After declaring my quest to create a solid xna community game title nearly a month ago, I thought I'd write about my progress.

First of all, I am in the middle of some stressful things in my life. I just finished up my second to last master's class (in Education) and I have several projects going on at work that has prevented me from devoting as much time as I would want to this project. However, I think my goal is realistic. I want to submit my game for review by August 1st, 2009. That leads me to what one needs to learn, and what I have been learning, to achieve this goal.

Every xna game development site that you will find will bluntly let you know that you need to understand C# language and programming before you begin with xna (Xna is C# with game creation additions). They will also tell you that nothing in Xna is "drag-n-drop," you must really learn to program.

After reading up on this, I started the progress of learning C#. Surprisingly enough, the best resource that I have found for this is C sharp for sharp kids at the ms site. It is geared toward 12-16 year olds, but I found this guide very helpful. Another site that I would reccomend is http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx . I have moved from the "kids" book to this tutorial and I think that I am beginning to grasp the language. My goal is to continue focusing on the C# language while I am still in my Master's program (mid-March).

While I am focusing on C# I am studying two other things. First, I went ahead and started a game making tutorial for the xna. This is located at riemers.net . Right now I am reading along and copying code to get the same results as on the site (It is a tutorial for a 2D cannon game). I plan on starting over with this and modifying it to something different as soon as I switch to focusing on xna development. There are several other tutorials that seem helpful that I will utilize: Four Rivers, Game Engine Tutorial, XNA Game Making, XNA Resources, and ZiggyWare (Alien Aggressors Tutorial). As you can see, I have plenty of material to study!

The second topic that I am studying is that of Game Design. I have started reading The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford. Also, I found an awsome site (today, actually) that include interactive videos and is simply titled Understanding Games.

That's it for now. I know I have a long way to go and the guy who said this was headed "straight for failsville" last month could be so right. However, I am glad that the majority of comments to my initial post were positive. I hope to start posting more often when my progress becomes more significant. I have so many ideas that I want to implement and even some concept drawings. I am worried about ideas being stolen, however. I hope that doesn't come across as cocky, but I don't want to loose out to someone who doesn't have to overcome the learning curve of coding that I must.

Anyway, give me some criticism, ideas, helpful links, and advice, and I will update as soon as there is something to update.