Tag Archives: Game Engine

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Posted on March 25, 2008 by Rob Burke

Buy Cialis Without Prescription, If you're authoring multimedia applications in Silverlight, you might be interested in how each of the core game engine services for Legend of the Greasepole is now implemented for the Silverlight 2 Beta. Cialis for sale, From C/C++ to a Provider Model-Based .NET Engine

Some brief history to explain how we got here: Greasepole's first incarnation was manky C/C++ stuff that I'd perf-optimized to bits back in 1997-98. Trainwreck stuff, Cialis in canada. Purchase Cialis online no prescription, Migrating that C/C++ mess to a C# mess involved writing a lot of Visual Studio 2008 macros. These macros could gain surprising insight into non-compiling half-C++, Cialis to buy, Where to buy Cialis, half-C# code, in order to sweep through and perform laborious changes, Cialis in australia.

What came out the other end of the refactor was a C# core engine for the game that required the implementation of five platform-specific services:

RenderingService,

SoundService,

InputService,

GameTimerService, and

GameSettingsService.

I previously implemented those services for the XNA version, Buy Cialis Without Prescription. Buy Cialis without a prescription, Now let's look at the Silverlight versions of these services.

Silverlight RenderingService

When each frame is rendered, buy cheap Cialis, Buy generic Cialis, the engine ultimately requests that the RenderingService draws a series of sprites from particular "frame descriptions" or "FrameDesc"s (a vestigial name, essentially meaning bitmaps with metadata) at given (x, purchase Cialis, Buy no prescription Cialis online, y) coordinates:

public void DrawBitmap(TSprite associatedSprite, FrameDesc frameDesc, buy Cialis online cod, Where can i order Cialis without prescription, int nScrx, int nScry, Cialis to buy online, Buy Cialis from canada, byte[] replaceRGB, byte[] substituteRGB)

The bitmaps themselves are stored as Resources in two assemblies (SilverLegendAssetsMenu.dll and SilverLegendAssetsGame.dll) that I download on-demand using WebClient, buy Cialis online no prescription. Cialis in japan, This has the advantage of dramatically reducing startup time, and only requiring the game engine to manage the downloading of two files over the web after startup, Cialis gel, ointment, cream, pill, spray, continuous-release, extended-release. Where to buy Cialis, An equivalent option would have been downloading archives full of bitmaps, but I was concerned that this would require decompressing the bitmaps at runtime, purchase Cialis online. Buy Cialis Without Prescription, The RenderingService pre-caches the URIs for the bitmap associated with each FrameDesc (e.g. Cialis san diego, "SilverLegendAssetsGame;component/Graphics/Frosh4a.BMP") so that the bitmap can be looked up without string manipulation whenever it is requested by a sprite.

Each game sprite is assigned its own System.Windows.Control.Image by the RenderService, Cialis for sale, Cialis in mexico, which is initialized by having its UriSource Property set to a System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapImage. When the FrameDesc for the sprite changes (and therefore the sprite's bitmap appearance has changed), where can i buy Cialis online, Cialis prescriptions, the Source Property of the BitmapImage, a URI, next day Cialis, Cialis in us, is changed to the appropriate cached Uri. (It looks as though you're not permitted to re-use BitmapImage instances across multiple Images.)

Mirrored images are achieved by setting a MatrixTransform on the sprite's Image's RenderTransform, Cialis buy.

Z-Ordering is performed by using the ZOrder property on the Images, Buy Cialis Without Prescription. Order Cialis no prescription, After each frame is rendered, the RenderingService iterates through all the Images on the Canvas, online buying Cialis hcl, Free Cialis samples, looking for any that weren't rendered during that frame and therefore should be removed from the Canvas.

But what's with the byte[] replaceRGB, where can i buy cheapest Cialis online, Cialis price, coupon, byte[] substituteRGB parameters on the DrawBitmap call. In all the other versions of Greasepole, buy cheap Cialis, Cialis pills, the characters became multicultural by performing color-key swapping of their solid skintones. The DirectX engine used two BitBlts, Cialis tablets, Buy Cialis without a prescription, and the XNA engine uses custom shaders. Buy Cialis Without Prescription, Achieving this in real-time with Silverlight 2 is something I haven't yet figured out.

Silverlight SoundService

Sounds assets are stored as MP3 Resources in the previously-mentioned download-on-demand assemblies SilverLegendAssetsMenu.dll and SilverLegendAssetsGame.dll, Cialis to buy. Buy Cialis online without a prescription, Just as with with RenderService, the SoundService pre-caches the URIs to all the sound files, ordering Cialis online. Saturday delivery Cialis, The SoundService keeps a static collection of MediaElements around. These are added as children to an invisible Canvas called SoundCanvas, order Cialis from mexican pharmacy. When the engine requests that a sound is played, the SoundService finds an unused MediaElement in the static collection, sets its Source Property to the correct URI, and Play()s it, Buy Cialis Without Prescription. Purchase Cialis online no prescription, The MediaElement's MediaEnded event is handled to either loop the sound by either (1) setting .Position=TimeSpan.Zero and calling Play() again, or, where can i find Cialis online, Cialis discount, (2) if it's not looping, to add the MediaElement back to the static collection of available Media Elements, delivered overnight Cialis. Buy Cialis from mexico, Incidentally, this whole MediaElement juggling trick was a highly unstable process in the Silverlight 2 Alpha which seems to work reliably in the beta, Cialis in india. Cialis trusted pharmacy reviews, Silverlight InputService

In the Silverlight 2 Beta, handling input was a piece of cake, fast shipping Cialis. Rx free Cialis, Mouse and Keyboard events are handled for events on the main Canvas to inform the InputService of human interaction. Buy Cialis Without Prescription, Unfortunately for game developers, keyboard input is more or less crippled when Silverlight is in fullscreen mode. Luckily, buying Cialis online over the counter, Where to buy Cialis, we'd designed Greasepole to be playable with just one mouse button.

I also wish I could use the right mouse button for input, Cialis in australia, Cialis from canadian pharmacy, but instead it brings up the Silverlight Configuration menu.

Silverlight GameTimerService

To create a game loop, buy Cialis no prescription, Order Cialis online overnight delivery no prescription, Greasepole uses the "empty Storyboard technique" outlined at Silverlight Games 101. The game loop calls Update enough time to ensure a constant 24 updates-per-second update rate, buy cheap Cialis no rx, Cialis paypal, and Render whenever possible, which triggers the RenderingService (see above), Cialis in canada.

In every other respect, the game timer is the exact same as in the XNA version, Buy Cialis Without Prescription. Buy Cialis online with no prescription, DateTime.Now works as advertised! Here's to a common set of .NET Framework classes.

Silverlight GameSettingsService

The IsolatedStorageFile API makes it very easy to rapidly save and load game settings in a local sandbox, order Cialis online c.o.d. Buy generic Cialis, See this sample for more information on how to use the virtual file system in Silverlight. The GameSettingsService uses a very similar technique, real brand Cialis online. Online buy Cialis without a prescription.