Getting Started With Silverlight

In this tutorial I'm going to talk about game design in Silverlight 2 platform. I'll try to make this tutorial as easy to understand as possible and only include the most basic stuff to get us all started.

By the end of this tutorial you will have created a project that looks like this:

Software Requirements

First off, here are the software that will help you make your game

• Visual Studio 2008
• Silverlight 2 SDK and Tools for VS2008
• Microsoft.Net Framework 3.5

Go ahead and install those required software. Some websites also recommend that we install Deep Zoom Composer and Microsoft Expression Blend but we don't quite need them for the time being. You'll be able to learn developing basic games without these additional software.

Make a new Silverligt 2 project

After installing the required software, you'll do the following:

1. Run Microsoft Visual Studio.
2. File -> New Project
3. Under Visual C#, click Silverlight, then Silverlight Application
4. Name your application "GameExample" and click ok
5. When prompted, select "Automatically generate test page to host Silverlight"

Several files are created for you after you create a new silverlight project. On the solution explorer on the right, you'll see the files "App.xaml" and "Page.xaml". If you click on the "+" sign, you'll see the C# files "App.xaml.cs" and "Page.xaml.cs"

The file Page.xaml.cs contains the main C# code for your project. If you want to know what this project does, simply click Debug -> Start Debugging (F5), and all you'll see is a blank page (which makes sense because you have a blank project). We'll add some stuff to our project now:

Write Some Code

We are now ready to change the source code to make it do something. Like any other normal tutorials, we'll try to display "Hello World" on the screen. Simply do the following:

6. Double click on Page.xaml.cs to edit the code
7. Change the code to the following:

    public partial class Page : UserControl
    {
        TextBlock gameTitle = new TextBlock();

        public Page()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            gameTitle.Text = "Hello World";
            LayoutRoot.Children.Add(gameTitle);
        }
    }

In this code we declared a TextBlock called gameTitle. A TextBlock is one of the Silverlight components that lets you display text. (Other types of components include PasswordBox, Buttons, Images, etc.)

InitializeComponent() initializes components that are used in your application and should be left alone.

gameTitle.Text = "Hello World" sets the text in the TextBlock, and then you have to add it to the screen by calling LayoutRoot.Children.Add(gameTitle)

8. Press F5 to test your project.
9. Proceed to next tutorial.

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