Questions and comments to hal {at} artofmagic.co.uk

.NET RTS Engine

1. Game Design
1.1 One Page game Idea
1.2 Cut Down Game Engine
2. Using C# .NET and the XNA Game Studio - Create a Project
2.1 Using XNA to Create a New Game
2.2 Load a Model
2.3 Models and Entities
2.4 Local and Global Transforms
2.5 Cameras

Welcome to my attempt to show how you can write a Real Time Strategy (RTS) engine using DirectX and .NET 2.0. I'm going to use the XNA Express Framework.

This is essentially a tutorial site, there are already several existing Open Source .NET RTS engines and if you want a complete game system you would be better off starting with one of them.

On the other hand if you want to learn a little bit about games, DirectX and RTSs then this may be the place for you. No promises!

You can link to the various tutorials / steps involved from the left hand navigation menu.

The tutorials and steps are based on the key aspects in any design, I'm not being anywhere near as rigorous as I would be if I were doing this commercially, but hopefully all the key elements will be covered.

I did start this by using Managed DirectX (MDX) 1.1. However, this has gone the way of the dodo and Microsoft now offer the hobbyist/student XNA Game Studio Express. This is an excellent basis for us to use and integrates with a version of Softimage/Modtool for modelling and texture creation. And you can run your application on an xbox360. I suspect we'll not get that far but still pretty cool.

Onto first discussion page. 1. Game Design