Silverlight Games 101

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

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 and Silverlight. At first I thought about creating an abstraction layer on top of the two to provide a consistent way of writing games for both. The problem with this is that anyone else who wanted to use this framework would have to learn something new.

So instead I started to work on something ambitious, and really had no expectations up front that it would actually work. The idea was to create a way to compile your XNA 2D code and content into a Silverlight application. Even better would be if you didn't really have to change much or any code. This actually worked out better than I thought and gave rise to SilverSprite. SilverSprite is available as an open source project on CodePlex and the licensing should allow you to use it in any way you wish.

• CodePlex Project: http://www.codeplex.com/SilverSprite
• Watch the Channel 9 video on SilverSprite here: http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Continuum/SilverSprite/
• See SilverSprite in action here (running the Farseer Physics XNA demos): http://www.bluerosegames.com/silverspritefarseerdemo

I released a new version this weekend that adds some new features. Here is a partial current list:

• Implements much of SpriteBatch, so many SpriteBatch games should be easy to get working
• Bitmap fonts are supported
• Compressed DXT textures are supported to reduce XAP size.
• Gamepad controls are mapped to keyboard
• Keyboard and mouse are supported

One thing I do ask is that if you port your XNA game to Silverlight, that you consider hosting it on Silver Arcade.

Posted: Mar 23 2009, 03:29 by Bill Reiss | Comments (24) |

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Write a Silverlight Game and win $5000 cash!

Many of you have probably already seen this contest but if you haven't, it's the biggest prize I've ever seen for a Silverlight game contest. Microsoft is sponsoring the Server Quest game contest and you can find more details here:

http://www.serverquestcontest.com/index.aspx

Now I have checked with the people running the contest, and they tell me that you can still host your game wherever you want even if you submit it to the contest, so even if your game doesn't win, we'd love to consider it for Silver Arcade, our new site for hosting free web gameswritten exclusively in Silverlight, or win and also submit it to us for the best of both worlds.

I'd love to submit a game, and I have a good idea for a fairly original game, but I don't know if I'll have the time to actually write it. Good luck to you, you have 50 days left until the deadline.

Posted: Mar 10 2009, 14:42 by Bill Reiss | Comments (10) |

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New Silverlight game developers forum on silverlight.net

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, go here:

http://silverlight.net/forums/52.aspx

I find it useful to subscribe to the RSS feeds for the silverlight.net forums, if you're interested the feed is here:

http://silverlight.net/forums/rss.aspx?ForumID=52&Mode=0

I think it's great to have another place to discuss Silverlight game development, and I hope to see you there.

Posted: Mar 10 2009, 14:35 by Bill Reiss | Comments (60) |

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

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, they felt that it deserved its own category.

I'm very pleased and humbled to have been named the first official Silverlight MVP. For more about the Silverlight MVP program, please check out Kathy Kam's blog post on the subject:

http://blogs.msdn.com/kathykam/archive/2009/03/08/announcing-the-new-silverlight-expertise-for-the-mvp-program.aspx

The MVP program has been very rewarding for me and this is just the latest in a wonderful experience. 

Posted: Mar 08 2009, 08:32 by Bill Reiss | Comments (20) |

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SilverArcade.com Logo contest over, please help us choose

We have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we got a lot of great entries in our 99designs.com logo contest. The bad news is that we got a lot of great entries in the logo contest. So we're asking for your help. Please go through the list of logos that we have whittled down to our favorites and post a comment here telling us what you like.

The contest finalists are here: http://99designs.com/contests/18245

Thank you for your support and more news soon.

Posted: Mar 02 2009, 15:37 by Bill Reiss | Comments (14) |

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