Learn to program games in C#, for free

Hey All,

While I have ancient knowledge of C, Basic, and some C++, It's been over a decade since I flexed that knowledge, and it's mostly lost to time. That being said, most game languages today are some variant of C#, JavaScript, Assembly, or engine specific. I was interested in XNA when it first came out, but never got around to looking into it.

When it was announced XNA was going the way of the dodo, I looked into alternate easy ways to learn C# or other languages for use with Unity, but never really had much luck or much willpower behind it, as there wasn't much structure.

Then, a friend recently told me about this: http://www.coursera.org/course/gameprogramming

It's actually given by a teacher from University of Colorado, and if you take the course while it is live (it just started this week), you can apparently even get actual college credit for it as long as you complete it within time. The course goes over programming games with C# in XNA and MonoGame. While XNA is dead, MonoGame is an open platform that has XNA APIs, and can even export to next gen consoles, apparently. I'm pretty sure you'll also be able to use the C# knowledge gained within Unity, if you want.

The intro info so far as has been ultra helpful, and the course states that no previous coding knowledge is required, so I wanted to make some of my fellow duders aware.

The msdn site has really good documentation for c# if there is some syntax you don't quite get. Just putting it out there, good luck duder.

@eujin: oh damm, this looks awesome, thank you very much for the heads up!

you know if any chance he will be doing the class anytime in the future?

seems a bit late to jump in, i get the feeling we would be swamped with work to catch up.

any chance also you can elaborate a bit on what you mean that we get a college credit for taking the class?

@mrfluke: This is the first week. This week's class is just introduction to what the course is about, and some basic coding concepts.

As a heads up, it's all recorded lectures, reading, labs, etc. You can join even after the class is over, you just don't get the college credit. So you could join at anytime. I only joined Thursday.

@eujin: awesome to hear, thanks again for the heads up.

but doing some research on the site, maybe your college is giving you a college credit once you show them the certificate

cause it seems with the exception of 5 classes (and that one is not one of the 5) , you dont get any college credit.

http://help.coursera.org/customer/portal/articles/1164367-will-i-get-university-credit-for-taking-these-courses-

regardless, still an awesome resource.

@mrfluke: I'm not entirely concerned about the credit, but it's still cool for those who are.

Also, if you watch the introduction to the instructor video, dude has a crazy Racing game rig.

I think reading MSDN is much better.

does anyone know if I can simply copy my code from an XNA project into monogame and have it run (aside from having to compile assets into xnb first)?

@killacam: From what I understand, it's not quite that simple. If you're in the course, there's a section for MonoGame resources that goes over that. Another reference I found is also here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/192209/from_xna_to_monogame.php

It sounds like MonoGame doesn't have it's own Content Pipeline for XNA stuff yet, so it uses XNA's instead. Other than that it should be the same..I think?

Anecdotes from the course:

Man I felt real dumb when I couldn't figure out why the end result number for the first week's assignment was coming out way off what it should have. It helps that you have your division and multiplication set up right. I was dividing where I should have multiplied.

Either way, I really dig the course so far. He kind of wants you to get his book from amazon as course materials (for $10), but so far I haven't really needed it, and he goes over what you need as part of the lectures and labs.

@eujin: Thanks. Yeah I knew about the pipeline stuff, but other than that monogame sounds like a dream.

So, having completed week 2, I think a lot of the concepts the instructor's teaching will be helpful in general, and the C# code he's teaching isn't XNA specific in most cases (Although it looks like the graphics drawing stuff is XNA/Mono specific, but you could likely make the transition to Unity pretty easily once you've got the C# down.).

So far, it's been pretty fun, and I've not run into needing to look up anything externally (or in books) outside of asking peers in the course, except for when I was trying to grasp Classes in C#.

Basically, I'm recommending this for anyone who has the patience, regardless if you care about course credit or not, as it'll be there forever.

It's been a week since you've made this thread.

Usually they repeat the courses at throughout the year

I think he made the thread while the course was in the middle-end of the first week.

@oodli:

I know. I just like drama.

@video_game_king: @oodli: Both of you are correct. I made the first post shortly after I finished watching the Lectures for week 1, as I wasn't sure if it was worthwhile or not to mention.

So far, I've felt it's been pretty worthwhile.

For anyone working on the course: If you're doing lab 10, the instructor posted that he's got old code uploaded as the materials. There's info in the discussion forum there on the proper steps to complete it. Feel free to PM me if you get stuck, the lab itself was pretty helpful.

In other news, assignment 3 completed. Getting better at reading code documentation has helped a ton. Also, people on the course forums have no idea about rules of blackjack.