Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1. Getting Started
So maybe you have played with XNA Game Studio and already know that it can help
you get a small game going relatively quickly. As you get better with it, you start to
uncover its limitations. You'd prefer to have the full power of DirectX available to you
in C#, since C# is nicer to work in than C++. Is there an alternative to XNA that can
give you this? The answer is yes.
SlimDX
will give you that power in C#. It also gives
you the power to work with different versions of DirectX as well. This means that you
can make your games support multiple DirectX versions so that they can run on more
computers, expanding your potential user base.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
• Setting up Visual Studio 2013 Express and SlimDX
• Creating our initial framework
• The GameWindow class and the GameLoop method
• Testing our game window
Setting up Visual Studio 2013 Express
We will be using Visual Studio 2013 Express since it is freely available from Microsoft.
Here are the steps to set up Visual Studio 2013 Express:
1. To download Visual Studio 2013 Express, you can visit the Microsoft website
This website will show you all of the Express versions of Visual Studio that are
available.
2. You will have to choose
Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop
since we are focusing on PC development. Click on it to expand its section
of the page, and then click on the
Install now
link to begin downloading the
installer (
wdexpress_full.exe
).
3. Now that you've downloaded the installer for Visual Studio 2013 Express, it's
time to install it. Just double-click on the installer file to begin the installation
process.
