First let me say I have nothing to do with this book. It's just something I feel strongly about and thought I'd share.

The book just came out this month and is called "Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation" by Steve Swink.

I'll be upfront and say I have not read this book yet, it just arrived from Amazon today. However, it is based on and expands upon my favorite online article about game development of all time . And of course it's by the same author.

Here is the article:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061114/swink_01.shtml

Read it first and if you like it as much as I did you will quickly get the expanded book version. The insight in this article (and I'm sure in the book) is such that you will certainly learn something about the finer details of game feel. I think the content of the article and book are especially relevant to small web games.

Let me know what you think...

-Jeff Weber

I’ve add a Farseer Physics water demo to my site and uploaded the code to the Farseer Physics Engine Codeplex site.  It’s a simple demo that shows how to use the fluid related physics classes in the Fareer Physics  Engine.

You can view the live demo here.

Here’s a screenshot:

The folks over at Bytejacker have a quick review my game.  The Diver stuff is about 2/3s the way in.

Here is the direct link to the video: http://www.bytejacker.com/episodes/012

The game has not been changed. Just made the appropriate updates to support the new release of Silverlight 2.  No more beta!

If you go to the Diver site with an older version of Silverlight, you will see the “Install Silverlight” badge.  Click it and follow the instructions on screen.

Possibly it's just me, but Diver seems a bit smoother with this new release...

One of my dreams is to have all the flash game portals out on the internets, Kongregate, Addicting Games, Newgrounds ... etc., start supporting Silverlight games alongside Flash.

I'm positve they will eventually, but not until the Silverlight install base reaches a certain threshold. I'm not sure what that threshold is but I hope we get there soon.

The best place I found to keep track of the approximate Silverlight 2 install-base is www.riastats.com.  RIAStats keeps real-time data on the install-base of the different plug-ins.  They somewhat recently started filtering out sites with content specifically dedicated to Silverlight so as to have a more accurate reading.

Today, the percentage install-base for Silverlight 2 crossed the 6% line! woohoo! 

Still a long way to go but it's moving in the right direction.  Hopefully things will pick up once the final version of Silverlight 2 is released.

-Jeff