Beginning .NET Game Programming in C [Paperback]

* Adapted for C# by key Microsoft Insiders from a previous bestseller--Lead author is the .NET Game evangelist at Microsoft!

* An easy-to-read, soup-to-nuts guide that helps you start programming games fast

* Packed with code examples that are complete games, Beginning .NET Game Programming in C# includes an introduction to Managed DirectX 9 and is also an introduction to exciting advanced features of .NET, including the Speech API to generate voices, synchronizing mouth animations with generated sounds, the .NET Compact Framework, data access with ADO.NET, collision detection, and artificial intelligence.

* Includes complete code listings and applications for all games included in the book: .Nettrix (a Tetris clone), .Netterpillars (a Snakes clone), River Pla.Net (River Raid clone), Magic KindergarteN., D-iNfEcT, and Nettrix II (for the Pocket PC) as well as a version of the classic game Spacewars and a Twisty Cube game that did not appear in the VB .NET version.

BACK A FEW YEARS AGO I HAD AN IDEA. What if I could make the power of the DirectX API available to the developers who were going to be using the new set of lan? guages and common language runtime that Microsoft was developing? The idea was intriguing, and opening up a larger portion of the world to DirectX was a goal I was only too happy to endorse. Besides, what developer doesn't want to write games? It seems that at least once a week I am answering questions directly regard? ing the performance of managed code, and Managed DirectX in particular. One of the more common questions I hear is some paraphrase of Is it as fast as unmanaged code? Obviously in a general sense it isn't. Regardless of the quality of the Managed DirectXAPI, the fact remains that it still has to run through the same DirectXAPI that the unmanaged code does. There is naturally going to be a slight overhead for this, but does it have a large l³$