Random Bits

Added a new video to shows that this effect is not just a image effect . Original Post

WPF 3.5 SP1 (Beta) introduces the ability to apply Pixel Shader effects to any UIElement, these will executed by GPU by compatible cards. Greg Schechter's blog is an excellent place to start learning about these features. Shader Effects have long been used in rendering pipeline, to create great special effects. And nowadays are used by almost every game engine to enhance the visual aspects of the game play. Another good tutorial and Check out the HLSLTester code , it is helpful in creating new effects here . I have used the Shader code from this page and added some dynamic properties to create the following effect. Download the full code for this demo from here . Download the compiled effect .

Yesterday night I got to watch "The Dark Knight" and I loved it, the best part was Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker character.and off course the bat-pod I felt the batman character could have been portrayed a little bit more 'darker'. The dialog of the movie ... "I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve." :) More complete review here...

After installing Windows Vista SP1 the windows experience index shot up from 3.8 to 5.1 :) hmm..

This is a test post using Windows Live Writer

Good discussion on Channel 9 on the future of C# and some rational behind features that might make it in C# 4.0 .( We'll see what those features are at PDC ) "Concurrency features by far are game changing aspects.." - Andres C# 4.0: Meet the Design Team

Won a BlackJack II at World Microsoft Partner Conference . Now I have to Load Windows Mobile 6.1 on it and may be pre-beta versions of Silverlight Mobile :)

Fixed the Resize Bug, check out the latest version

Had to roll back the previous version as I had a Resizing Bug..

Minor update v1.1 to SilverCarrom Increase the MaxFrameRate to 120 , this make the physics more accurate Implemented ReSize Handlers to scale the Game fit the current Browser Size.

One the first code for any game will be setup a game loop. Here are some of the posts on how to achieve this in Silverlight applications: Creating a Game Loop - Silverlight Games 101 Tip of the Day #5: Timers and the Main Game Loop - Mike Snows Silverlight Blog Silverlight-Speed Loop You can see that there are two ways, one using the DispatchTimer and one using Storyboard. However I found that " The DispatcherTimer is a lower resolution timer than the timer behind the Storyboard class, which causes loss in fidelity. Additionally, the Storyboard execution is more stable across the different supported OSs and Browsers. I'll put together a sample to show the comparision. " as stated in post Procedural Animation in Silverlight 2 | Adam Kinney, Continuum Explorer So for my game I started using the empty storyboard method. But then I noticed that I getting only 60-62 FPS (frames per second) even when doing zero computations. This was causing some edge conditions manifest in col

SilverCarrom is My first Silverlight Game. Carrom is a game that I played a lot in my childhood in India. I guess anyone from India in my age group must have played it sometime or other.Carrom is game similar to the game of Pool. Here instead of spherical balls we have small coin shaped objects. For more information on Carrom visit www.carrom.org . Visit http://www.ehow.com/how_2124269_play-carrom.html for more information on ho to play this game. This code uses the Farseer Physics Engine that was developed by Jeff Weber of Farseer Games . Here are some of the To do items that I intend to work on when i have time... Implement scoring MultiPlayer ( Player Vs Computer & Player Vs Player ) Physics Engine Bugs Game Varitions Help / Options Here is the screen