Introduction to XNA on Windows Phone 7 SILVERLIGHTSHOW.NET Webinar Peter Kuhn, June 30 th, 2011

About Me Peter Kuhn (34) - "Mister Goodcat" MCPD/MCTS/MCC Technical author Trainer/consultant for.NET/Silverlight/WP7 – Blog: 2

Agenda Windows Phone 7 Mobile Games Silverlight vs. XNA Introduction to XNA Live Coding Sample More on XNA Mango Demo Outlook and Q&A 3

Windows Phone 7 Microsoft's new mobile platform Again, it's a mobile platform – Limited CPU power – Limited GPU power – Slower file system I/O – Network bandwidth limitations  Don't be paranoid, but careful and considerate Don't ever trust the emulator 4

Mobile Games Biggest market share for WP7 Similar numbers for iOS + Android High demand from consumers Interesting chance for developers 5

Silverlight vs. XNA Two equally treated frameworks Technologies can (partly) be mixed No requirement to use XNA for games (you can use Silverlight for games too) – Use Silverlight if the included controls, animation or layout system is more effective – Use XNA for more complex games and for its unique selling points like 3D rendering – Generally only do simple/static games in Silverlight – Mind the upcoming Mango update 6

XNA (1) Managed environment, but focuses on performance More comfort = less performance  XNA has none of Silverlight's comfort – No declarative UI (XAML) – No layout system – No animation system – No data binding – No built-in controls and themes/styles – No sophisticated text rendering 7

XNA (2) Different programming paradigm to Silverlight Puts you in an "active" role instead of a passive consumer Game loop as the central driving construct – Update: Handling input, executing logic – Draw: Rendering all the content to the screen "Think incrementally" 8

Live Coding Sample 9

XNA (3) Lack of comfort makes some things really hard – User interfaces (menus, option screens etc.) – Good looking text rendering (line wrapping etc.) – Complex screen layout (e.g. lists of data, scrolling) – User input (no text box etc., no SIP) One possible solution: the Mango update – Mixing Silverlight and XNA in the same application – Comes at the cost of worse portability 10

Mango Demo 11

Outlook XNA is much more than what we learned today – 3D, Sound and music, multi-touch input, etc. – Additional non-technical topics Full training also covers not so common topics: – Chances and limitations of an indie developer – Sharing experience from commercial game projects – Monetizing options – And a lot more… 12

Q&A 13

Thank you for attending. 14