Let's Make a Game Engine for XNA 4.0r, Prologue

I was in the middle of making a simple game engine framework so I could start writing blog posts about things like creating camera, input systems, terrain systems, spatial partitioning, etc., when I realized that I should document the actual creation of the framework.

I chose XNA for a few reasons:
1.) I'm already familiar with it after having developed a game engine for it: http://quickstartengine.codeplex.com/
2.) It's fast for prototyping
3.) It handles the back-end for a lot of mundane things like creating a Window, handling Windows messaging, handling DirectX. All of that means less I have to explain here on my blog, and that lets us get to the interesting parts more quickly.

You'll need some familiarity with Visual Studio 2010:
XNA 4.0r runs only in Visual Studio 2010. Luckily it works in the free version of VS2010 C# Express, which you can get here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/visual-csharp-express

The upcoming blog posts assume you know C#:
XNA runs within C#. If you do not know C# then you may want to stop now and spend a couple of days getting a basic rundown of C#. When I first started with XNA I knew only C++, I picked up enough about C# in about 8 hours to start making simple games in XNA. If you know C++ or Java fairly well then you can probably pick up the basics of C# pretty quickly.

If you're not familiar with XNA:
I would recommend at least spending a few hours looking a few simple tutorials to learn about some of the main functionality, how to create a project, and how the content pipeline works.
These links should cover just enough for you to grasp what you'll need to make this game engine.:
http://www.xnadevelopment.com/tutorials/gettingstartedwithxnadevelopment/GettingStartedWithXNADevelopment.shtml
http://www.xnadevelopment.com/tutorials/creatinganewxnagameproject/CreatingANewXNAWindowsGameProject.shtml
http://www.xnadevelopment.com/tutorials/addinganimagetothegameproject/AddingAnImageToTheGameProject.shtml

Ok, if you made it this far you are reasonably familiar with Visual Studio 2010 Express, C# and XNA 4.0r. Now we can continue on to Part 1 of this series.