If you’re reading this blog you’ve probably heard of SilverSprite, a set of open source class libraries that enable you to port your XNA 2D games to Silverlight. It provides APIs that mimic the XNA APIs and hides the major differences in the two platforms away from the developer. A few months ago, real life intervened and I was forced to discontinue actively working on the project. I’ve made it to a point where I can resume my work on it, but now the big question is whether anyone still cares.
A few other projects forked off from SilverSprite including XNATouch (for iPhone) and ExEn (for Silverlight, Android, and iPhone) so I’m thrilled that what I started inspired and gave a good starting point to these very interesting projects. Should Silversprite continue on in its own form or has it done its job and is it time to move on?
I’d really like your feedback in the comments here and in the SilverSprite CodePlex discussion forum:
http://silversprite.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=242841
There have been some events recently that could help SilverSprite move forward, such as the availability of Silverlight profiling tools and the new graphics APIs coming in Silverlight 5. Given a combination of these it’s possible that performance issues which are the biggest issue with using SilverSprite to port an existing game could be reduced or eliminated.
February 22nd, 2011 at 9:15 PM
I have worried about that a bit. All I know is that, at the moment, SilverSprite is working like a charm and absolutely rocks. I'll probably try repeating the process all over again sometime in the future. . . when I've already made my fortune deploying SilverSprite games
(yeah, that'll be the day. . .). I know that the way I'm doing it is far from idea and, frankly, doesn't even make much sense to me.
So, to put it in the words of Col. Jack O'Neil, if I have problems "I'll cross that bridge when I get to it."