Sams Teach Yourself Windows Phone 7 Game Programming in 24 Hours

Description

In just 24 sessions of one hour or less, you'll learn how to build high performance games for Windows Phone 7 with Microsoft's free XNA 4.0 toolset. Using this book's straightforward, step-by-step approach, you'll master all the skills you need to design, develop, test, and publish highly playable games for any WP7 device. You'll learn how to integrate game logic, touch screen user input, bitmaps, animations, audio, physics effects, GPS location services, and more. Each lesson builds on what you've already learned, culminating in the construction of a complete game - and giving you a rock-solid foundation for real-world success!

Step-by-step instructions carefully walk you through the most common Windows Phone 7 game development tasks.

Quizzes and Exercises at the end of each chapter help you test your knowledge.

By the Way notes present interesting information related to the discussion.

Did You Know? tips offer advice or show you easier ways to perform tasks.

Watch Out! cautions alert you to possible problems and give you advice on how to avoid them.

Learn how to

* Develop fast, playable Windows Phone 7 games with XNA 4.0
* Get and manage user touch screen input
* Draw 2D bitmapped images, and bring them to life as sprites
* Transform sprites using rotation, scaling, and velocity calculations
* Detect and handle collisions between game objects
* Create surprisingly realistic animation effects
* Master sophisticated finite state programming techniques
* Integrate GPS Location Services into your game
* Make the most of Windows Phone audio
* Read, write, and save game files
* Create your game's Graphical User Interface (GUI)
* Implement realistic physics effects, including gravity and acceleration
* Tweak gameplay to make your games more fun

CONTENTS:

Introduction 1

Audience and Organization 1

Conventions Used in This Book 5

Resource Files 5

Part I: Introduction

HOUR 1: Making Games for Windows Phone 7 9

Getting Started with Windows Phone 7 9

Windows Phone 7 as a Game Platform? 10

History of the Platform 11

Hardware Specifications 16

Summary 17

Q&A 18

Workshop 18

HOUR 2: Getting Started with Visual C# 2010 for Windows Phone 21

Visual C# 2010 Express 21

Using Silverlight for WP7 24

XNA Game Studio 30

XNA or Silverlight: What's the Verdict? 37

Summary 37

Q&A 38

Workshop 38

HOUR 3: Printing Text 39

Creating the Font Demo Project 39

Adding a New Font to the Content Project 41

Learning to Use the SpriteFont Class 45

Printing Text 46

Summary 48

Q&A 48

Workshop 49

HOUR 4: Getting User Input 51

Exploring Windows Phone Touchscreen Input 51

Simulating Touch Input 52

Using Gestures on the Touchscreen 55

Summary 56

Q&A 57

Workshop 57

HOUR 5: Drawing Bitmaps 59

Adding a Bitmap File to an XNA Project 59

Loading a Bitmap File as an Asset 62

Drawing a Bitmap with SpriteBatch 63

Drawing Bitmaps with Transparency 65

Summary 68

Q&A 68

Workshop 69

Part II: Sprite Programming

HOUR 6: Treating Bitmaps as Sprites 73

Bringing Bitmaps to Life 73

Drawing Lots of Bitmaps 74

Running into Limits with Global Variables 76

Creating a Simple Sprite Class 79

Summary 87

Q&A 88

Workshop 88

HOUR 7: Transforming Sprites 89

Translating (Moving) a Sprite 89

Using Velocity as Movement Over Time 91

Moving Sprites in a Circle 94

Summary 98

Q&A 98

Workshop 98

HOUR 8: More Sprite Transforms: Rotation and Scaling 101

Rotating a Sprite 101

Scaling a Sprite 108

Summary 114

Q&A 114

Workshop 115

HOUR 9: Advanced Linear and Angular Velocity 117

Calculating Angular Velocity 117

Pointing a Sprite in the Direction of Movement 124

Summary 129

Q&A 129

Workshop 129

HOUR 10: When Objects Collide 131

Boundary Collision Detection 131

Radial Collision Detection 139

Assessing the Damage 141

Summary 147

Q&A 147

Workshop 147

HOUR 11: Managing Lots of Sprites 149

Robot Trash Collectors 149

Summary 160

Q&A 160

Workshop 161

Contents

HOUR 12: Sprite Color Animation 163

Getting Started with Color Animation 163

Color Animation 167

Summary 178

Q&A 178

Workshop 179

HOUR 13: Sprite Transform Animation 181

Adding Transform Support to the Animation Class 181

Combining Multiple Animations 189

Summary 194

Q&A 194

Workshop 195

HOUR 14: Sprite Frame Animation 197

Drawing Animation Frames 198

Creating the Frame Animation Demo 202

Summary 209

Q&A 210

Workshop 210

HOUR 15: Transforming Frame Animations 213

Drawing Frames with Color Mods 213

Drawing Frames with Transform Mods 218

Animation Mods Demo 224

Summary 228

Q&A 228

Workshop 229

HOUR 16: Drawing with Z-Index Ordering 231

Prioritized Drawing 231

Summary 237

Q&A 237

Workshop 238

Part III: Gameplay

HOUR 17: Using Location Services (GPS) 241

GPS 101 241

Windows Phone Location Services 243

Simulating Position Changes 245

Creating the Geo Position Demo 249

Summary 252

Q&A 252

Workshop 253

HOUR 18: Playing Audio 255

Getting Started with Windows Phone Audio 255

Creating the Audio Demo Program 259

Summary 262

Q&A 262

Workshop 263

HOUR 19: Reading and Writing Files Using Storage 265

Using Windows Phone Isolated Storage 265

Creating the Storage Demo Example 270

Summary 274

Q&A 275

Workshop 275

HOUR 20: Creating a Graphical User Interface 277

Creating the GUI Controls 278

Demonstrating the GUI Controls 287

Summary 292

Q&A 292

Workshop 292

HOUR 21: Finite State Gameplay 295

Finite State Gameplay in Theory 295

Testing Game State 299

Summary 308

Q&A 308

Workshop 309

HOUR 22: The Physics of Gravity 311

Simulating Gravity 311

The Gravity Demo 314

Summary 320

Q&A 321

Workshop 321

HOUR 23: Rocket Science: Acceleration 323

Building the Game 323

Summary 334

Q&A 335

Workshop 335

HOUR 24: The Black Hole Game 337

Adding the Finishing Touches 337

Summary 357

Q&A 357

Workshop 357

Index 359