.
As soon you start to add pages to it the feeling lack of responsiveness will make you wonder why you didn't go native from the start.
I would go for Xamarin. The Xamarin 2.0 has Visual Studio integration. You can write code for iOS or Android on Visual Studio 2012 (I am a ReSharper fan :) ).
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Closed 10 years ago.
The goal of my personal experiment is to create a 3D engine in C#.
I have read a little about XNA and SlimDX. I'm not sure about XNA, because it's basically a complete engine already and so there won't be much for me to do. SlimDX looks closer to my assumptions, but I would appreciate any other recommendations.
I have some experience using OpenGL and writing a simple engine for Android games, and for the PC using jogl.
I am interested in hearing about something similar to the level of abstraction available through Java / OpenGL, but this time with DirectX.
You can download the old DirectX SDK from here which will give you C# wrappers for Direct3D.
However... if you did want to give XNA a shot, this is probably one of the best tutorials out there to get started with (and by started I mean enough to implement your own game, but it will take a lot of work).
http://www.riemers.net/
You can get the current version of the XNA SDK here
As a DirectX c# wrapper, there's also http://sharpdx.org/
Couple of Pros/Cons between Xna/SlimDX
Xna is simple to learn, and you will already have some built in functions to load models, draw text, some built in render state presets, Math classes/structures. On the other hand it's feature set is fairly limited compared to new graphics card capabilities. You will have something up and running quite fast, but on the other hand, you might end up a bit limited for advanced features (tessellation/compute/append buffers/readonly depth to name a few). You will still have quite some work to do of course.
SlimDX/SharpDX are fairly minimal (they mostly wrap around DirectX functions), so If you want to use DirectX11 (if you want to use 9 go for xna :) , you will have a bit of work to do in order to have something running in the first place, but you will have full DX power and complete flexibility over how you want to organize your engine. You will need to have your own model importer, font renderer (DirectWrite), state manager. Most common math part is already there (Matrix/Vectors) so you won't have to worry about this part.
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Closed 11 years ago.
I'd like to diversify my skills into the tablet and smartphone arena. I have 5+ years experince in C#, asp.net and ajax.
Which platform will be an easier to learn to develop on next: Android or IOS?
Coming from a Java background and having developed on both Android and iOS, I can definitely say that Android is a much easier leap to make. Java & C# are very similar, so you'll mainly be confronted with minor language differences and learning the Android API. Objective C on the other hand is a very different beast and can be as finicky as C++ at times. It's a great language, but the learning curve is much higher.
Keep in mind that if you know well c# and .NEt you can use this skills also for developing in android and iOS with mono.
For iOS monoTouch and for android mono for android .
Seems like you have enough experience to be past the point where language familiarity matters little. You will probably be equally comfortable and equally annoyed by both. Android promotes Java and Eclipse, which are both consistently annoying across all platforms. Apple promotes Objective-C and Xcode, [which are [great on [the Mac platform]], [except for [the annoying bracket soup]]. Pick your poison according to taste.
Consider the development for Windows Phone: I suppose there are more facilities to find your's niche as a single developer because the platform is young.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I am a experienced PHP developer and planning to learn C# for developing desktop apps. Being unfamiliar with C# and desktop languages I couldnt find a good Video tutorial, and Visual C# different then C#?
Can anyone please link me to good Video Series for learning C#
there are some good C# tutorials here from msdn.
Also Microsoft has some videos here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/bb798022
NOTE: If you know Java by any chance, you might be wasting your time on video tutorials, C# is so similar to Java and you can pick it up by experience during the project you are working on. The MSDN library is very helpful and similar to Java API.
If you want to learn to develop desktop applications in C# then there are two obvious directions to go...
Windows Forms video tutorials: http://windowsclient.net/learn/videos.aspx
WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) video tutorials: http://windowsclient.net/learn/videos_wpf.aspx
Windows Forms is the "old school" framework for quickly setting up user interfaces for Windows desktops. WPF is the newer framework that allows for more flexibility and modularity with your code.
C# is just one of the languages offered by Microsoft to generate .NET code. Some of the videos will feature heavy use of C# whereas others might feature VB (Visual Basic) or even XAML (a declarative language used in WPF).
Have fun!
Once I watched these video series. There are 35 videos about C#. Some of them are really relative with desktop application. http://www.quack-ware.com/tutorials/CSharp.aspx?page=1
Pluralsight has a good training program with a free trial period: http://www.pluralsight-training.net/microsoft/courses/Index
Microsoft's Channel 9 has a lot of great videos. It is really about .Net in general, but has a lot of great stuff on C#. http://channel9.msdn.com/