Adam Kinney posts tagged with 'gaming'

Silverlight Games today and more on the way

Adam Kinney — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:40:00 GMT

Yesterday Bill Reiss announced the Sports Game in Silverlight Contest which begins August 8th, (the same day as the Olympics, interesting). Bill has been around since the beginning of writing games in Silverlight. His blog Silverlight Games 101 began a few days after MIX07 when he started talking about building games with the Silverlight 1.1 alpha.

Due to this expertise this announcement came after speaking at the XNA Gamefest with Joel Neubeck, another Silverlight game writing master. I really wish I could have been there at the conference. Along with announcement that you'll be able to sell XNA Games on the Xbox 360, Bill demonstrated shared code for Windows, Zune and Silverlight.

And now to match the emerging field of Silverlight game creation, you can enter a contest and win some cash. (Don't worry, if writing games isn't your thing then there is still the other two Silverlight contests going on right now.)

So where are these games I speak of? I'm glad you asked. I've compiled a list below for your viewing, clicking, popping, stacking, shooting pleasure.

	Buddy Knavery Buddy Knavery is an old-school mini-adventure game built on new technology. If you enjoyed "point-and-click" classics such as Maniac Mansion or King's Quest, you'll probably dig this game.
	Bumble Beegger A 2D Silverlight action game called Bumble Beegger. The game uses the Farseer Physics Engine for gravity, movement and collision detection.
	Crayon Cannon Crayon-based games are the latest rage, its as if Elmo has been let loose with Visual Studio and Silverlight. Or in this case Popfly and their new game building updates. Fire the cannon!
	Destroy All Invaders Inspired by Mark Fennell's Wings Flash game, instead of using Google Maps though, Microsoft Virtual Earth Oblique (Birds-eye) imagery is used. The goal is simple: use the mouse to steer your chopper around and destroy the invading UFO's before they destroy you. You can use the Ctrl key to accelerate and the left mouse button to fire.
	Dr. Popper Dr. Popper is a puzzle game similar to Bubblet, Jawbreaker, or Bubble Breaker. Connect pieces of the same color, the more the better. Try out the different game modes each with their own strategies.
	HexMinesweeper Standard minesweeper wasn't quite enough, hex minesweeper just had to be done. Hunt for mines, mark them and don't blow up.
	Line Rider Boy grabs sled. Boy rides sled. In Line Rider the player draws their own landscape with a simple pencil tool creating as many ramps, hills, and jumps as they can imagine. Then they send a virtual sledder careening down the course until he wipes out.
	Shock Danger! Addictive! A full screen Breakout-like game, with some enhancements: more than 10 bonuses, 11 brick types, teleports, explosives, customizable background sounds and secret level codes, tracks high score and related info using WCF. Login not required to play. The Reflexes rating (click Top Score) adds a twist to the game play.
	SilverLander The game counts down and begins the lander on approach from the top left of the screen. Your job is to bring the lander to a safe slow (and upright) landing on the surface inside the highlighted landing zone. Each level increases difficulty by increasing gravity, increasing initial velocity, decreasing available fuel, and a decreasing landing zone radius.
	Stack Attack Stack blocks on the tray up to 5 high. Move the tray with the arrows and use the space bar to place the blocks in the pit.
	Tetrislight A classic among classics, Tetris is one of the most popular titles in video games history. Tetrislight brings the game to the browser and demonstrates Silverlight’s support for animation, music, fonts, and more.
	Tunnel Trouble Shoot a hole in the wall. Then shoot a hole in another wall. You can now walk through one hole and over to another. Pick up gems and items. Solve the puzzles!
	Vector Space: Zero Destroy the asteroids and enemy ships before they destroy your ship! Dig the retro music and parallax background scrolling!
	Zero Gravity Help Lt. Bennet get back to his home before he strays too far into the void of Zero Gravity. Use the W,A,S,D keys to jump between blocks, through teleports, tubes, and switches. You can even be Lt. Bennet's friend on Facebook.
	Zombomatic The electricity is running and your Zombomatic 3000 is broken! To get it working again, you must create a path for the electricity to follow. To do this you need to flip over the panels to reveal more conductors.

For more games check out the games list on Mashoo run by Silverlight Girl.

Xbox Gamercard updated for Silverlight 2 Beta 2

Adam Kinney — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:34:00 GMT

After a few changes the Xbox Friends Watch Gamercard now runs on Beta 2. The few changes I had to make included

updating the project file in Visual Studio to match Beta 2
Adding System.Net as a reference since the WebClient class has moved there
Changing Storyboard.GetClockState to AnimationInstance.GetCurrentState to match the API update.
Moving from ToolTips to the ToolTipService on the HyperlinkButtons.
Changing MouseLeftButtonDown event handlers to handle the Click event on Buttons, now that MouseLeftButtonDown event no longer fire.
The final change had to do with adding a setting in the AppManifest.xml to allow the XAP to be hosted on a different server than the page its embedded on and still make the cross domain call. Emil Stoychev has more detail about the X-Domain Scenario on SilverlightShow.

Get your own Gamercard on the script builder page. Even if you already have the Gamercard on your page, you will still need to update your embed code to reflect the new changes.

Now to find the time to play the Xbox...

Xbox Friends Watch - releasing v1 of the new Gamercard

Adam Kinney — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:50:00 GMT

Xaps

One of my favorite new features of Silverlight 2 is the new Application model. Moving on from version 1.0, where JavaScript instantiation was the only way to start your app and you were restricted to the same origin as the web page, enter the Xap. The new packaging model, not only bundles your assets into one file enabling simpler deployment, it also enables application instantiation via the object tag. Plus, the Xap can live on a separate server than the web page, which enables the creation of embeddable applications with Silverlight.

<applause!>

- More information about Xaps and the new Application Model

Xbox Friends Watch Gamercard

In celebration of this functionality, I've expanded on the Xbox Friends Watch line and added a new Gamercard. Xbox.com currently offers a gamercard which renders a fairly static set of html and images which is embedded via an iframe. Using Silverlight for its interactivity, data stack and portability and the Xbox Gamertag Data Service I thought I would be able to enhance the experience as well as expose the status information provided by the Data Service.

Below is the result of my experiment and using the Gamercard page you can create a script to add the Gamercard to your site.

- Add the Gamercard to your page

Next Steps

My next post will include some of the technical details covering how the Gamercard was created and some of the techniques I used to work with Silverlight 2.

If you're interested in following the saga of the Xbox Friends Watch components you can subscribe to my XBF feed, follow XBF on Twitter or follow XBF on Facebook.

HALO 3 live action trailer in HD via Silverlight

Adam Kinney — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:44:00 GMT

Watch the gritty, live action HALO trailer in HD now

Now for those of you that know, I am not a huge fan of HALO for multiplayer joy (I'm still a UT guy (UT 3 trailer here!)). BUT I did like the thematic single player mode and I do like the mythology of HALO. So what better to see then a trailer for the third installment done in live action in HD on demand.

Lovely, looking forward to the next installment.

Ch9: Brian Beckman on Game Physics

Adam Kinney — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:36:00 GMT

Enjoying the featured video seat today on Channel 9, is an interview with Brian Beckman on simulating realistic physics in a real-time situation. Most likely if you are using physics like this it would be for a video game, although an OS that used real-time physics would be very interesting.

I am no Physics guru, myself, but Brian and Charles do a fine job of keeping me engaged. They begin by going into a bit of the history of game physics, starting with flight simulators.

As shown in the video image, Brian walks through a few visuals explaining formulas and graphs showing how you might explain and calculate the physics of plane flying through the air. Although it sounds like a bit of work, they then raise the stakes by jumping into the physics of a car on the road. From two fixed wings flying through the air to four rubber tires attached to hubs which are then attached to a car body via various suspension models on a range of various surfaces. Lovely.

Towards the end of the interview Brian introduces us to a few simulations/games/works of math that knocked his socks off. Rigs of Rods and Plasma Pong. Seriously awesome pieces worth checking out (both are free to download) even if you don't like games.

Dr. Beckman's most recent work has contributed to a game which apparently is an awesome driving experience entitled Forza 2. Everyone I know who has played, and likes driving games, loves it, so I would say "Job well done."

And if you're wondering, after watching the video, where you can get his wallpaper, check out the Fractal World Gallery.

Taking a break from WoW

Adam Kinney — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 03:08:00 GMT

(I wonder how many of these type of blog entries)

Yes, its true for the very few of you who care I will be breaking from playing WoW. Its definitely a timesink, but more importantly it stunts my growth in learning other new things. The new plan is to be more creative in my spare time and not just consume. If I want 3D artwork, I will be creating it in 3DSMax, time to refresh all of that in my mind. So many ideas pop in my head when its free to float, its time to follow through on some of those ideas.

(Yes, W3bbo, you can say I told you so, if you feel so inclined. :p)