Day 1

XNA game studio in my start menu.

Today I've taken my first steps to making an xbox indie game.

First I installed visual studio 2000 and Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0.

After this I'm not sure what to do...

Clicking on XNA game studio in the start menu brings up a list of programs and links, but none of them is actually a program to make games with.

I've been googling what to do next, and I've eventually found this bit of helpful text (here):

You have heard all the buzz, you might have even seen some cool games that people said were written with XNA, but you're still not sure what exactly XNA is and what you can do with it. "XNA" the term is a brand, it refers to all the Microsoft Technologies that have to do with developing games. This includes both DirectX and the XNA framework. Most of the buzz lately is due to the XNA framework and chances are that is why you are here.
The XNA framework is an API. What that means is that it is a framework developed by Microsoft to help you make games faster. It's not a drag and drop game maker and you will need to learn how to program before you can use it. It is easy to use, but you will have to be somewhat technical to develop games with it.
The XNA framework is not a game engine. It does not include physics, collision detection and other things often found in game engines. It is a game development framework, but how the game works is programmed entirely by you.
XNA Game Studio is the environment you develop in. XNA Game Studio is basically a plug-in that gets installed into one of the currently supported Visual Studio environments. Typically XNA framework games are written in C#, but there is some support for other .NET languages with some slight functionality lost.

From this I gather that:

• XNA Game Studio is a.k.a. XNA framework
• You write in C#
• C# is a .NET language
• You use the XNA framework in Visual Studio

I've opened Visual Studio and there isn't an obvious choice from here. I guess I'll choose file > new > project.

Starting a new project in Visual Studio

The options when you start a new project in Visual Studio

Now what do I choose? There's no obvious choice like 'XNA framework' or 'Xbox Indie Game'. I thought it could be 'Console Application' (since the Xbox is a console) but googling the term gives:

A console application is a computer program designed to be used via a text-only computer interface, such as a text terminal, the command line interface of ...

It seems I also need to learn how to program (using C# (how is this pronounced? 'see hash?)). I've ordered a £15 book from amazon, which was recommended for beginners on this thread.

It seems the next step is either to join the App Hub for around £60, or to learn some C#. I think I'll do the latter first - at least see if programming is for me, before I shell out that much money.