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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Microsoft Silverlight is a programmable web browser plug-in that enables the animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback features that characterize Rich Internet Applications. Silverlight is a great (and growing) RIA platform and games are the next level to exploit in it. But it doesn't offer 3D capabilities out of the box and integrating a 3D engine can involve lot of complex mathematics and matrix algebra. This book will help C# developers to get their fingers on the pulse of 3D in Silverlight.
This book uses Balder, an open source 3D engine offering 3D capabilities for Silverlight 3. It leaves out boring matrix algebra and complex 3D mathematics. By the end of the book you will have explored the entire engine, and will be able to design and program your own 3D games with ease!
The book begins by introducing you to the fundamental concepts of 2D games and then drives you into the 3D world, using easy-to-follow, step-by-step examples. The book employs amazing graphics and impressive performance, and increasingly adds more features to a 3D game giving you a rich interactive experience.
By following the practical examples in this book, you will learn the important concepts, from the creation of the initial models, up to the addition of physics and artificial intelligence.
The book helps you to provide realistic behaviors for 3D characters by enveloping models with different textures, using lights to create effects, animating multiple 3D characters using a physics engine (Farseer Physics Engine), and simulating real-life physics. Videos, music, and sounds associated with specific events offer the final touches to the 3D game development learning experience.
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Seitenzahl: 476
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009
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Table of Contents
3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3 Beginner's Guide
Gastón C. Hillar
3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3 Beginner's Guide
Copyright © 2009 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: September 2009
Production Reference: 1180909
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847198-92-1
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Gastón Hillar and Adline Swetha Jesuthas
Cover image for illustrative purposes only.
Credits
Author
Gastón C. Hillar
Reviewers
Tarkan Karadayi
Richard Griffin
Acquisition Editor
James Lumsden
Development Editor
Darshana D. Shinde
Technical Editor
Arani Roy
Copy Editor
Sneha Kulkarni
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Editorial Team Leader
Abhijeet Deobhakta
Project Team Leader
Priya Mukherji
Project Coordinator
Zainab Bagasrawala
Proofreader
Lesley Harrison
Graphics
Nilesh R. Mohite
Production Coordinators
Aparna Bhagat
Shantanu Zagade
Cover Work
Aparna Bhagat
About the Author
Gastón C. Hillar has been working with computers since he was eight. He began programming with the legendary Texas TI-99/4A and Commodore 64 home computers in the early 80's.
He has a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science in which he graduated with honors, and he also has an MBA (Master in Business Administration) in which graduated with an outstanding thesis. He has worked as a developer, an architect, and project manager for many companies in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Now, he is an independent IT consultant and a freelance author always looking for new adventures around the world. He also works with electronics (he is an electronics technician). He is always researching new technologies and writing about them. He owns an IT and electronics laboratory with many servers, monitors, and measuring instruments.
He has written another book for Packt, "C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide".
He contributes to Dr. Dobb’s Go Parallel programming portal http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel/ and he is a guest blogger at Intel Software Network http://software.intel.com
He is the author of more than 40 books in Spanish about computer science, modern hardware, programming, systems development, software architecture, business applications, balanced scorecard applications, IT project management, the Internet, and electronics.
He usually writes articles for the Spanish magazines "Mundo Linux", "Solo Programadores" and "Resistor".
He lives with his wife, Vanesa, and his son, Kevin. When not tinkering with computers, he enjoys developing and playing with wireless virtual reality devices and electronics toys with his father, his son, and his nephew Nico.
You can reach him at: <[email protected]>
You can follow him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/gastonhillar
Gastón's blog is at: http://csharpmulticore.blogspot.com
Acknowledgement
While writing this book, I was fortunate enough to work with an excellent team at Packt Publishing Ltd, whose contributions vastly improved the presentation of this book. James Lumsden helped me to transform the idea in the final book and to take my first steps working with a new Beginner's Guide. Zainab Bagasrawala made everything easier with both her incredible time management and patience. Darshana Shinde helped me realize my vision for this book and provided many sensible suggestions regarding the text, the format and the flow. The reader will notice her great work. Arani Roy made the sentences, the paragraphs, and the code easier to read and to understand. He has added great value to the final drafts.
Special thanks go to Einar Ingebrigtsen (http://www.ingebrigtsen.info), Balder's lead developer. Einar's work inspired this book. He made it possible to have a game engine for Silverlight 3. This book was possible because Einar helped me with each new feature added to Balder. His outstanding knowledge on game development made it possible to work with an excellent engine. I also have to thank Petri Wilhelmsen, another Balder's developer who also helped to improve the engine. I would like to thank my technical reviewers and proofreaders, for their thorough reviews and insightful comments. I was able to incorporate some of the knowledge and wisdom they have gained in their many years in the software development industry. The examples, the pictures and the code include the great feedback provided by Tarkan Karadayi. Tarkan helped me a lot to include better and shorter code to simplify the learning process. I would like to thank Mark Dawson, Kit3D's developer. Mark's work also inspired the development of many simple 3D applications using previous Silverlight versions and his simple yet powerful engine. I wish to acknowledge Bill Reiss, as he worked to show the world that Silverlight games were possible. He was another great source of inspiration for my work on this book. I would like to thank Doug Holland, as his blog posts at Intel Software Network always helped me to stay tuned with tips related to many products used in this book.
I must acknowledge David Barnes, Beginner's Guide Series Editor at Packt. His help in my previous book and his wisdom is also part of this new one. I must also thank Shilpa Dube, Rakesh Shejwal and Rajashree Hamine. They helped me in my previous book written for Packt and this new one was much easier bearing in mind their excellent tips.
I wish to acknowledge Hector A. Algarra, who always helped me to improve my writing.
Special thanks go to my wife, Vanesa S. Olsen, my son Kevin, my nephew, Nicolas, my father, Jose Carlos, who acted as a great sounding board and participated in many hours of technical discussions, my sister, Silvina, who helped me when my grammar was confusing and my mother Susana. They were always supporting me during the production of this book.
About the Reviewer
Tarkan Karadayi has been writing code since age 14. He has a Masters in Computer Science and is currently working as a Lead Developer.
I would like to thank my wife Anna, my parents and my three sons Taran, Kyle, and Ryan for their love and support.
I would like to dedicate this book to my son Kevin and my wife Vanesa
Preface
Most online interactive content uses 2D graphics. To represent real-life situations, Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) need to show real-time 3D scenes. This book will let you add a new dimension to your Silverlight applications using C# and XAML. The book covers the various tools and libraries needed for giving life to 3D models in a Silverlight viewport—right from editing, exporting, loading, and controlling 3D models up to specific 3D algorithms. It will help you learn to develop 3D games and interactive 3D scenes for a web site with animated models, with numerous examples and clear explanations packed with screenshots to aid your understanding of every process. After all of the code is written and the additional art assets edited, they are all compressed into .zip files for easy availability and use.
What this book covers
Chapter 1: Lights, Camera, and Action!: In this chapter, we will cover many topics that will help us to understand the new tools and techniques involved in preparing 2D graphics to be used in Silverlight games. This chapter is all about tools and graphics.
Chapter 2: Working with 2D Characters: In this chapter, we will begin creating 2D characters that move on the screen and we will learn to control their behavior in the 2D space. We will learn about GPU hardware acceleration, 2D vectors, resolutions, sprites, and animation.
Chapter 3: Combining Sprites with Backgrounds: In this chapter, we will control multiple sprites created on demand. We will animate several independent sprites at the same time, while responding to the keys pressed by the player to control characters and some game logic.
Chapter 4: Working with 3D Characters: In this chapter, we will take 3D elements from popular and professional 3D DCC tools and we will show them rendered in real-time on the screen. We will learn a lot about 3D models, meshes, and 3D engines.
Chapter 5: Controlling the Cameras: Giving Life to Lights and Actions: In this chapter, we will learn everything we need to know about 3D cameras to be able to render our models in real-time on a 2D screen from different angles. We will change the values for their most important properties and we will be able to watch their effects in a rendered 3D view.
Chapter 6: Controlling Input Devices to Provide Great Feedback: In this chapter, we will learn everything we need to know about the most widely used gaming input devices. We will be able to read values from them in order to control many aspects of our games.
Chapter 7: Using Effects and Textures to Amaze: In this chapter, we will learn everything we need to know about the process of enveloping a 3D model using textures. We will be able to take 3D elements from popular and professional 3D DCC tools and we will show them rendered in real-time on the screen with different textures and enlightened by many lights.
Chapter 8: Animating 3D Characters: In this chapter, we will learn how to move, rotate, and scale the 3D models in the 3D scenes. We will use object-oriented capabilities to define independent behaviors for simple and complex 3D characters.
Chapter 9: Adding Realistic Motions Using a Physics Engine: In this chapter, we will simulate some laws of 2D and 3D physics. We will learn to define gravity force, mass, drag coefficients, and moment of inertia to represent the physical properties of the bodies that define a model.
Chapter 10: Applying Artificial Intelligence: In this chapter, we will detect collisions between 3D characters and we will define specific behaviors using artificial intelligence, persecution, and evasion algorithms
Chapter 11: Applying Special Effects: In this chapter, we will use advanced physics and special effects. We will generate gravity effects, we will add fluids with movements, and we will use transitions to determine different states in a game.
Chapter 12: Controlling Statistics and Scoring: In this chapter, we will create gadgets to display different kinds of information to the player on the screen. We will also calculate different kinds of information in order to update the gauges. Also, we will measure and improve the game’s overall performance.
Chapter 13: Adding Environments and Scenarios: In this chapter, we will create menus and attractive transitions. We will add configuration options and we will save them using an isolated storage.
Chapter 14: Adding Sound, Music, and Video: In this chapter, we will generate sounds associated to game events. We will also add presentation videos and background music.
Appendix: Pop Quiz Answers: This appendix will include answers to all the pop quiz questions chapter-wise.
What you need for this book
You will need Visual C# 2008 (.NET Framework 3.5) with Service Pack 1, or greater—Visual C# 2010—installed.
You can use the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition or greater (http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/). However, you have to read the documentation to consider its limitations carefully.
Who this book is for
This book is designed primarily for C# developers with a basic knowledge of Visual Studio IDE who want to develop online 3D games using Silverlight, or create interactive 3D scenes for a web site with animated models. No prior experience in 3D programming, 3D animation, and Silverlight is required.
The book is also aimed at 3D developers who want to improve their online content by offering innovative 3D models in action.
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Chapter 1. Lights, Camera, and Action!
We want to develop 3D games using Silverlight 3. We will need to work hard in order to achieve this exciting goal. First, we must understand some fundamentals related to various tools and 2D graphics, and their relevance to Silverlight 3. In this chapter, we will cover many topics that will help us understand the new tools and techniques involved in preparing 2D graphics to be used in Silverlight games. This chapter is all about graphics.
In this chapter, we will:
UFOs in the sky!: Invaders
You love 3D games. You have always wanted to develop a 3D game with amazing characters, dazzling scenarios, outstanding effects, and many skill levels. And now you have the opportunity. A legendary game developer drives a new game contest. He challenges Silverlight developers to show him some ideas for a modern 2D Invaders game. If he likes a developer's idea, he will contract him to develop 3D games for his well-known gaming web site using Silverlight 3. This web site pays high wages to developers. It is an incredible opportunity and you cannot miss this train. Tickets, please!
Developing 3D games is an exciting process, but it is also difficult. However, working with a 2D game before moving into the 3D world is a nice starting point. That is exactly what we are going to do.
During our journey, we will need to exploit our creativity as much as possible. Game development requires many heterogeneous skills. However, the most important ingredient is creativity.
We already know how to develop some applications using the C# programming language. However, RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) offer an exciting way ahead for game development because they provide a rich experience for users without the need to install software on their computers. Users expect RIAs to be like conventional downloadable games that offer amazing graphics, impressive performance, and a very interactive experience. Silverlight is a great (and growing) RIA platform, and games are the next level to exploit in Silverlight. 3D games represent our challenge in this book and we shall take full advantage of our C# knowledge here.
So, let's take our C#, XAML, and Silverlight development skills to the next level. We want to take full advantage of modern technologies. First of all, we must install the latest tools and begin working on some 2D games' basics. Later, we will use that knowledge in developing 3D games using Silverlight 3, the newest kid on the block from Microsoft.
The only requirements needed to develop 3D games using Silverlight are to understand the basics of the C# programming language, XAML code, and the Visual Studio IDE. We will cover the rest of the requirements in our journey through the 3D game development world!
Time for action—preparing the development environment
First, we must download and install various Silverlight development tools.
We need to install Visual C# 2008 (.NET Framework 3.5) with Service Pack 1 or greater (Visual C# 2010) in order to successfully complete the installations provided here. Installing Silverlight 3 Tools will uninstall the previous Silverlight versions. We will not be able to create Silverlight 2 applications using Visual C# 2008 with Silverlight 3 Tools installed in our system. Visual C# 2010 does not have this restriction because it allows us to choose the desired Silverlight version target.
Tip
You can use the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition or greater (http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/). However, you have to read the documentation and consider its limitations carefully.
The following are steps for preparing the development environment:
Application name
Download link
File name
Description
Expression Design
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Overview.aspx?key=design
Design_Trial_en.exe
It is a commercial tool, but the trial offers a free fully functional version for 30 days. This tool will enable us to transform vector assets to the appropriate format for use in Silverlight 3.
Inkscape
http://inkscape.org/download/?lang=en
Inkscape-0.46.win32.exe
It is a very complete free, open source, vector drawing program. This tool will enable us to import many vector assets in different, popular file formats and export them to a format recognized by Expression Design.
Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9442b0f2-7465-417a-88f3-5e7b5409e9dd&displaylang=en
Silverlight3_Tools.exe
We must install it to create Silverlight 3 applications in Visual Studio IDE using XAML and C#. This will uninstall previous Silverlight SDKs (Software Development Kits).
Silverlight 3 Offline Documentation (in a CHM format)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0A9773A7-C854-41FA-B73D-535ABFB73BAF&displaylang=en
Silverlight_3_Docs.zip
We must download and decompress this file, as we will be needing access to the Silverlight 3 official documentation.
Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/Default.aspx#PageTop
Blend_Trial_en.exe
This tool will enable us to create content and prototypes that target Silverlight 3. It will be really helpful to use Expression Blend 3 to create rapid prototypes for some game scenes.
.NET RIA Services
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=76bb3a07-3846-4564-b0c3-27972bcaabce&displaylang=en
RiaServices.msi
This framework allows the creation of business applications that are capable of talking to our games. In the same link, there is a PDF file available for download with interesting documentation about this framework.
Silverlight Toolkit (updated for Silverlight 3 compatibility)
http://codeplex.com/Silverlight
Silverlight 3 Toolkit July 2009.msi
It is convenient to download the latest stable release. This toolkit provides a nice collection of Silverlight controls, components, and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle. It will be really helpful to use these controls to provide many game statistics. Besides, it includes more Silverlight themes.
What just happened?
We installed Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio, Expression Blend 3 for Silverlight 3, .NET RIA Services, and Silverlight Toolkit.
Now, we have everything we need to begin creating and testing amazing 2D games using Silverlight 3 and C#.
Time for action—recognizing digital art assets
One of the best ways of explaining a new game idea is showing it in a very nice picture. This is exactly what you want to do. However, it is very difficult to find a new game idea from scratch. Therefore, in working out how to impress the legendary game developer, you ask for some help in an 8-bit retro gaming community. You meet a legendary space shooter games' expert and he shows you many remakes of the classic 8-bit Invader game—also known as Space Invaders. The remakes are too simple and they do not exploit modern widescreen displays, as they run in very low resolutions inside the web browsers. A dazzling remake of an Invaders game sounds like a very nice idea!
We are going to take a snapshot of the first scene of one of the most exciting 8-bit implementations of the Invaders game—the legendary TI Invaders—as shown in the following picture:
What just happened?
Looking at the TI Invaders scene picture, we can recognize the following digital art assets:
These assets are organized as shown in the following picture:
The aliens are organized in five rows and eleven columns. There are four tents and just one ship to challenge all these aggressive invaders.
Time for action—creating the raster digital content
This prehistoric game used a 256X192 pixels screen (49,152 pixels). We are going to prepare raster digital assets for the game optimized for a 1680X1050 pixels screen (1,764,000 pixels). The game should look nice when compared to the older version.
The old version used 8X8 pixels raster digital assets. In this new version, we can use 50X50 pixels raster digital assets.
Tip
The creation of raster digital assets for a 2D game is very complex and requires professional skills. Digital artists and graphic designers are very important members of a professional game development team. They provide great quality digital assets to the programming team.
As you do not have access to professional digital artists yet, you must download some freeware icons and then prepare them to be a part of a game demonstration. Luckily, you will find some nice space and zoom-eyed creatures in PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format that are free to download from Turbomilk (a professional visual interface design company, http://turbomilk.com). They are ideal to use in the game.
Tip
PNG is an open, extensible image format with lossless compression. Silverlight 3 works great with PNG images. I recommend not using the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format for foreground digital assets or iconic graphics because it uses a lossy compression method that removes some information from the image.
First, we are going to download, manipulate, resize, and finally save the new versions of the new raster digital content for the game:
What just happened?
We created raster digital content for the game optimized for a 1680X1050 pixels screen. We downloaded some images, and manipulated them to remove the shadows and prepare them for the game's main scene. We used a naming convention for the images as we want to keep everything well organized for the game.
The game will look nice using these modern raster digital art assets.
Digital Content Creation tools
The Digital Content Creation tools (DCC) are very important partners for game designers and developers. They allow digital artists and graphic designers to concentrate on the creation of different kinds of digital art assets, which are then used in the applications.
Tip
We can also use everything we are learning in developing the applications that have intensive graphical resources. However, we will call them games in the rest of the book.
It is very easy to understand their purpose using an example. If you want to show a sky with stars as an application's background, the easiest way to do it is by loading a bitmap (PNG, BMP, JPG, and so on) using the procedures or controls provided by the programming language.
A digital artist will create and manipulate the sky bitmap using an image manipulation tool such as GIMP, Photoshop, or Picasa.
Developing games requires the usage of a great number of resources; it is not just programming tasks. We are going to use many popular DCC tools during our journey to create Silverlight 3D games. As many of these tools are very expensive, we will use some open source and free alternatives to carry out the most important tasks.
A good practice before beginning 2D and 3D game development is to research the tools used to create the 2D and 3D digital content. This way, we will have a better idea of how to create the different scenes and the most common techniques. Later, we will learn the programming techniques used to give life to these graphics-related operations. We will be able to provide great real-time interaction to all these digital content assets, as shown in the following diagram:
Basic elements of a 2D and/or 3D real-time game
A modern 2D and/or 3D real-time game uses the basic elements shown in the previous diagram. Let's go through them in the following list:
Many specialized DCC tools help in creating the basic elements explained in the aforementioned list. For example, using GIMP you can see the alpha channel for the ship's PNG image, as shown in the following picture:
Programming responsibilities
We do not have to write lines of code dedicated to creating an image. Instead, modern game programming focuses on the following tasks:
Programming games requires more knowledge about the underlying hardware on which the game will be run. We must establish performance baselines and minimum requisites to achieve a desirable performance for the game. Besides, we must specify the recommended input devices to take full advantage of the game. These tasks could seem pretty trivial, but they are very important because some games are very complex and demand many difficult optimizations to be able to run on the mainstream hardware available.
This is a simple summary of a game's programming responsibilities. We will work through them all throughout this book.
Time for action—installing tools to manipulate scalable digital content
Your cell phone rings. An old friend sees your name in the participants' list and calls you because he has some interesting information. He tells you the game has to scale to huge resolutions such as the ones found in exclusive XHD (eXtreme High Definition) displays. These displays can support resolutions as high as 2560X1600 pixels.
Scaling the raster digital assets is a big problem because pixelation becomes easily visible. If you scale the final alien for using it in a higher resolution, it will look really pixelated as shown in the following picture:
You want the game to use the entire screen space, even in the XHD displays. To make this possible, you could prepare another set of raster digital assets for the game optimized for a 2560X1600 pixels screen (4,096,000 pixels). However, the game can also be run using a 1920X1080 pixels screen (2,073,600 pixels). There is another alternative of creating a new set of scalable vector graphics (vector-based illustrations), which are ready to scale to any screen resolution without generating pixelation problems.
This way, you can provide two versions of the same game—one using raster digital assets optimized for a 1680X1050 pixels screen and the other using scalable vector graphics. There is no restriction in the number of games per participant. Therefore, you can submit both versions.
Tip
The creation of scalable vector graphics assets for a 2D game is very complex and involves professional skills. We are going to simplify this process by using the existing clipart.
First, we must download and install some additional tools that will help us in converting the existing scalable vector graphics to the most appropriate file formats to use in Silverlight 3:
Tip
The necessary tools will depend on the applications the digital artists use to create the scalable vector graphics. However, we will be using some tools that will work fine with our examples.
Application name
Download link
File name
Description
Expression Design
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Overview.aspx?key=design
Design_Trial_en.exe
It is a commercial tool, but the trial offers a free fully functional version for 30 days. This tool will enable us to transform vector assets to the appropriate format for use in Silverlight 3.
Inkscape
http://inkscape.org/download/?lang=en
Inkscape-0.46.win32.exe
It is a very complete free, open source, vector drawing program. This tool will enable us to import many vector assets in different, popular file formats and export them to a format recognized by Expression Design.
What just happened?
We installed Expression Design and Inkscape. Now we have the necessary tools to convert the existing vector clipart to the most appropriate formats to use in Silverlight 3.
XAML works fine with Silverlight 3
Why do we need to install so many tools to create a simple vector asset to use in Silverlight 3? It's because Silverlight 3 uses XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language), and the best way to add scalable vector content is using objects defined in XAML. However, many tools that offer functions to export to XAML do not work as expected and are not compatible with Silverlight 3. Besides, many converters are still in alpha versions and have problems when we need to convert complex vector art.
The game must be finished on or before the due date. Therefore, to avoid problems related to XAML vector assets, we are going to perform additional steps. But we will be sure that the resulting XAML will work fine with Silverlight 3.
Time for action—creating the scalable digital content in XAML
As you do not have access to professional digital artists yet, you must download some free clipart and then prepare it to be a part of a scalable game demonstration. This time, you want to offer a different version of the game by mixing some Halloween monsters (the new invaders) with the ship. This will be the vector-graphics based game. Luckily, you find some nice, free-to-use clipart in WMF (Windows Meta-File) scalable vector format from Microsoft Office Clipart. They are great to use for offering a different scalable version of the game.
Tip
WMF is an old, scalable vector format. Silverlight 3 does not offer direct support for WMF graphics. Therefore, we must convert WMF graphics to XAML. Following the next steps, we can also convert from any vector formats supported by Inkscape such as SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), AI (Adobe Illustrator), PDF (Adobe PDF), and EMF (Enhanced Meta-File) among others.
First, we are going to download, organize, and convert some scalable vector graphics to XAML which is compatible with Silverlight 3:
What just happened?
We created scalable vector graphics and converted them to an XAML format, which is compatible with Silverlight 3. We downloaded some images and used a process to convert them to a format that Microsoft Expression Design can read. As this tool does not work with WMF files, we needed to provide an AI-compatible format.
We converted the files to a PDF format, which is compatible with the newest AI formats. Expression Design can read this format, but it requires the files to have the .ai extension. That is why we needed to rename the files exported from Inkscape as PDF.
We used Inkscape because it is free, open source, and compatible with the most popular scalable vector graphics formats. However, we did not export to XAML from Inkscape because there are some incompatibilities in that conversion. The most secure way to export to XAML these days is using Expression Design.
This scalable vector content for the game could be optimized for any resolution. We used the same naming convention previously employed by the raster graphics, as we want to keep everything well organized for the two versions of the game. One will show raster aliens and the other, scalable Halloween monsters.
The game will look nice on XHD monitors using these scalable vector art assets.
Previewing and scaling XAML vector graphics
The XAML vector graphics can scale while keeping their quality intact when they are used in Silverlight 3 applications. This is not new; this happened with all the vector graphics formats. Scaling the vector graphics is not a problem because they do not have pixelation problems. However, they require more processing time than raster graphics to be shown on a screen.
If you scale one of the Halloween monsters to use it in a higher resolution, it will look really great as shown in the following picture:
A very interesting hidden tool that can help us when working with XAML and XAML vector graphics is XamlPad.
XamlPad is a part of the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) SDK. Once Visual Studio is installed, it is available in the following folder: Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin. You must create a manual shortcut to XamlPad.exe in that folder because it is not available in a menu shortcut.
Time for action—testing the scalable digital content using XamlPad
Now, we are going to test how an XAML vector graphic scales using XamlPad:
What just happened?
We used a very simple yet handy tool called XamlPad to preview XAML-scalable vector illustrations. Now, we are sure that the scalable clipart for the game is going to work fine in different resolutions. We can include these vector illustrations in Silverlight 3 applications.
