http://learnbuildplay.com/Training/IndieGameDevBook

Last December, I finished my game development book for XNA and was beginning reviews and conversations with publishers. In February, Microsoft announced that it had no plans to expand XNA any further and that Support for it would be dying out. Exit publishers.

But it turns out that the open source version, Mono Game, has been taking off. Coursera/University of Colorado has released an XNA game programming course (about half way done right now) on XNA, and over 22,000 people signed up wanting to learn it. Given the free nature of this, and the fact I had this book decaying in backups, yet still current in technology, I decided to release it for free.

You follow a small indie team as they take an initial concept, design it out, learn to work together as a team, learn to program, learn AI & physics, produce the game, and then even learn how to approach testing, investors and releases.

I'm hoping this will be a valuable resource for many, but I'm also looking for advice to improve it. I don't want this to become a stagnant training material. I'm actually working with some top notch artists, musicians and market agents on addressing new versions of this. I want your feed back. Tell me the good, the bad and the ugly.

The next releases of the book will be split out more, and focusing on the different areas more. The specialists I'm working with will help re-author and add content to improve it. I hope you enjoy the book as is, but don't hesitate to suggest changes, tell me how terrible the current art is, or even express that the comic training in it is terrible.

I use this book in my classes, and I don't want it to be from my head alone, not when I have a whole community of awesome game developers and those starting out, who may be able to help make it better!

Thanks!

Wanted something exactly like this for learning gamedev using XNA or monogame. The fact that its free is totally awesome. I'll be sure to get back to you with some feedback as soon as I go through this. Is there a specific way how you want us to give you feedback or just replying here is good enough?

Is there a specific way how you want us to give you feedback or just replying here is good enough?

Excellent question. You can post it here, but I've been taking what I get in direct feedback from here and other posts/forums and placing it in the Learn Build Play contact page, particularly its feedback section.

This sounds like a job for the GDN Book Review team! Assuming one still exists....

Appreciate you putting out such a wealth of material. For free at that!

It's quite good, but maybe there should be prepended a "Beginners'" in the title of it.. I was checking it out expecting to find vectors, quaternions, voxels and many other things

(Though i realize, it is focused heavily on the team and project aspect)

No matter.. good work

Man, I loved this book!!!! Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us

That's really cool of you to release it for free. I bet it will help a lot of future developers.

Could we get some e-book format please?

.MOBI or .EPUB?

Could we get some e-book format please?
.MOBI or .EPUB?

Definately. I've have multiple requests for this.

I'm working with some people about redeveloping the book, and ina bit we will be re-releasing this, but in smaller sections, taking into account nearly every request I've gotten so far, and then some.

Dan, what a great book! But those figures of people like "Kathy", "Daron" etc looks horrific, please add some good looking ones :)