Silverlight Games 101

Moved again, hopefully permanently

Bill Reiss — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:46:32 +0000

I’ve been contemplating a move to WordPress for a while for my blog, I’ve used Community Server and BlogEngine.net previously, and both of those have left me feeling lacking. I have been barraged with comment spam lately, and I hope that WordPress will make it easier to avoid this. I also wanted to move my [...]

Compile your XNA 2D games to run in Silverlight with SilverSprite

Bill Reiss — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:29:32 +0000

In December, I released my Dr. Popper game on Xbox Live Community Games (XLCG) which allows you to sell your XNA based games on the Xbox 360. We also started work on Silver Arcade, a hosted game platform for Silverlight games. So I started thinking more about how to make a game for both XNA [...]

New Silverlight game developers forum on silverlight.net

Bill Reiss — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:35:37 +0000

It looks like Microsoft is taking Silverlight game development seriously, first we hear about a contest with a $5000 prize at http://www.serverquestcontest.com and now they’ve launched a new forum just for game development on the official Silverlight developer’s site silverlight.net. More about the contest soon, but if you want to check out the new forum, [...]

I’m just speechless… What an honor to be the first Silverlight MVP

Bill Reiss — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 08:32:45 +0000

Last week, Scott Guthrie announced the addition of a Silverlight expertise for the Microsoft MVP program. Up until now, any MVPs specializing in Silverlight were part of the Client App Dev expertise. Client App Dev includes Windows Forms, WPF, and Silverlight MVPs. With all of the interest in Silverlight and its strategic importance to Microsoft, [...]

Got a Silverlight Game? Want to make some money?

Bill Reiss — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:18:55 +0000

Over the past year, I’ve talked with a few of you about my dream of creating a game site exclusively for Silverlight games. I’m pleased to say that I’ve found a couple of other developers who share my vision and we’re actively working on putting the site together. Think Miniclip or Kongregate but for Silverlight [...]

Frame Based Sprite Animation in Silverlight

Bill Reiss — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 05:57:05 +0000

Code for this sample: http://www.bluerosegames.com/silverlight-games-101/samples/wokka.zip There is more than one way to skin a cat. In Silverlight, many time there are several, with many being bad, and a couple being good. Sometimes there is no clear cut winner as to the best way to do something. This is one of those cases, and I’m presenting one [...]

Dr. Popper now on Xbox Live Community Games

Bill Reiss — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 04:02:31 +0000

This post isn’t strictly Silverlight game related, but since you may have played the Silverlight version, I thought you might be interested. I’m thrilled to announce that Dr. Popper has passed peer review and is now available through Xbox Live Community Games for only 200 points. It has all of the game modes from the [...]

A simple Silverlight game particle system

Bill Reiss — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:33:39 +0000

Source code: http://www.bluerosegames.com/silverlight-games-101/samples/particles.zip Particles are a key part of game programming. When it comes to explosions, smoke effects, and many other types of effects, it is often easier and gives a better effect to compose the full effect out of several smaller particles. These particles can vary in velocity, position, color, and opacity, among other properties, [...]

An improved Silverlight Sprite class

Bill Reiss — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:00:07 +0000

Source code for this sample: http://www.bluerosegames.com/silverlight-games-101/samples/better-sprites.zip When I started working on my next sample which has to do with creating particles, I saw that I had most of what I needed in the Sprite class but I needed to be able to inherit from it to add some functionality. Inheritance is a bit messy in Silverlight [...]

Generating Asteroids for the Game

Bill Reiss — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:25:53 +0000

Source code for this tutorial: http://www.bluerosegames.com/silverlight-games-101/samples/GeneratingAsteroids.zip In the original asteroids arcade game, the asteroids themselves were randomly assigned from a predefined set of shapes. I thought it would be more interesting to dynamically generate the outline of each asteroid as we create them. The first this we want to do is move the CreateVectorFromAngle and DegreesToRadians [...]