Book Image

3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3: Beginner's Guide

By : Gaston C. Hillar
Book Image

3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3: Beginner's Guide

By: Gaston C. Hillar

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewer
Preface
Pop quiz—Answers

Time for action—installing Farseer Physics Engine


Your project manager has a Ph.D. in Physics. So, he is an expert in gravity, speed, acceleration, impulses, torques, moments of inertia, friction coefficients, and so on. The UFO and the spaceship will be fighting near the Earth. Therefore, you must consider gravitational force. Speed cannot be linear. The UFO and the spaceship should have impulses. The UFO should rotate using an angular velocity and considering a rotational drag coefficient. You have to improve the game applying the laws of 3D physics.

You have great difficulties with the laws of physics. Your project manager knows this and he suggests using a high-level physics engine—wait, do not run away! You will not need to learn complex physics laws in order to apply them in your games.

Farseer Physics Engine (http://farseerphysics.codeplex.com/) is an easy-to-use, open source 2D physics engine designed for XNA Framework and Silverlight. It focuses on simplicity and useful features...