I thought I would share one of the core concepts I implemented in Perenthia that has been working quite well. Early on in development I decided to create templates and instances in regards to game objects. A template would define common, unchangable properties of an object whereas an instance would be the opposite. An example would be a Sword; there is a template for a Sword that defines its damage value, price, required skill level, etc. 

I have one table that stores all the objects for the game. Since objects being actively used are loaded into memory and the table is indexed for those queries it runs pretty fast. Since I store all of the objects into one table I make heavy use of the XML data type in SQL 2005 to provide a bunch of XML Serialized Key/Value pairs that define the properties of an object. On the code side of things a dictionary provides the underlying data store for properties of the object. For instance, the Sword example above has a Power property that is used in combination with the wielder's skill in swords to determine damage. The Power property just fetches the Power value from the properties dictionary using the property name. This works a lot like the dependency properties, just my collection serializes to XML for database storage. When an object is loaded from the database the xml from the template is retrieved and added to the object, then the object instance xml is dropped into the object, overriding any template properties of the same name.

This property dictionary also allows me to store whether or not the property belongs to a template or instance. If the property belongs to a template then when the instance is serialized and saved to the database those template properties are excluded. Likewise saving a template does not serialize and save the instance properties. This structure allows for a lot of flexibility with my objects and has been working out quite well. I probably would not have used serialization and xml the way I am if I was doing a typical call to the database qith each request as the extra overhead would not have been worth the effort. However, since my objects are loaded into memory and my saves are background threaded I experience a lot of benefit of an easy to use object.

I shuld note that players character data is stored in a separate table from the core objects table. It follows the same design buy allows me to migrate and change data in the objects table without overwriting player data, since players are essentially the same as mobiles. 

I am flying out to MIX in a few hours and I am really excited. This will be my first time at MIX and I am looking forward to all the great sessions regarding Silverlight 3, mixing it up with other industry professionals and just hanging out in Las Vegas. :)

I have been porting out the multi-player aspects of Perenthia into a separate library I hope to get up on CodePlex before too long. What the library will provide is some interfaces and classes related to handling multi-player environments. A central static class will manage connected clients and three protocol classes for HTTP, Polling Duplex and Sockets will use the static class to retrieve connected clients and push information down to them. A simple set of "tags" are used to send information back and forth and some providers allow for defining your own implementation of handling commands and encrypting data.

The library will be focused on providing an easy way to get setup and implement a multi-player structure. You will still need our own game engine and associated components.

As soon as I get it cleaned up a little and tested out I will put it up on CodePlex and provide a tutorial and sample application showing how to implement and use the component.

Perenthia has a fan site, it is called Beyond Angarath, Angarath being a primary city in within the game world. This is exciting for me and extremely cool! It is very rewarding to see people enjoying your creation enough to put work into a fan site for that creation. The forums have been getting more active lately with folks trying out the Alpha and giving lots of feedback and suggestions. I hope stay close with the community in building this game; I have a vision for it but ultimately I want people to play it and enjoy playing it.

I am hoping to start writing some articles about building multi-player games in Silverlight. I am planning on charting my development progress and ideas in my design and development of Perenthia.

Silverlight is a great platform for .NET developers to be able to write multi-player browser based games. You get a great tool for building a UI, animations, sounds, etc. and can program everything in your .NET language of choice. Silverlight 3 is supposed to support 3D so that will open it up even more for some great games.

Over the next few months, in between working on Perenthia, I am going to work on the first of a series of articles outlining how I built Perenthia. I will start with the Server component, outlining the core communication architecture and design decisions.

Keep checking back for more information.

I am planning on attending MIX09 this year, already registered actually. I missed it last year but wanted to be present this time around for the new Silverlight announcements and to meet some of the Silverlight team. Anyway, if you are going I will be there :)

I did a Character Creation, Movement and Chat test last night with the Perenthia Alpha players. The tests went well, I chatted with a few players, found some bugs and was very encouraged by the whole thing. The next test should start next weekend and will include some combat/spell tests. After that we will do some questing tests, travel tests (boats and stuff) and then I will open up more of the world for the alpha players to help resolve other issues not covered by the main feature tests.

I am enjoying Silverlight as the client UI, it provides a Windows like interface with ability to be run in a browser.

As I have been working on the Silverlight UI for Perenthia I find myself constantly adding little things here there to provide more information or easier click-to-action type of functionality. The UI has evolved, for the better I hope, over the past few months from my original design as I have discovered something else that needed to be displayed while hooking it into the server. This seems to be the natural progression of things, at least with the way I work. :)

Here is the latest UI screen shot, this one shows my character viewing the items a merchant has for sale, with my inventory items on the left and the ones the merchant offers on the right. I will do a development update again soon, had to backtrack a bit with the UI.

While building the Silverlight UI for Perenthia I have been building some re-usable game controls that I plan on posting before too long. One of the controls I created is a Window control that is just a control that provides a title bar with a close button and provides a Content section to add custom controls. I needed it to provide menu windows or panels but it could be used outside of games for just about anything. The control is draggable, as long as the parent control is a Canvas and will position itself as the top window when clicked, provided other windows exist in the same parent.

The Window control is featured in the screen shot below, the "Spellbook", "Character Sheet" and "Adenturer's"** are the windows. They contain custom controls that determine the content of the windows. The small icons at the very bottom of the screen shot are Slot controls that allow for a background image, primary image and object Item to be set on them. They also respond to clicks so click events can be handled on them. The ChatPanel under the windows is also a re-usable control and allows for adding any type of UIElement as content for the main chat area, not just text.

I hope to get these controls commented and the source up soon.

** The "Adventurer's" window is actually "Adventurer's Backpack", have a font sizing issue :)

Here are two new screen shots of Perenthia, well, one of Perenthia and the other one is the content tool I wrote that allows me to add monsters, items, etc. The alpha is getting closer, I am mostly adding content at this point and making sure everything works together as expected.

This is the main UI that you will see the most of while playing:

The admin tool is a Windows application that allows me to map the world and add "Actors" to the map, all of which are saved to the database. The map displayed is also the map I am viewing in the main UI above.