The SpaceShooter minigame is an official released version of a tutorial session Mr Frank "Savage" Savage did for the Korea Game Conference in 2008. The idea was to try and create a basic prototype of a Wing Commander-style game using XNA Game Studio.
Despite having worked with XNA Game Studio for nearly 4 years, Frank was still surprised at how easy it was to create this minigame. This represents a grand total of 25 hours of coding, finding data on the web, building a procedural star field with MapZone, and lifting the rest of content from other XNA Game Studio samples and starter kits. Add to that another 5 hours of bug fixes, FxCop cleanup, garbage collector cleanup, and writing the appropriate documents!
...
Observant readers who've downloaded and played with the minigame probably noticed the stubs in the SpaceShip class for network play. My plan is to do a co-op play version where two players take on four AIs, which should make for some interesting multiplayer network code.
Once these elements are present, you have everything you need to build a real space game with multiplayer co-op, dozens of missions, and a compelling storyline. So I guess I better get those pieces built so I can start playing the great games this minigame will hopefully inspire. ;}
