Just checking in and I have downloaded the April 07th refresh of the XNA GSE. I also have gone over some of the library documentation and it seems very promising. In the mean time I've been busy putting together some graphics of sorts for the main menu. Its a real chore to manage the graphics with some XML code and going back and forth making sure all is right. There is so much to digest and parse out . At the moment , I am working on developing with the Express version code name Orca's. I am hapy to see that the overall improvements are great. For one, the Database is smaller ,due to the fact its built around the Compact framework for smaller platforms.
This also true for XNA.

XNA media program

As sort of a favor and an endeavor for me to begin a project, I am going to start a media project.
First of all I will design the interface ,to be used on an X-Box 360. One of the main objectives is to get the video and sound together for possible movie and/or music files for DVD burning.
One of the formats that was requested was .AVI for movie streaming.
The next step is to get most of the source code together, for which I'll use my Visual C# Express IDE and compiler.
Next, is to get all or most of the information pertaining to multimedia . I willl also try to implement DirectX source code, which is rich in depth of code,Yikes.
XNA , already has a sound API that is integrated into the DLL's .
Thats' it for now, in a few more weeks I will post some of my progress, which may be slow at first. A word of caution ,this not a wiz bang deal. You cannot expect a real program just come outta the blue and work perfectly.
------------------Later-----------------------

OLD SCHOOL VIDEO GAMES

Back when video games may have gotten started, there were a few people who had ideas as to how and when games would be made and played. Many of these pre programming genius's ,I think, relied on ordinary children's games (with a lot of imagination) to get things started in  the realm of game programming. when we were growing up did we not play some sort of variation of table tennis, Ping Pong. There were adventures to be had playing hide and seek. Then thee were classic table games that started the roots of strategy games. One of these was checkers and the other was chess. Out of these games came the very foundation of video games to date.

 

New Stuff

In the area of components, you would have to consider the basics.

1. Preamble: Sort of an introduction to your program- aka splash screen
   
2. Menu structure: This is to give users some options
3. Game engine: Here you will need an outline to begin--- procedures,etc.
   

Procedures to which the program may actually initialize elements of graphics

rendering, messages, and code cleanup

Grid Component

One of the most fascinating things about some game Add-ins are the grid patterns used. For one, I would like to put a 3D grid pattern on the console face that looks like a chess board ,viewed from a 30 degree angle. This is to make a perspective view for designing other objects that may be used in the game.

here is the basic outline :

public partial class GameComponent1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GameComponent
{
public GameComponent1(Game game)
: base(game)
{
// TODO: Construct any child components here
}

/// <summary>
/// Allows the game component to perform any initialization it needs to before starting
/// to run. This is where it can query for any required services and load content.
/// </summary>
public override void Initialize()
{
// TODO: Add your initialization code here

base.Initialize();
}

/// <summary>
/// Allows the game component to update itself.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param>
public override void Update(GameTime gameTime)
{
// TODO: Add your update code here

base.Update(gameTime);
}
}

Here is link to someone who is programming code for XNA:

Sedlak-XNA

XNA Components

Here I will attempt to outline a design of a single component for XNA framework. Hopefully it can be used creatively.