Silverlight Games 101

Tampa User Experience Users Group First Meeting September 10

The Tampa User eXperience User Group will have its first meeting next Wednesday. The presentation will be MS Ajax Client Script 101 by Jay E. Kimble. We will be meeting at  Answers Systems (4029 Tampa Road, Oldsmar, Fl 34677... right next to the Oldsmar Fleamarket).

Pizza and drinks will be supplied, so come on out. One lucky winner will walk away with an MSDN Premium subscription!

No web site yet, but go to Jay's blog here if you plan on coming and let him know:

http://theruntime.com/blogs/jaykimble/archive/2008/09/03/tux-tampa-ux-is-next-wednesday-sept.-10th-at-630pm.aspx

Silverlight Sports Game Contest Registration and Submission now live

I'm happy to announce that you can now register and submit your games for the TeamZone Sports Silverlight Sports Game Contest. The deadline is approaching, games must be submitted by September 8th. With $2000 in prize money, we're looking forward to seeing some great submissions. I encourage you to go ahead and register now even if your game isn't ready to submit since we will be sending out any important information to registered users if needed.

You can get details about registering and submitting here: http://www.teamzonesports.com/SilverlightGameContest/Submit

Silverlight Game Contest rules and FAQ now online

I previously posted about a Silverlight game development contest that is being sponsored by TeamZone Sports http://www.teamzonesports.com (who happens to be my employer) and I wanted to briefly update you that the contest site is live, with official rules and FAQ. The submit page isn't quite ready yet, I'll post again when this goes live.

The official contest page is here:

http://www.teamzonesports.com/SilverlightGameContest

Good luck with your games and I'm looking forward to seeing them!

Developing games that work with both XNA and Silverlight

Yesterday I co-presented a session at GameFest 2008 on Silverlight game development, and one of the things I showed was a sample of abstracting out the differences between Silverlight and XNA so that you could write game code that would run against both.

The quick and dirty sample is here:

http://www.bluerosegames.com/silverlightxnasample.zip

I want your input, if something like this was built up into a game library that could run on both Silverlight and XNA and was available on CodePlex, would you be interested? It would be a fairly significant undertaking and I want to know whether people would find it worthwhile. I thought it might be a bit more relevant now that you'll be able to sell XNA Games on XBOX 360. 

Announcing a new Silverlight game contest

I'm happy to announce that there is a new game contest that will be starting soon for Silverlight games. You can read more about it here:

http://www.teamzonesports.com/home/SilverlightGameContest

The games have to be sports related, it can be as little as some sports graphics in your puzzle game, or something as totally sports as a complete soccer simulator.

The complete rules and submission form will be available on August 8, 2008, but you can start working on your game now. If you have any questions, you can send them to contests@teamzonesports.com

Submissions need to be in by September 8, so you have some time to put a great game together. Most importantly, the games have to be fun, gameplay is king.

Edit: We're still nailing down the last details, but it looks like the contest will be open to US residents only, sorry.

Sweet New Vector Graphics Space Game

All I can say about this new game, Vector Space: Zero, is that I'm glad it wasn't entered into the DevX Silverlight game contest or I wouldn't have a chance. Daniel "Dan Dan" Gimenez did an amazing job on this game with parallax background scrolling, retro vector graphics, background music, sound effects and high scores.

You can play it here: http://www.ddtmm.com/vs0/

Wow, just wow...and I'm happy to have contributed in a small way by giving him some early guidance through my tutorials, and he used the Farseer physics engine as well. 

Silverlight Streaming now supports Silverlight 2 Beta 2

I've become a big fan of Silverlight Streaming. It's simple to deploy a XAP file and have your Silverlight application running in seconds. There is also now an REST API to upload and manage Silverlight apps and other files.The have also added support for accessing WMV video files via a URL, so you could use it as a general purpose video server.

However with all of the great things they have been adding to Silverlight Streaming, they took a little while to get it running with Silverlight 2 Beta 2. They have now released that support, so you can start using Silverlight Streaming to host your Silverlight 2 Beta 2 apps. I highly encourage you to check it out.

One other good thing about Silverlight 2 Beta 2 now being supported on Silverlight Streaming is that the games for the DevX RIA Run Silverlight game contest are now also updated to Beta 2, you can play my entry, Stack Attack, here:

http://www.devx.com/RIA/Game/38018?id=271&trk=StackAttack

Use Storyboards for Game Loop, not DispatcherTimer

Ok so I had some earlier posts discussing how to make a game loop using two different methods, one being an empty Storyboard, and the other being the use of a DispatcherTimer. Adam Kinney of Microsoft has researched it a bit, and has posted his findings, confirming some of the empirical results I found from testing the two:

http://adamkinney.com/blog/339/default.aspx

Adam writes:

The DispatcherTimer is a lower resolution timer than the timer behind the Storyboard class, which causes loss in fidelity. Additionally, the Storyboard execution is more stable across the different supported OSs and Browsers.

So it looks like to get the smoothest movement in your game, you should use the Storyboard technique that I talk about in my Silverlight Game Loop tutorial.

Silverlight Games 101 Posts and Samples Updated to Silverlight 2 Beta 2

I have updated the new iteration of samples and tutorials to Silverlight 2 Beta 2. The Zip files for the sample source code have also been updated. If you see any issues with the samples, please let me know and I'll update them ASAP.

Also to help with getting to the tutorials easily, I have added a quick access listing of tutorials to my Blue Rose Games site here:

http://www.bluerosegames.com/brg/silverlight_game_development.aspx

I'll update this list as I add more samples.

Now that Beta 2 is released, expect more game related tutorials in the near future. I've been holding off on doing too many because they all had to be updated for Beta 2. Now that Beta 2 is released, it should be easier to create some content that will work with Beta 2 and beyond.

RIA Run Silverlight game contest entries posted

The folks at DevX are running a contest for Silverlight 2 games, the deadline has passed, but a few entries are up on their site now:

http://www.devx.com/RIA/Door/37728

I'm a bit partial to one of the entries, Stack Attack. I heard about the contest about a week before the deadline and decided to see if I could write a game from scratch in a few evenings using Silverlight 2. Stack Attack is the result, and I think it turned out pretty well. If I had a bit more time I would have added high scores and polished it a bit more. Please go and play my game and the other entries and let me know what you think!

This is a direct link to the Stack Attack game page:

http://www.devx.com/RIA/Game/37741?id=271

A couple of strategy tips in the game. Diagonal lines are worth the most, followed by horizontal, and lastly vertical. You get bonus points (2x or more) for getting a "combo" (2 or more lines at once) and you also get bonus points when a line collapses and causes another line. Also lines of 4 count as 2 lines, and lines of 5 count as 3, which can help you get to your goals easier.

Enjoy!

Silverlight Game Creation with the Popfly Game Creator

The Popfly guys have put together a game engine which you can use to create your own games.

http://blogs.msdn.com/johnmont/archive/2008/04/30/the-new-popfly-game-creator.aspx

It features the wizards and templates you've come to expect if you've played with Popfly and it's worth checking out.

Dr. Popper game, now with networked high scores

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while, or have been through the silverlight.net gallery, know about my Dr. Popper game. One of the things I was really looking forward to when I ported it to Silverlight 2 was to provide a server-based high score board. I'm pleased to announce that this is now deployed.

I used a combination of WCF and SubSonic to implement this, and I plan on creating a more general purpose high score system that you can use in your own game, so for now, if you want any more details on how I put this together, let me know.

You can play the new version here:

http://www.bluerosegames.com/brg/games.aspx

My new blog for general Silverlight (non gaming) stuff

Don't worry, I'm still mainly going to focus on blogging about game development, but I've had some topics I've wanted to post about lately that were not game related and didn't want to mix everything together in one spot. So I've set up a new blog here:

http://www.bluerosegames.com/SilverlightBrassTacks/

I'll keep posting to both, and put each post where it makes the most sense.

Fast facts about Microsoft MVPs

Well it looks like my renewal post the other day generated some interest and discussion, and it prompted Dave Campbell of Silverlight Cream to post his feelings about the MVP program as well:

http://geekswithblogs.net/WynApseTechnicalMusings/archive/2008/04/04/121043.aspx

Scott Vallee just sent me some fast facts about the MVP program that I'd like to share with you:

• Worldwide there are more than 100 million participants in technical communities.
• Of these participants there are only 4,000 MVPs located across 93 countries, spanning more than 30 languages and more than 90 Microsoft technologies.
• There has been a 10 percent to 15 percent MVP audience growth in countries such as China, Russia and Korea.
• Over the past few years new regions with MVPs include the Republic of Congo, Ghana, Nepal, Macedonia and Macao
• In recent years, a handful of MVPs have been awarded in new categories such as MSN, Xbox, Visual Studio Tools for Office, Microsoft Dynamics and Visual Studio Team System.
• MVPs are a diverse group that includes accountants, teachers, artists, government workers, engineers and technologists.

Thanks Scott for the information!

So now I feel even more honored to be part of the program, unfortunately my flight to the MVP Summit tomorrow (Friday) is on American Airlines on an MD80, so hopefully I'll make it up there.

Renewed as MVP for another year, with a bit of a change

I'm very happy to share that I've been renewed as a Microsoft MVP for the next year. Along with the renewal, I have been switched from DirectX/XNA as my main competency to Client App Dev, which is where they're putting the MVPs these days that are focusing on Silverlight. So what does this change mean? Not a lot overall, many MVPs focus on more than one area of Microsoft technologies, but it does mean that at events like the MVP Summit coming up, I get access to more sessions with the Silverlight team.

For those that are not familiar with the MVP program, it's all about helping in the community, both online and local. People who contribute significantly to one or the other or both are recognized by Microsoft for their contributions and are awarded on a yearly basis. When it comes time for renewal, you are judged solely on your contributions over the past year, and it's getting harder and harder to get renewed, so I'm grateful to be a part of the program for another year.

Reflecting back on my first year as an MVP, I'm thrilled with how many great people I've met, and the groups I've been able to speak in front of. Over the past year, I've gone from a complete novice speaker terrified to get in front of a small group to someone who's pretty comfortable in front of a group of 100 or more. Working with the community is something I really enjoy, maybe more than I even thought I would, and everything that I've given has come back to me many times over.

People ask me how to become an MVP, and for them I have the following advice:

• Find a Microsoft technology that excites and interests you
• Get involved in online forums and newsgroups, especially answering questions
• Get to know your local Microsoft Dev Evangelists and User Group leaders
• Get to know the other MVPs that focus on the same technology as you
• Volunteer to speak at any event you have an opportunity to speak at
• Start a blog and post useful information in the technology of your choice
• Start or become a contributor to an Open Source project, for example on CodePlex
• Most importantly: Only pursue MVP if you truly enjoy helping the community. It's a lot of work, and unless the work is rewarding to you, the other benefits probably won't be worth your time.

This is a very exciting year for Silverlight and XNA, and I look forward to contributing to both of these communities of the next year and beyond.