Vectorform hearts Fast Company
Posted by Blair Munro – May 14, 2009Fast Company gets circulated around Vectorform every month, so we are thrilled that one-and-a-half of our apps were featured in Chris Dannen’s 11 Killer Apps for Microsoft Surface. The article provides information and videos for 11 applications created for the Microsoft Surface.
Our MSNBC Election Experience, created for political analyst Chuck Todd and NBC Universal, made the list, and we got some indirect coverage for a demo application created in partnership with FD Kenisis for Coldwell Banker. FD Kenisis, Coldwell Banker’s Agency of Record created a concept and UX for Coldwell Banker’s Home Search Application. We developed the application incorporating Live Maps and Coldwell Banker’s Existing web services.
We’ve got our fingers crossed that the BMW Product Navigator and SurfaceDJ round the list out to a lucky 13!
Silverlight Viewports
Posted by Dan Dobbs – November 14, 2007One thing you usually recognize about web-based games is that they generally have a fixed view. With a fixed view, your game world matches the web control 1:1. What if you want the game to take place in a larger space, like an entire world, or a galaxy. In the game world, you’d create a viewport or a camera that only displays a portion of the world. Unfortunately, Silverlight doesn’t have native support for viewports into a larger space. We decided to make it.
Source: CanvasViewport C# class
The CanvasViewport is a simple plugin class that can be used to create a viewport on any Canvas (it doesn’t have to be the main page). It works by manipulating the Canvas’ RenderTransform in response to programmed parameters.
Usage:
// Create a viewport on this canvas.
CanvasViewport _Viewport = new CanvasViewport(this);
// Create a viewport that is 320x240 in logical (original canvas) units
_Viewport.Size = new Size(320, 240);
// Set the center of this viewport to 500, 800 on the canvas
_Viewport.Center = new Point(500, 800);
// In a game, you can have the viewport track a player like this:
void Update()
{
_Player.Update();
_Viewport.Center = _Player.Position;
}
An added advantage to using viewports in XAML is that since XAML graphics are all vector based, zooming in and out dosen’t have all of the pixelation problems that working with raster graphics has. Here’s the orignal game without the viewport.
Here’s the game with a smaller viewport into the original world. (Notice that the UI and the Reticle doesn’t change size).
Have fun with your viewports.
Breakout – Silverlight Style
Posted by Dan Dobbs – November 8, 2007
A full breakout clone with source. The demo features 9 levels loaded from embedded XML. There is also an “attract” mode which makes for a nice screen saver.
We also wrote a level editor in WPF because it was so similar to Silverlight. The editor can be released upon request.
Silverlight 1.1 – C#
Silverlight Pong – 1.1 C#
Posted by Dan Dobbs – November 1, 2007
We wanted to start exploring some game development with Silverlight so we started where one should start… good ol’ Pong! Then with the functionality in place we couldn’t help but skin it with some nice imagery of a beat-up ping pong table. Enjoy!
This is our first 1.1 example and we plan on doing more as time allows so check back often.
and for the Javscript folks, here’s the 1.0 version…
Character Assassination
Posted by Vectorform – April 3, 2007Game addiction comes and goes at a pretty quick clip here in the office:
So, we built our own! It’s called Character Assassination.