Chris Bowen's Blog : Popfly

Make Silverlight Games with Popfly Game Creator

cbowen — Mon, 05 May 2008 06:09:24 GMT

Many people have been using Silverlight to create games for the web, but until now, you've had to be a programmer to do it.

Just released on the Popfly site is alpha of the new Popfly Game Creator feature, which provides a great way to create and share some interesting games without having to deal with some of the complexities normally associated with game creation, all using Silverlight.

Head over to Popfly, choose the "Create a Game" option, and choose a base game (or start from scratch):

You can go ahead an click Play to try the game, but the interesting part is when you start modifying the game by working with the Actors, Scenes, and Game settings.

With Actors, you can modify the individual elements that comprise your game. The car that drives, the spaceship that flies, etc. Choose from the hundreds of built-in items, or make your own.

In Scenes, create the different screens that your game will have (title, instructions, game, "you win", "you lose", etc.) You can select from a number of backgrounds and sounds (or again add your own.) Then, use the editor to place the actors on the various scenes.

So, how does the game know what to do? This is where Behaviors come in, for both scenes and actors. Making a lot of options available to you in a surprisingly easy-to-use editor, you can add effects like motion, shooting, disappearing and more using visual tools.

Wiring up events (like steering your car) to buttons on the keyboard is very straightforward:

Want to add a special effect when the car hits a boulder? No problem.

Finally, use the Game screen to change overall game properties (score, lives, etc.) and to import files to your project.

Once your game is ready, just hit Play! You can also use the built-in debugging features to see what's happening behind the scenes as you test your game. You can view performance details, watch output from your game to a console window (for example, you can track game events such as keypresses), and turn on visibility of the bounding boxes used to detect collisions.

Best of all, since it is Popfly, you can easily save your games and share them with your friends and rest the world.

Ready to Learn More?

You can just jump right in and try things out, but I'd recommend you watch this video tutorial first (go ahead, it's only 8 minutes long):

Video: Popfly Game Creator

There's plenty more over on the Popfly Wiki, including more videos, samples and tutorials.

Very cool stuff. I hope you'll take a moment to check it out. Send me a link to any games you make!

-Chris

New Deitel Resource Centers: ASP.NET 3.5, LINQ, Popfly, WPF, and SharePoint

cbowen — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:28:52 GMT

Deitel recently released more topics of interest to .NET developers in their excellent Resource Center series.

Created to help you find articles, tutorials, blogs, downloads, FAQs, and more, here are the new centers:

I find these valuable since they're not simply lists of links. Most resources have brief descriptions of each item written by someone who has taken the time to review the resource.

Worth a look!

-Chris

Technorati tags: ASP.NET, LINQ, Popfly, WPF, SharePoint

Major Visual Studio 2008 Announcements Today

cbowen — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:15:58 GMT

We've taken the wraps off some big announcements related to Visual Studio 2008. As Soma mentions on his blog, he made the announcements at TechEd Developer Europe today.

The highlights:

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 are expected to ship before the end of November
With Visual Studio 2008, license restrictions are being changed to permit partners to target other platforms with Visual Studio.
Premier VSIP (Visual Studio Industry Partner) customers will have access to Visual Studio source code
More details on Popfly Explorer - an add-in for Visual Studio to make it easier to work with Popfly
Microsoft Sync Framework CTP
- Document - "Introduction to the Microsoft Sync Framework"
- Bits - Microsoft Sync Framework CTP1

And more. Read Soma's post for the full details.

Mary Jo Foley has some coverage as well and there a press release accompanying the announcements.

-Chris

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Technorati tags: Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio, Popfly, .NET 3.5