About half way down I came across this:

1:02pm—Question about Another live download video. Whitten: Silverlight being used as "presentation layer."

Why is this news?  Well there had been rumors that Silverlight would eventually make its way to the XBox, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen hard evidence.

Seems like it’s only for video now, but hopefully in some future release it’ll be opened up to other uses. (crosses fingers…)

My first thought? Meh, another Flash portal….  Then I looked a little closer. I soon realized Game Jolt was not just another Flash site. In fact Flash is just one of the game platforms they showcase under the banner of “Online” games.  They also support downloadable freeware games, open source games,  and games hosted on other websites (think overview page with screenshots, video, and link to game)

Without a lot of hope, I decided to sign-up and try to upload a Silverlight game to the Online section.  I do this at just about all new game portals I come across and almost always the portal ends up only supporting Flash uploads.   Same was true this time.  No way to upload a Silverlight game to the “Online” section of the site.

So, I did what I always do. I emailed the Game Jolt crew and asked if they had plans to support Silverlight.  I never expect much from such emails. Usually I get a reply along the lines of “What’s a Silverlight” or “Sorry we only support Flash right now…”  

Not this time!  This time I got this:

You know, I actually totally forgot about Silverlight. We do plan to build out the Flash section into a Browser Games section, though. We'll be sure to allow developers to upload Silverlight games as well.

Hope you like the site so far. If you have any other questions or feedback, be sure to let us know.

David DeCarmine

Game Jolt

Fast forward 1 week and SHAZAM:

Tire Storm on Game Jolt!

At this point, some may be thinking what’s the big deal? You uploaded your game to another game-portal. So! 

It’s a big deal to me because game portals that support Silverlight games are few and far between.  There are only 4 that I know of

www.Mashooo.com (they were 1st)
www.SilverArcade.com (very nice, very clean)
www.SilverlightClub.com (kinda busy… a little too cluttered for my taste)
and now www.GameJolt.com 

On a side note, Game Jolt is also the first game portal I’ve come across that also supports Unity game uploads!

So, all you developers with Silverlight games looking for some exposure, head on over to Game Jolt and upload your game.   They have a revenue sharing option in the works as well so you may even be able to make a buck or two soon.

-Jeff Weber

(note: I have no affiliation with Game Jolt. I just like that they support Silverlight games)

Please let me know if you notice anything that seems broken or missing.  Now  I can get back to working on the Krashlander editor.

-Jeff

-Jeff

It’s like Kongregate for Silverlight games!

Congrats Silver Arcade team

Go take a look and have some fun!

www.SilverArcade.com

-Jeff Weber

I also did some graphical work on the main Krashlander character.  Nothing is final yet, but I like the look so far. Let me know what you think.

Here are some screenshots of the Krashlander character:

Here is a tech preview video:

Here is how the landscape system works at a high level:

1. Use online editor to create in-memory path objects (online editor still needs to be developed)
2. At save time, convert all Path objects to mini-language, string representations and dump them into an XML document that represents the state of a game-level.
3. Save the XML document to either isolated storage or the cloud.
4. At load time, read through the XML document and convert all mini-language strings to in-memory Path objects.
5. Create a point list approximation of the Paths using the PathToPoint converter.
6. Use the point list to initialize the landscape physics.

For those interested here is my little test harness for converting from path to points.  (This demo doesn’t have any of the physics stuff, this is JUST for testing the path to points.)

LinearApproximationDemo.zip  (I used code from here and here while developing this demo)

Now it’s time to start developing the online editor for Krashlander. This will not be a small task.  Should be fun work, though.

-Jeff Weber

Here’s a screenshot:

Here’s his blog post about the launch.

Here’s where you can play it.

Check it out and have fun boss-launching!

Andy built this game using his  Physics Helper for Silverlight, Blend, and Farseer

-Jeff

As I mentioned in my last Krashlander post, Krashlander is inspired by an old favorite game called Ski Stunt Simulator.

While this is true, it is not my intention to simply clone Ski Stunt and call it a day.  The primary concept I’m borrowing from Ski Stunt is the control scheme.  Everything else in Krashlander, outside of some larger ideas and concepts, is yet to be prototyped and designed.

Prototyping Roller-Skis With Suspension

Last week I worked on prototyping a different sort of “ski”. My idea was to try something more like a roller-ski with suspension.  Here is the best example of a roller-ski I could find on the web. This one doesn’t have suspension but it looks pretty cool.

I quickly thru together a prototype and took a few runs down my crappy looking test landscape. (same landscape you saw in my 1st prototype video of Krashlander)

Here is some footage using the “roller skis” :

Prototype Results

While I still love the idea of roller-skis with suspension, so far they have not turned out to work as well as I’d have liked.

The roller-skis tend to reduce the amount of control you have.  They either bounce too much or they are too “soft” and it’s hard to do flips.  I have not been able to find a good set of parameters yet to give them the “feel” I want.

I haven’t made a final decision yet, but right now I’m leaning away from roller-skis with suspension. I’m going to remove the suspension and see how it feels with just the wheels.

The plan for next week

The Silverlight  3 beta came out last week and it has a number of new features I need to understand prior to continuing with Krashlander.  The feature I’m most excited about it the GPU acceleration. This should provide great performance boost when done right.

I’ll be spending next week porting my current Krashlander code over to Silverlight 3 and figuring out what needs to change to take best advantage of the new features.

Have a good week all…

-Jeff

Mashooo.com is proud to announce the first ever, world open, Silverlight game development contest.

It is an open "no holds barred" style competition, meaning that people from around the world are free to participate and there are no theme limitations. Just bring your talent and zest for Silverlight game development and show the world what you can do.

The contest will begin on March 18, 2009 and last for around 3 months.

The approximate retail value (ARV) of all the prizes is more than $10,000 USD in cash and software packages.

In related news… I’ve been asked to be a Judge for the contest and I was more than happy to accept the offer.

Head on over to the S-Prize contest page for more details…

-Jeff Weber

Krashlander is a game I’ve been waiting a long time to develop.  It is heavily inspired by, and in some ways a tribute to, an old favorite game of mine called Ski Stunt Simulator.

The thing that blew me away about Ski Stunt Simulator and the thing that made me want to develop Krashlander, is the control scheme. (see below)

 
Control instructions from Ski Stunt Simulator

If you’ve played my other Silverlight game, Diver, then you know the control mechanic I’m talking about. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?

I really believe this control scheme has been severely under utilized across the gaming ecosystem.

Diver actually served as a sort of “warm-up” game to Krashlander.  Instead of jumping right in and working on Krashlander, I decided to build Diver first in order to become familiar with the Silverlight platform.

Krashlander will be a bit more forgiving than Diver, but will still require skillful control of the mouse.

I could go on, but instead I’ll  save some details for subsequent posts.

I plan to post weekly developer updates about Krashlander on this blog and daily developer updates on Twitter. (follow me to see the updates).

Before I sign off, here is a video from a very early developer proof of concept.

Enjoy!

-Jeff