As of now (well a couple of days ago) DreamSpark has been available to students in a number of major countries around the world. It is a great program that empowers students to work with technology without being restricted by finances.
What is DreamSpark?
DreamSpark is free software. It is a program where if you are a student and can verify that (usually with a Uni email address), then you can get a ton of free professional development and design tools from Microsoft.
What is included?
- Visual Studio 2005 Pro
- Visual Studio 2008 Pro
- Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
- SQL Server 2005 Development Edition
- Expression Studio
- XNA Game Studio 2.0
- 12-month subscription to XNA Creators Club
These are available alongside the already free Express editions and MS Virtual PC, all perfect to get into developing for a wide range of platforms, including the Xbox 360! (requires the Creators Club subscription)
Go to the DreamSpark Website and follow the instructions there to get your free stuff. Countries and Universities are being added all the time, so if you aren't able to get in now, check later. Or better yet, talk to your University about getting into this.
So how is this different from MSDN?
Well for one thing, this does not contain any free client Operating Systems. So that means you cannot free versions of XP or Vista through DreamSpark. However DreamSpark does give you a 12 month Creators Club subscription for free, which is worth $129 Australian ($99 US), so you can start using Visual Studio 2005 and XNA Game Studio (does not work with 2008 yet) to create games for your Xbox 360.
Resources for XNA
So you want to get started in XNA? Well there are a ton of resources out there already, prepared to help you get started.
Firstly I have a strong knowledge of XNA, and post up Samples and Tutorials to this site. Currently not much, but I intend to get more up. :)
Then you have the Creators Club website. This site is the official site for XNA and contains tons of info on the subject. You do not have to have a subscription to access the learning materials, just a couple of premium starter kits and partner items. On the website there are plenty of samples detailing almost anything you would want to do with XNA. A couple of Video tutorials, and plenty of friendly help on the forums.
You can get to the website through http://creators.xna.com
For a really nice set of tutorials for the beginner, working through creating an engine, you can't go past www.thehazymind.com where Mike Schuld has put together plenty of tutorials explaining many key aspects of basic engine development. Once you are done, or if you have an issue, head to the forums at www.thehazymind.com/smf and post there. There are plenty of people there (including myself) willing to help you out, as well as some extensions to the engine and plenty of ideas and friendly coders.
For a daily must read (maybe for your RSS reader) you cannot go past www.ziggyware.com for articles, links and videos relating to XNA. I suggest you bookmark that and check it every so often for great resources and tutorials. Sometimes even competitions with great prizes.
Of course there are plenty of books coming out on XNA, just search Amazon for XNA and you can find them easily. Some nice light reading before sleep. ;)
For writing HLSL shaders, there are a couple of options:
Once Australia gets into DreamSpark, I will post more on it. If you can get into it now, enjoy. Otherwise in the meanwhile, you can download any of the express editions as well as XNA Game Studio 2.0 for free and get started.
(XNA Game Studio requires Visual C# Express or higher)