Wow, it looks like the winners are up on the Server Quest Contest site, and I'm very excited to see that Boss Launch took first place! You can check out Boss Launch and all of the great entries at the Server Quest Gallery.

I had a great time doing my first MSDN GeekSpeak yesterday on Silverlight Game Development! The format of this show is really great - it offers an open forum where the attendees can fire off questions in real time.

You can download the recorded show here.

(Unfortunately, the performance of LiveMeeting when demo'ing games is pretty horrible, so feel free to try the demos live at spritehand.com).

Thanks to Glen Gordon and Jim O'Neil for hosting!!!

I have a Silverlight Seminar and a webcast coming up at the end of May -if you're available then come and check them out!

GeekSpeak on Silverlight Game Development
Wednesday, May 27th 2009 3pm EST
The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Silverlight Seminar, presented by ACM
Saturday, May 30th 2009 8:30am - 4:30pm EST
Horizons Computer Learning Center, 6711 Towpath Rd., Suite 100, East Syracuse, NY 
This will be an all-day Introduction to Silverlight, with Hands-on-Labs.

SilverArcade is now live! This "free online game community" offers Silverlight-based diversions for the casual gamer, and per-play revenue for the Silverlight game developer. SilverArcade is the brainchild of Bill Reiss, Rob Eisenberg, and Chris Bennage.

It's great to see Silverlight coming into its own, seemingly with video and casual gaming leading the way (and with LOB apps closing the gap for the lead?!)

I had some time to update Boss Launch with a few fixes, a couple more levels, and some sound effects and loops. There are now five environments: Office, Forest, Desert, Beach and Moon! I also added a neat little "poke" functionality that allows you to move the Boss Ragdoll around by clicking him with the mouse after he is launched. This is really handy for knocking those closeby targets to the ground! I have a busy few weeks ahead, so this is probably how Boss Launch will stay for the next little while.

Go and have some fun!

Thanks to everyone who attended my Silverlight Sessions at Code Camp 11! Chris Bowen and Chris Pels did another great job organizing what is the best free developer community event in the Northeast!

As promised, here are the slides and resources from the Silverlight 3 Graphics talk:

• What's New in Silverlight 3 Graphics
  • Slides
  • Demos from my Blog
    • Perspective 3D
    • GPU Acceleration
    • Effects (Pixel Shaders)
  • Misc. Demos (Bitmap API, Animation Easing, H264, Shaders)

Up Next: Cre8 Conference

I'm excited to be presenting at the upcoming Cre8 Conference in Orlando, FL on April 15-16th! Cre8 is a conference for creative professional and covers the gamut of designer tools - everything from Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop... and yes, Silverlight. I'll be presenting:

Silverlight for Designers: Bridging the Gap from Designer to Developer
Discover how to create an effective workflow that allows designers and developers to collaborate on interactive projects. Build easy-to-use interfaces that connect simply to Web services (the ‘cloud’), databases, XML content, and more.

Wow, I just found out that the video I submitted for the MIX09 Show Off! event got first place! I heard the competition was fierce this year, I just wish I had been at MIX to see the show, but it was too close to the MVP Summit this year.

So here is the video I entered, in which I try to channel Billy Mays to create a commercial for the Physics Helper Library. (I was also poking fun at the official rules which said "Please, No Commercials!") And no, my Photoshop skills aren't that bad, I just pasted my head on there in a big hurry :) 

VIEW THE VIDEO

One of the really fun and productive things coming to Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight 3 is the concept of Behaviors.  In a nutshell, you will be able to drag/drop a Behavior in Blend 3 onto a UI Element on the design surface, and that will automatically inject runtime logic into that element. Behaviors aren’t a new concept, and there is even an equivalent in the ASP.NET AJAX world if you’ve played with creating custom controls in that universe.

Physics Behaviors!

One of the most fun examples I’ve seen using Behaviors was done by Pete Blois, a Program Manager on the Expression team at Microsoft. Pete and another developer created some Physics Behaviors which very closely mirror the Physics Helper Library I created for the Farseer Physics Engine. I first saw Pete demo the Physics Behaviors at the MVP Summit a few weeks ago, and my jaw dropped at the similarities! Pete & Co.’s Physics Behaviors use the Box2D Physics Engine.

Getting Started with Behaviors

If you’re playing with Silverlight 3 and Blend 3, why wait? You can play with Behaviors today! Note this is all Beta level stuff, so be prepared for some hiccups along the way

Pete’s MIX Session – Pete Blois gave a great overview of Behaviors in this MIX 09 session.

Using Behaviors – A quick Walkthrough by Kirupa on how to use behaviors! Pay special attention to where you find the assembly Microsoft.Expression.Interactivity.dll - you'll need that for the next link.

MIX Behavior Pack – this contains the Physics Behaviors, as well as a bunch of others.

Creating New Behaviors

It turns out it’s pretty easy to create your own behaviors, and I’ll be covering this in a later blog post. But if you can’t wait, just download the MIX Behavior Pack and have a look at the Behaviors, all of their source code is included!

Let me start by saying that I have a great boss now, and I've never had any problems with any of my past managers either :) That said, I've made "The Boss" the unfortunate main character in the latest little Silverlight physics game I've been creating.

In "Boss Launch," you catapult your obnoxious leader into various targets, trying to knock down enough stuff to reach the next level. This Silverlight 2 game was created using Expression Blend, Visual Studio, the Physics Helper Library, and the Farseer Physics Engine.

This is an intial release, and I'm seeking feedback of all kinds: Bug Reports, Comments, Ideas. Please leave comments in this blog post, or email me. I'm especially interested in any Mac users out there. This game is probably too intense for older machines, and I expect some criticism on performance :P (but when Silverlight 3 releases, that will be quickly fixed).

So, go and give it a try, and remember this is a Beta so be gentle!

Most have you have probably heard by now that the first Beta of Silverlight 3 is out in the wild! You can get everything you need to get started with the Silverlight 3 Beta here, but note that if you are actively doing Silverlight 2 development, you will either need a second development machine or a Virtual machine - because Silverlight 2 and 3 environments cannot exist side-by-side.

I just completed a big dump of Silverlight 3 information on my blog - stuff that I have accumulated while involved in early testing of Silverlight 3. Here is a summary of the posts, I hope you find them enlightening:

Silverlight 3: GPU Acceleration and Bitmap Caching - this is the most exciting feature of Silverlight 3, IMHO!

Silverlight 3: Pixel Shaders and Effects - see how you can create new effects using HLSL.

Silverlight 3: PlaneProjection with Storyboard - looks at how to display and animate the new 3D Perspective projection.

Silverlight 3: HitTest with WriteableBitmap - the title is a tease, be forewarned!

I am wrapping all of this information and more into a slide deck and presentation which I'll be giving at Code Camp 11 near Boston, so if you're in the area come and check that out!