SilverSprite

New Post: Silverlight 5 Toolkit in Express?

LiquidAsh — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:57:02 GMT

If I'm looking at the correct Silverlight5 Toolkit samples, one folder is labeled "Controls" which builds and runs fine. I haven't had any luck with projects in the XNA folder: tried "Silverlight Xna Platformer" and "Simple Animation".

New Post: Silverlight 5 Toolkit in Express?

LiquidAsh — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:50:07 GMT

OK. Well I played around with it a bit more, and was not even able to get a simple content-less game working. I also tried the SnakeGameSilverSprite sample which seems to open up alright (no content project in the solution), but then does not do anything. When I hit F5 within either of these projects, it brings up the browser with a brief Silverlight loading animation which then turns into a blank white browser window.

I'm guessing there's something more wrong with my installations than not being able to open content projects(?).

New Post: Silverlight 5 Toolkit in Express?

billreiss — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:27:00 GMT

Can you build and run the SilverSprite 5 samples or the Silverlight 5 toolkit 3D samples?

New Post: Silverlight 5 Toolkit in Express?

billreiss — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:18:41 GMT

You won't see any visual indication that the project has a linked content project.

New Post: Silverlight 5 Toolkit in Express?

LiquidAsh — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:04:04 GMT

billreiss wrote:

Hmm it's probably an Express thing, ...

Disappointing, but thanks for the response. I did try adding the content project to a silverlight application's csproj file by hand (as described in step4 here: http://silversprite.codeplex.com/). However, there was no noticeable difference when I opened the project up in VWD 2010 Express. I do see another post with a similar problem under the SL5Toolkit's Issues. Btw, I was using the December 2011 version of the SL5Toolkit.

Guess I'll try using the old SilverSprite under SL4 instead.

Thanks for your help.

New Post: Silverlight 5 Toolkit in Express?

billreiss — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:44:01 GMT

Hmm it's probably an Express thing, what happens if you try to create an XNA app? If you can do that you should be able to add its content project manually to a Silverlight project.

Also look through the comments here to see if anything helps: http://silverlight.codeplex.com/releases/view/74436

New Post: Silverlight 5 Toolkit in Express?

LiquidAsh — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:25:30 GMT

Thanks for the quick response. I was getting the installation failed with error code: (0x80070643), which I tracked to the RIAServices.msi. After uninstalling that by hand, SP1 completed successfully.

However, I'm still not able to 1) create a Silverlight 3D Application from VWD: the template is available, but error says: A problem was encountered creating the sub project 'Silverlight3dAppContent'. The template specified cannot be found. Please check that the full path is correct., or 2) open a sample like the RolePlayingGame.sln: both RolePlayingGameContentSilverlight.contentproj and RolePlayingGameDataWindows.csproj are failing to load because The project type is not supported by this installation.

Any ideas?

New Post: Silverlight 5 Toolkit in Express?

billreiss — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:02:38 GMT

What is the error you're seeing with SP1?

New Post: Silverlight 5 Toolkit in Express?

LiquidAsh — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:48:24 GMT

Does anyone know whether the new SL5Toolkit + SilverSprite combo is available under Visual Web Developer 2010 Express? I have been able to install VWD, SP1, SL5, and the SL5Toolkit without trouble. The problem seems to come with the subsequent installation of the Windows Phone SDK (since the SL5 Toolkit requires XNA). This installation seems to requires an additional SP1 application, but that always seems to fail. I've tried a few (painfully slow) variations in installation order, and am curious whether anyone else has been successful in getting these tools working under the free versions of Visual Studio. If it's just me, then maybe a clean install of Windows7 is in order for my machine(?). Any suggestions will be gratefully received.

Updated Wiki: Home

billreiss — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:59:27 GMT

Project Description
Run XNA games without code changes in Silverlight. Since the game compiles into straight Silverlight code, it will run anywhere that Silverlight can. Now with support for Silverlight 5 Toolkit's SpriteBatch and other XNA compatibility.

NEW! Silverlight 5 support. The Silverlight 5 Toolkit provides many of the XNA APIs such as SpriteBatch, Mesh and Model, and Input, but some classes are missing like Game and GameComponent. This makes much of the legacy SilverSprite code obsolete, but with Silverlight 5 the goal of SilverSprite is to fill in the gaps. The Silverlight 4 code has been preserved in case anyone needs it but there is a new source tree for Silverlight 5.

Getting your game going with SilverSprite for Silverlight 5
Step 1. Install Silverlight 5 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=229318

Step 2. Install the Silverlight 5 Toolkit http://silverlight.codeplex.com/

Step 3. Create your Silverlight Project. You have 2 options here, and neither is ideal. You can use the Silverlight 3D Application template which creates a corresponding content project for you and adds the proper references to the Silverlight XNA libraries, or you can create a standard Silverlight project and add the other stuff yourself.

If you create a standard Silverlight project, you'll need to add the following assembly references:

Microsoft.Xna.Framework
Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content
Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics
Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.Extensions
Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.Shaders
Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Math
Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Toolkit
System.Windows.Xna

Step 4. Add your content. If using the Silverlight 3D Application template you can add your content to the content project generated for you. Alternatively, you can edit the .csproj file and either replace the existing contentproj with your own, or in the case of a standard Silverlight Application you can add the XML for the content project.

<PropertyGroup>
  <XnaContentProject>..\Silverlight3dAppContent\Silverlight3dAppContent.contentproj</XnaContentProject> </PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
  <MSBuild Projects="$(XnaContentProject)" Properties="XnaContentPipelineTargetPlatform=Windows;XnaContentPipelineTargetProfile=Reach" />
  <CreateItem Include="$(XnaContentProject)">
    <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="XnaContentProjectItem" />
  </CreateItem>
  <CreateProperty Value="%(XnaContentProjectItem.RelativeDir)">
    <Output TaskParameter="Value" PropertyName="XnaContentProjectPath" />
  </CreateProperty>
  <CreateItem Include="$(XnaContentProjectPath)cachefile*targetpath.txt">
    <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="XnaContentCacheFile" />
  </CreateItem>
  <ReadLinesFromFile File="@(XnaContentCacheFile)" Condition="Exists(@(XnaContentCacheFile))">
    <Output TaskParameter="Lines" ItemName="XnaContentOutputs" />
  </ReadLinesFromFile>
  <CreateItem Include="@(XnaContentOutputs->'$(XnaContentProjectPath)bin\AnyCPU\$(Configuration)\%(Identity)')" AdditionalMetadata="Link=Content\%(RelativeDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)">
    <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="Content" />
  </CreateItem>
</Target>

Replace the XnaContentProject to point to the location of your content file. You can see examples of how this should look in the Samples folder.

Step 5. Add SilverSprite.dll to your Silverlight application.

Step 6. Add your source files to the Silverlight application.

Step 7. Add code to MainPage.xaml.cs to attach to your game class, here is an example from the Role Playing Game sample:

    public partial class MainPage : UserControl
    {
        RolePlayingGame game;

        public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            game = new RolePlayingGame();
            game.Attach(LayoutRoot);
        }
    }

Step 8. Unfortunately the Color enums such as Color.CornflowerBlue were not included with Silverlight 5, and there is no way to provide them, so SilverSprite provides a ColorHelper class. You can change Color.CornflowerBlue with ColorHelper.CornflowerBlue and the same goes for any other colors. To compile for both XNA and Silverlight, you can #if all of these or you can add ColorHelper.cs to your XNA project.

Some things just don't work at all, like XACT sound and networking.

A good amount of the code for the Silverlight 4 version and some for Silverlight 5 comes from the Mono.Xna http://code.google.com/p/monoxna/ library.

Created Release: SilverSprite for Silverlight 5 binaries (Feb 12, 2012)

billreiss — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:57:59 GMT

Binaries for SilverSprite Feb 12 2012 for SL4 and SL5.

Released: SilverSprite for Silverlight 5 binaries (Feb 12, 2012)

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:57:59 GMT

Binaries for SilverSprite Feb 12 2012 for SL4 and SL5.

Created Release: SilverSprite Source, Samples, and Binaries (Feb 12, 2012)

billreiss — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:43:44 GMT

First code drop of new Silverlight 5 support. Also includes samples and Silverlight 4 source code.

Released: SilverSprite Source, Samples, and Binaries (Feb 12, 2012)

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:43:44 GMT

First code drop of new Silverlight 5 support. Also includes samples and Silverlight 4 source code.

Updated Wiki: Home

billreiss — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:22:02 GMT

<PropertyGroup>
  <XnaContentProject>..\Silverlight3dAppContent\Silverlight3dAppContent.contentproj</XnaContentProject> </PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
  <MSBuild Projects="$(XnaContentProject)" Properties="XnaContentPipelineTargetPlatform=Windows;XnaContentPipelineTargetProfile=Reach" />
  <CreateItem Include="$(XnaContentProject)">
    <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="XnaContentProjectItem" />
  </CreateItem>
  <CreateProperty Value="%(XnaContentProjectItem.RelativeDir)">
    <Output TaskParameter="Value" PropertyName="XnaContentProjectPath" />
  </CreateProperty>
  <CreateItem Include="$(XnaContentProjectPath)cachefile*targetpath.txt">
    <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="XnaContentCacheFile" />
  </CreateItem>
  <ReadLinesFromFile File="@(XnaContentCacheFile)" Condition="Exists(@(XnaContentCacheFile))">
    <Output TaskParameter="Lines" ItemName="XnaContentOutputs" />
  </ReadLinesFromFile>
  <CreateItem Include="@(XnaContentOutputs->'$(XnaContentProjectPath)bin\AnyCPU\$(Configuration)\%(Identity)')" AdditionalMetadata="Link=Content\%(RelativeDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)">
    <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="Content" />
  </CreateItem>
</Target>

    public partial class MainPage : UserControl
    {
        RolePlayingGame game;

        public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            game = new RolePlayingGame();
            game.Attach(LayoutRoot);
        }
    }

Step 8. Unfortunately the Color enums such as Color.CornflowerBlue were not included with Silverlight 5, and there is no way to provide them, so SilverSprite provides a ColorHelper class. You can change Color.CornflowerBlue with ColorHelper.CornflowerBlue and the same goes for any other colors. To compile for both XNA and Silverlight, you can #if all of these or you can add ColorHelper.cs to your XNA project.

Some things just don't work at all, like XACT sound and networking.

A good amount of the code, especially things like Vector2 and math classes come from the Mono.Xna http://code.google.com/p/monoxna/ library.

Source code checked in, #74170

billreiss — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:15:40 GMT

Initial version for Silverlight 5

Source code checked in, #74169

billreiss — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:30:40 GMT

Moved existing silversprite code to SL4 folder to make way for SL5 code.

New Post: MediaPlayer.Play Gives NullReferenceException

Shnagenburg — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:21:31 GMT

Try setting the build action for the song to Content instead of Resource. I did this on XNA 4.0 with an MP3 and it worked, but it kept looping. Using MediaPlayer.Stop() would hopefully fix the problem.

New Post: Change Game Resolution

Shnagenburg — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:26:31 GMT

I'm having this same issue. What exactly did you mean by "using the project itself"?

New Post: an XNA compatibility layer for Winrt (Win 8) based on SilverSprite?

SleepyDaddySoft — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:54:29 GMT

I made an attempt earlier to port silversprite to WinRT/XAML. It didn't go very well. There were missing features that made basic things like sprite tinting impossible, plus no effects at all. A better bet would be to implement Xna over C++/DirectX11.1 and have silversprite be kind of a "port" of the silverlight 5 xna api to winRT/XAML. I think that should be a separate project though.