It should be fun

This is the start of my developer diary for SilverTile. The diary is mainly for my own use both as a reference and as a way to document my progress. Hopefully I will end up with a useable solution one day.

Silvertile? What is it?

The last few months I've been experimenting with Silverlight programming. I've written all kinds of database-driven applications and have experimented with various different programming models. While this has been rewarding and I've learned much, it hasn't excactly been coding for fun.

For a while I participated in the development of Smeedee, a project monitor for agile projects, and that was fun - but lately I've been playing with my own project again. As all good nerds know, writing a game is the most entertaining way you can learn a new programming language or platform. So that is what I've been doing. Being a fan of old-school games I decided to write a remake of a real classic – the original Zelda for the NES-platform. The game itself is simple, but it is fun to play and writing a remake should be a fun challenge.

Good old Zelda - coming to Silverlight?

Writing games is a fun excercise itself, but it gets even more fun if you end up with something that can be reused later. That is the reason I am writing about SilverTile and not SilverlightZelda - I am writing a reuseable library for old-school games. :-) The library itself will be quite simple, but I plan to include XAML support for graphics and level design.

Can I use it? Does it work?

I have created a project for SilverTile on Codeplex, but the source code there is more or less unusable. I have been using it as a test bench for the architecture and design of the library and I don't think anyone will be able to use it. As soon as I have some usable code I will upload it to the project.

So then. I'll get back to the coding. Hopefully I will have more to show soon. :-)

Silverlight .net, silverlight, silvertile