Ooo, its a fancy new toy for me to play with. Well it’s not really new but it sure is neat, and its exactly what I need for a new project! (surprise surprise!)

As you may or may not know, I LOVE making games and seeing as I am a programmer I feel like I should have the required skill-set to do so. The roadblock I always hit is two fold though. The first part of the roadblock is graphics, while I am a programmer I am not a graphic designer, I like to draw but don’t feel that my work is game worthy, so I always end up getting frustrated with that and end up calling it quits. The second part of the roadblock is game programming knowledge. Even though programming is what I do, my primary focus in programming has always been business processing and automation (ho-hum kind of programming), so there’s a LOT to programming a game that I just don’t know. Anyone who has done research on game programming can tell you that there are sooo many choices, tools and theories out there that it can get a little overwhelming. So I guess the roadblock is really 3 fold. But, Oh Silverlight how you have tempted me to once again fall into this desire!

So why has Silverlight turned me back on to game development? Well the reason is a bit long winded; but hey, thats what blogs are for right? So, hers why. First, I recently joined Facebook and like eveyone else on that crazy Social site started to receive uncountable numbers of requests to join this game and that game, or to use this or that application. There are SO many applications and games on facebook its just unbelievable! In any case, I eventually used one of them, a pretty neat experience to say the least. Being the curious person I am, I just had to have a peek at their API and development platform. Which then led me to wanting to use it. So I started thinking of what kind of app I could make. Which led me back to a BBG (Browser based game) that I made a LONG time ago called BumWars. The purpose of the game is irrelavant to this post so I wont get into that, but, I will say that I ended up starting the project. I was able to integrate into the Facebook platform without much difficulty, actually the experience was rather pleasant. However, once I started making my very static very boring game I decided to check out some other games on there. This led me to Yoville and FarmTown; very cool! They are actually multiplayer style video games right in the browser! Unfortunately for me, they are built with Flash and have some Java server program they are using which costs mucho buckos! Needless to say it got me a bit dis-heartened on my current project, but it got me googling (I still can’t believe thats a real verb!) for browser based game development, which in turn led me to Silverlight.

Silverlight 2 runs on the client side of everything, much like Flash. But Flash uses action script where-as Silverlight uses C#, and contains its own small version of the .NET framework. Whats this mean? That means that it doesn’t have to be hosted on a microsoft server, it doesn’t need the user to install the .NET framework or anything else, aside from Silverlight (which is a 2 minute process). So Silverlight will allow me to write code without learning action-script or purchasing Flash, BIG PLUS! at least for me. Couple that with Microsofts Expression Blend 2 and bang! We can even make animations for things, which looks easier than doing it in flash. So I say to myself…Hmm! Maybe we can make a browser based casual game after-all. Wait! What about the server technology? Well thats the beautiful thing! Since its written in .NET we can use webservices rather easily to create a communication between our client game and a server handling all of the multi-player info. So far, it sounds pretty sweet to me!

Now, lets assess the situation.
Q) Can silverlight make casual browser based games?
A) Yes.

Q) Can it handle multiplayer scenarios?
A) Yes.

Q) Can it handle user input (keyboard/mouse)?
A) Yes.

Q) Do we have a game to make?
A) not yet…

Q) Have we used Silverlight before?
A) Nope… not at all.

So it can do everything I need it to, but I need to learn how to use it. Ok, that should be doable. That is one of the purposses of this blog after all. to learn new things and share those experiences. So I suppose one of my first projects for the blog will be to start learning Silverlight. So be on the look out for some posts doing just that.  I’ll probably make it a series of posts where I try to reiterate what I’ve learned in the form of a tutorial, which will further my own learning. (I never said I wasn’t a little selfish.)