Newbie

[Shamun]

Hello everyone I'm new in this all 3D programming. I just want to know what is better to start with DirectX or XNA?

[Chr0n1x]

XNA is DirectX, but normally DirectX is C++ only, XNA is the C# 2.0 version of it, that also runs on the Xbox360.
If you mean Managed DirectX and XNA, I personally would say XNA, because it is not as harsh to those new to it, and also has a lot of newer things in it, besides compiling to .Net2.0 as well.

[Shamun]

Thank you very much, I tought that I should start learning XNA too.

[EddyLuten]

Pardon me if I bump this old thread but..

I've programmed solely in DirectX for the reason that I own Visual Studio 2005 Professional and don't want to use C# Express instead.

Currently, the XNA Framework for Windows ships with XNA Game Studio Express and not the DirectX SDK

I don't know if I'm getting things wrong here, but that's my main motivation. Is there any way that I could use XNA in Pro? If so, how hard would it be to port a DX9 project to XNA?

Thanks

[mikeschuld]

The Microsoft Guys have said they there will not be a supported version of XNA GSE for Pro, but that you should be able to run the two side by side with no troubles. The porting isn't too terribly bad, other than the main game class itself, as long as you did a lot of your coding modular enough you should only have to change the render calls in most places to get things running in XNA.

[muchrejoicing]

I can confirm that Visual C# 2005 runs just fine alongside VisualStudio 2005 Pro. It's worth it.

[SpaceShot]

Yeah on my current build there is Visual Studio 6.0, Visual Studio 2003 Pro, Visual Studio 2005 Pro, Visual C# 2005 Express, Visual Web Developer 2005 Express.  I expect to add Visual Studio 2008 to that mix next year (but drop support for 6.0 and 2003 at that time).

The installs work great side by side.  The only caveat I know of is that you should install 6.0 first before the rest.  Otherwise I've had no issues.  I've also read an article or two on using XNA in Visual Studio 2005 Pro and someone or two have even made converters so you can go back and forth (since you have to use Express for certain things, like say, deploying to the Xbox).

[Chr0n1x]

The MS guys said there will be XNA Pro, but you have to be a registered game developer to get it, just like the XDK. But Benjamin over at abi.exdream has done a lot of things to allow you to work with it on pro, since he loves his addons so much, including that converter back and forth.