With the official release of Silverlight 3 RTW I received some feedback that my plasma sample wasn’t working anymore.
The problem occurs in some small changes in the Writeable bitmap api.
The official MS change document talks about the new constructor and the lock methods.

3.19 WriteableBitmap changes

But that’s not the only thing.
From now on you have to use the pixels property to write or read pixels.

I updated my previous sample and code.

Updated on 15/07/2009 to Silverlight 3 RTW

Inspired by old school MS DOS demos and this Flash Alchemy experiment.
Found out that someone already ported some code from the Alchemy experiment to C#.
So after some tweaking and some help of my colleague Frederik it’s up and running in Silverlight 3 beta.

I’m using two threads to speed up the plasma calculation when moving the dots, since everybody has a duo,triple,quad,octa … core CPU these days,
One thread does even lines and the other odd lines (interlacing).

 public static void GeneratePlasmaEvenLines()
     {
       int index = 0;

       for (var x = 0; x < width; x +=2)
       {
         for (var y = 0; y < height ; y+=1)
         {
           uint color = CalculatePixel(x, y);
           plasma[index++] = color % 255;
         }
         index += width;
       }
     }

     public static void GeneratePlasmaOddLines()
     {
         int index = width;
         for (var x = 1; x < width; x+=2)
         {
             for (var y = 0; y < height; y+=1)
             {
                 uint color = CalculatePixel(x, y);
                 plasma[index++] = color % 255;
             }
             index += height;
         }
     }

  private static uint CalculatePixel(int x, int y)
     {
         int w = (int) param6;
         int h = (int)param5;
         uint color = (uint)
        (
              128.0 + (param3 * Math.Sin(x / param1))
            + 128.0 + (param4 * Math.Sin(y / param2))
            + 128.0 + ((param5/4) * Math.Sin(Math.Sqrt((double)((x - w)* (x - w) + (y - h ) * (y - h))) / 9.0))
            + 128.0 + ((param6/4)* Math.Sin(Math.Sqrt((double)(x * x + y * y)) / 9.0))
        ) / 4;

         // Add shift position to sync the color
         color +=  LastShift;
         return color;
     }

Placing the pixels on the canvas with the our brand new bitmap api

private void BuildBitmap(uint[] data)
        {
            uint colorValue=0;
                for (int x = 0; x < imageWidth; x++)
                {
                    for (int y = 0; y < imageHeight; y++)
                    {
                        // set the pixel value
                        int palletIndex = (int)data[y * imageWidth + x];
                        colorValue = GeneratePlasma.palette[palletIndex];
                        writeableBitmap.Pixels[y * imageWidth + x] = (int)colorValue;
                    }
                }

            writeableBitmap.Invalidate();
            btImage.Source = writeableBitmap;
            GC.Collect();
        }

To view the full code download the project below.

Silverlight 3 is required

It’s finally finished, my first Silverlight mini game.
In exception from the title image it’s 100% XAML.
All graphics done in MS Expression Design.

Had some small problems in blend, everything else was pretty straightforward.
If you have a background in .NET programming the transition will be smooth.

Enjoy !

Doing easing in and out in blend is pretty straightforward.
Creating that same storyboard in C# is just a mater of syntax.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is a sample I created during a Silverlight course.
The goal was to create some custom buttons.
Since that’s no rocket science I added some scripted storyboards and drag and drop controls.

If someone is interested, here is the source