silverlight posts

Independent Minds aims to take various aspects of indie gaming and present them to you each week. From game round-ups to design elements to interviews with prominent members of the scene, it's an exploration of what makes indie gaming great as well as what makes someone an indie.

There's quite a few options for the budding indie game developer. Do I go with this concept, or that one? What do I do about getting more teammates onto the project? Where am I going to get the money to live while I work on this? Where are my pants? One of the most important of all, though, is the question of doing a browser-based game or making a standalone game right off the bat. This week, let's take a look at some of the best browser game engines available for a developer to use on their way to indie stardom.

When considering an engine to use for the web, there are three primary engines that are used widely. This is not counting PHP-based browser games such as Tribal Wars, by the way. The engines are Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flash, Unity, and Sun Microystems Java. Each has their advantages and disadvantages, and appeals to a specific kind of developer or audience.

If you want to create your own game but think that applications like XNA Game Studios Express are too complicated to use, this may be your lucky day. Microsoft recently announced that it has launched the first version of its Popfly Game Creator. The program is an extension of Popfly, a Silverlight-based way to make web pages and small applications.

The interface allows folks to make games based on 15 different templates with access to a bunch of different artwork as well as sounds, backgrounds and animations. While you can make simple games like variations of Asteroids or Frogger without writing a line of code there is an option to write in code manually if you feel that is needed for your game. The idea is for your to make a game and embed it on your blog page or on a social network page like Facebook where it can be shared by others. The program is in an alpha version so expect improvements to be made in the coming months.