Kurt Jaegers - XNA 4 3D Game Development by Example: Beginners Guide

Kurt Jaegers is an Oracle Database Administrator and Windows Network Administrator, as well as a long-time hobbyist game developer. He has built games for everything from the Commodore 64 to the Xbox 360. He is the owner of xnaresources.com, and the author of XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide (C# edition) and XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide Visual Basic Edition , both of which were published by Packt Publishing.

As always, I would like to thank my wife Linda for proofreading my original drafts. I would also like to thank the visitors to my website and the readers of my first two XNA books for their support, encouragement, and thought provoking questions. Finally, I would like to thank the team at Packt Publishing. This is my third book with them, and the experience has always been wonderful.

Kenneth Dahl Pedersen now aged 35, has been programming since he got his first computer at age 6, starting on the Commodore 64 with small programs that could do next to nothing. It quickly evolved when he migrated to the much more powerful Amiga 500, developing some demos and light applications, and finally culminated when he got his first PC.

Since then, game development has held his interest in a vice grip and Kenneth has since then studied numerous programming languages and APIs for that purpose, his repertoire includes C/C++, OpenGL, DirectX, C#, WPF, WCF, MDX, and XNA.

With the appearance of readily available high-end engines, such as Unreal Development Kit, Kenneth had found another interest to keep him well sated in his thirst for game development knowledge. UnrealScript provided another mountain top to climb.

Kenneth has an education as a Systems Analyst and Developer. Originally from Denmark, where he still works, he now lives in Sweden with his wife and baby daughter.

Other than his wife and daughter, he uses his spare time for game development, seeking new knowledge, and dabbling in 3D visual arts in applications such as 3D Studio Max and ZBrush. And of course, Kenneth is an avid gamer after all, you cannot make a game if you don't enjoy playing them!

First of all, I would like to thank my wife, Nina, for the patience she's shown while I was doing this reviewI have probably not been as helpful around the house as I should have been while this has been going on.

My beautiful daughter, Nadia, for always giving me a reason to smile and laugh.

Michael Schuld started his foray into game development using Managed DirectX v9; after playing with the framework for a few months, he decided there wasn't enough beginner content out in the world to help those people who are new to game development.

To fix this problem, he immediately set out writing a tutorial series that he kept up to date with the change from Managed DirectX to XNA and all the updates to the XNA Framework since then. Along with these tutorials, he has hosted a popular XNA Game Development forum and has helped hundreds of programmers new to game development get their feet wet. The site and tutorials have been listed by Microsoft and GameInformer as one of a select list of community resources for anyone wanting to learn the XNA Framework.

More recently, he has expanded his work into DirectX v11 and reviewing books in the game development arena. His recent work, tutorials, and reviews can all be found on http://www.thehazymind.com.

I would like to thank David Bonner, Charles Humphrey, and Michael Quandt for their early interest and assistance with my tutorial series, both in reviewing the content for ease of use and helping out with the forums. I'm glad to have you guys around to keep things from getting too crazy.

Newton Sheikh , is a software engineer working on Cloud applications for Windows Azure platform. Newton has been working with .NET technologies for the last 4 years and loves programming both in C# and VB. Newton's hobbies include web development and web designing. He is a casual game programmer for Android and Windows. When not programming, Newton loves to hang out with his friends.

Newton made a very humble start of his career with a company named Inyxa LLC based in Faridabad, India. Currently Newton is working with Hanu Softwares in Gurgaon, India.

Pedro Daniel Gida Vzquez is an Economist, System Analyst, Professor, and Microsoft MVP for DirectX and XNA, which are some of the accomplishments obtained throughout his life. Owner of Pulsar Coders, an indie company that develops videogames for many platforms, he enjoys working daily on everything related to videogame development. His skills cover many areas in the field, both technical and artistic, and he is always looking for interesting challenges to extend his personal and professional goals. You can find a comprehensive bio of Pedro at http://www.linkedin.com/in/pedroguida.

Pedro has worked on XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide Visual Basic Edition (Book) and XNA Game Development Video Training Screencast (Video tutorial), both of which are endeavors by Packt Publishing.