XNA Game Development, from Beginner to Semi-Pro from the horse's mouth (so to speak)

You all know that every so often I like to sprinkle in educational, tutorial, "teach you to fish" like posts. Looking at complete projects is great, but sometimes it's also good to take a step back and get a more foundational picture. Also not everyone is as up to speed as you all are.

Today's post is curtsey of Alfred Thompson (aka Computer Science Teacher on MSDN), XNA Game Development Tutorial

Online. Plaintext Searchable Code. Lessons for Design, Art, and Programming. Everything You Need, Free.

Jump in at: http://create.msdn.com/gamedevelopment

Developed in Collaboration With MSDN Channel 9, XNA Game Studio, and App Hub

Bite-Sized Lessons, A Great Single-Screen Experience

This combination video and text tutorial set teaches basic 2D game development on Windows, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone 7 using XNA Game Studio 4.0.

• Videos are each less than 5 minutes in length
• Accessible with a web browser, no special installs needed
• All source code is plaintext, easy to copy and paste
• Assets and code projects downloadable for a quick jumpstart
• Downloadable checkpoints throughout to keep learners on track
• Entire experience can be run windowed, side-by-side with Visual Studio

COMPREHENSIVE EDUCATION

Learn the following lessons in our easy-to-follow chapters:

• Game Design from Start to Finish
• Animated and Static Art Creation
• The Game Loop Explained
• The XNA Content Pipeline
• Rendering Static and Animated Sprites
• Player Input on Windows, Xbox 360, and Phone
• Collision Detection and Response
• Debugging Game Code
• User Interface Design and Rendering
• Sound Playback
• Information on Xbox LIVE Indie Games and Windows Phone Marketplace

App Hub - Game Development Tutorial

From getting started getting the tools, designing your game (which I like that they included this step... getting into coding quickly is great, but you really need to have some idea of where you want to go with that code...), blowing stuff up through what to do when you're all done, each session takes you though developing your own game, on your XNA platform of choice, Windows, XBox 360 or Windows Phone 7

Here’s a few more links you might find interesting:

• App Hub
• WP7 "XNA for Silverlight Developers" Series
• Mixing the Game State Management and Platformer XNA Recipes
• XNA RPG - Learning XNA while building a RPG, a 26 part tutorial series
• Windows Phone 7, XNA and Farseer Physics. And source... and a game... and...
• If I were "graphically challenged" where could I get resources I could use in my XNA games?