XNA Links for Teachers (and other learners)

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I’ve been hearing from a lot of high school computer science teachers that they are looking for some fun and educational things to do with their AP CS students once the exam is over. For some of these teachers some XNA looks promising. For those people and more I decided to put this collection of resources together in one place. I’m open to adding more if people leave me comments or send me email. What works for you to get jump started with XNA and game development?

Official XNA Sites

Books

Projects – By and For Educators

Very Silly Games

Very Silly Games is a "Library of Gameplay silliness" from which you can pull down fully working XNA games you can play instantly on your computer or, once you have joined the XNA Creators Club, on your Xbox 360.

XNA Game-Themed Assignments

Kelvin Sung from the University of Washington at Bothell has a project that is building XNA Game-Themed assignments for use in computer science classes.

The project home page is here.

The Release Guide with a lot of information and links is here.

Video Demos

GuitarMatey

GuitarMatey is a 3D game for the Xbox that allows you to improvise guitar music with the accompaniment of a backing track. Five pirates dance for you as you play the game. While GuitarMatey lacks a real objective or purpose, it is perfect to help you learn about developing 3D games for free using XNA and our partner tools. 

Full details and links to the videos may be found here.

When Cods Collide

Betsy Aoki has created a simple 2D game in XNA that involves collision detection. It looks like a useful series and it is a fun read. So here are the links:

· Making a 2D XNA Game - When Cods Collide - Part 1

· Making a 2D XNA Game - When Cods Collide - Part 2

· Making a 2D XNA Game - When Cods Collide - The Final Chapter

Modify an existing game in 10 minutes

Hilary Pike has created a short quick moving demo/screen cast on modifying an existing 2-dimensional XNA based video game. In just 10 minutes she walks the viewer through some key gaming concepts and then adds Collision Detection and Score Keeping to the game.

XNA Pong Game

Dan Waters has created a Pong game as a tutorial for beginners. This might be a piece of code a bright student might enjoy improving on themselves.

Other Sets of Links From Teachers

Brian Scarbeau’s XNA Class links - https://sws.lhps.org/XNAforstudents/tabid/347/Default.aspx

Patrick Coxall’s collection of videos - https://www.ottawacatholicschools.ca/teh/content.php?doc=3697