Acknowledgments

The genesis of this book occurred as part of the XNA Based Game-Themed Programming Assignments for CS1/2 project, funded under the Computer Gaming Curriculum in Computer Science initiative from Microsoft External Research, and by Microsoft Research Connections. We would like to thank John Nordlinger for his recognition of our vision and Donald Brinkman and Lee Dirks for continual support, including their invaluable discussions and for allowing us incredible access. Throughout the project, Kent Foster has been our best advocate, connecting us with many end users who provided much-needed refinements to the examples. The final refinement of the materials and the book development efforts are part of the Game-Themed CS1/2: Empowering the Faculty project, funded by the Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (TUES) Program (National Science Foundation [NSF] award number DUE-1140410).

Students and the games they build from the course CSS385: Introduction to Game Development (see http://courses.washington.edu/css385) at the University of Washington Bothell have provided us with the ideal deployment vehicle and are a source of continuous inspiration. They have tested, retested, contributed to, and assisted in the formation and organization of the contents. The first two authors of this book are recent alumni of CSS385.

The University of Washington Bothell logo, which is used throughout this book, is a trademark owned by the University of Washington Bothell. The permission to use the logo is a courtesy of and does not represent endorsement from the institution. The Mind_Meld.mp3 audio clip used in the audio project from Chapter 7, “Sprites, Camera, Action!” was composed by Shane Krolikowski (http://skrolikowski.com/) using Apple’s GarageBand samples.

We also want to thank Pei Zheng for introducing us to Russell Jones, who connected us to our editor Gwenan Spearing at Apress. A heartfelt thank-you to Gwenan for her appreciation of our vision and for her patience and expertise in guiding us through the book-writing process, and many thanks to Felipe Ramos, our technical reviewer. Finally, we would like to thank Mark Powers for his insightful technical feedback and writing guidance.