SilverSprite - XNA Games in Silverlight | The Continuum Show

Bill Reiss is building games in Silverlight, but he also likes to build games in XNA. The obvious move then is to create a library that allows you to run XNA games within Silverlight. And no code changes to the XNA games would be ideal. That's exactly what Bill has done, and the code library's name is SilverSprite.

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NearFantastica

Mar 12, 2009 at 3:29 PM

Well that’s just the best thing since sliced bread....!
magicalclick remember the flow

Mar 12, 2009 at 6:07 PM

Is this for real? Meaning run XNA game on Zune?
Bill Reiss

Mar 12, 2009 at 6:11 PM

This is really about running XNA games in the browser, XNA games already run on Zune, and Zune doesn't run Silverlight currently as far as I know.
Charles Welcome Change

Mar 12, 2009 at 7:52 PM

XNA, besides being compellling for an in-browser game, would be a most excellent framework to build the UI experience of a web site.

Wandering around a site (virtual world on the Internet or, continuing the abuse of the terimnology, on premise) would become more of a literal user experience ("Hop in, let me show you around. Fasten your seatbelt by pressing the orange pill, but we've determined that your current system is multi-touch capable so, just use your fingers. Squeeze it.").

C
udithait Microsoft® MVP (Most Valuable Professional) in XNA / DirectX .

Mar 12, 2009 at 9:10 PM

its realy grate to have XNA like envionment in silverlight.
Now im ready to develop browser based game in silverlight more easily.
thnks
http://uditha.wordpress.com/xna-games
Dark_Halmut

Mar 12, 2009 at 11:37 PM

Great idea to get people started! If I were to write games in silverlight though, I'd rather make my own library then depend on someone else's library/design decisions.
raymond

Mar 13, 2009 at 3:45 PM

Cool!

Great interview Adam!

This has got my attention big time.
AdamKinney Agent of Change

Mar 15, 2009 at 11:01 AM

Thanks Raymond, I'm happy to hear that
Bill Reiss

Mar 21, 2009 at 9:19 AM

Just released an update to SilverSprite which addressed some of the most glaring things that were missing, like bitmap font support and being able to read compressed textures. The compressed texture one is pretty cool because if the compression looks ok for your particular textures, it will compress to 4 times smaller at least, and possibly 8 times smaller. This then will compress even further in the xap compression so it can be a big size savings.

There were also some missing methods that have been implemented for more compatibility.

Finally I included the Farseer Physics demos shown in the video here to the solution, along with a version of the class library which makes it easier to use with Farseer.

Thanks and enjoy,
Bill Reiss
Bill Reiss

Mar 27, 2009 at 5:14 AM

You can now also try the samples in this video yourself, I have made the Dr. Popper game available here:

http://www.bluerosegames.com/drpoppersilverxna.web/

and the Farseer Physics XNA samples running with SilverSprite here:

http://www.bluerosegames.com/silverspritefarseerdemo/
SocalSam boy, what a shiny head!

May 18, 2009 at 3:47 PM

XNA is awesome to use, and even better with Silverlight, etc. But I have been told that XNA designers are concerned about the XBox and not the PC developer, which would be the case for the Silverlight applications.

As a result, I am going to be very cautious about the use of XNA, which also requires that the XNA be distributed with your application.

Feel free to spam me if I am wrong.
Bill Reiss

May 19, 2009 at 4:55 AM

SilverSprite doesn't require XNA to be installed, but as for the rest, I would agree that Xbox is a major focus for XNA, and there are some good reasons you might not want to use it for Windows, like the fairly subtantial prerequisites. I don't feel, however, that XNA for Windows gets shortchanged unless you want to use DX10 features in your game or integrate it into another application.
LiquidAsh

Mar 01, 2010 at 6:40 PM

Thinks looks really great. I can't wait to play around with it!!!
saul1

Jun 21, 2010 at 7:58 AM

Silversprite doesen´t work!

Can anybody make a step by step tutorial?

Thanks!
Gronis

Jun 21, 2010 at 9:01 AM

Hi iv'e read your tutorial and downloaded some samples. but I can't get it work when I add the sorce code here:

<UserControl x:Class="SilverlightApplication1.MainPage"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:game="clr-namespace:Zombie_Mash_v1"
    Width="400" Height="300" >
    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <Canvas>
            <game:Game1 x:Name="game"/>
        </Canvas>
    </Grid>
</UserControl>

It worked first. But than, I edited another application and suddenly it stopped working. It says there is nothing called like that.