Silverlight Games – Test 1

Above is Smalltalk/DLR running in a browser with Silverlight 1.1.

• Download Silverlight 1.1 runtime
• Open “Virtual Desktop” test in your browser

Above is a simple game created in a few minutes using the Designer. To run it, open a Designer window and select:

• Server->Load->game1.des
• Prev->Engine->Run
• Press the space bar to release “bombs”

At the bottom is a target sprite which has been given a timeline that starts at the left then moves to the right and which also is set to automatically reverse direction.

At the top is the attacker sprite which has been given a timeline that starts at the right then moves to the left and which also automatically reverses direction. This sprite is also designated as a “shooter” which means that it will release objects when a key is pressed.

There are still several details to be worked out:

• collisions for compound objects aren’t defined yet, so the “bombs” pass right through the car
• when “bombs” reach the floor, they should probably disappear or explode – for now, they bounce
• there is no way yet of keeping score

The positive aspects of this game are:

• it was totally created in the browser with no outside tools
• instant deployment – as soon as it is saved on the server, anyone in the world with a Silverlight 1.1 enabled browser can play it

All of the game parameters are stored on the server in a JSON dictionary.

The next release of Silverlight 1.1 will likely support sockets, which means that browser-to-browser communcations will become possible. Then, by exchanging JSON-encoded data in a similar manner, we should be able to build realtime user-driven games or other types of applications.