Which loop to use - an Update - and XNA Games Studio Express
From the archive
This post was written in 2006. Technology has moved on a fair bit since then, so some of the tools, links and advice here may well be out of date. Treat it as a piece of history rather than a current guide.
XNA Game Studio Express
Just sounds great when saying it and looks like it should be a great hit, reducing the time and effort required to build multi-platform titles (albeit Microsoft software only) and gives the community a low-cost option of getting their work seen by the outside world.
For those of you not in the know yet, I would suggest hiking over to the Microsoft XNA developers homepage for more details but in short, the studio is an add-on express studio which builds upon C# express and the .NET2/.NET compact framework (depending on what you’re releasing to Windows/XBOX360). It gives a wealth of support for game developers (from beginner to pro) for creating games and content and with a small yearly fee ($99 Per Year) you can test and publish your games to Xbox Live for the community to download and play.
Back now to the main subject of this blog – the Game Loop
Just recently I spent some time browsing through the rest of the XNA team’s blogs (there are a few), I already knew and keep an eye out for Tom Miller’s Blog (good info) and also read Dave “Let’s Kill Dave” Weller’s blog (for a funnier outlook on life and XNA).
But today I came across Rick Hoskin’s blog (who recently has started blogging in the team, so new he’s not even done his profile yet, lol), he’s a Pro game programmer and provides some very good insight to good programming styles, dos and do nots.
Reading down I came across a nice little gem about a better game loop to use, he goes on further with some updates and even links to some further help on Tom’s blog (must have missed that one).
Just goes to show how much thought is required to choose a good game loop from the start and how much controversy there is on the subject.
Happy Blogging/Reading!