c# - What approach would you take to develop an old school game?

Possible duplicate: What technology should I use for a web-based game?

I have agreed to show my child how to develop software. He wants me to help him develop a game.

If you were me then what approach would you take to develop an old school game?

I was thinking about an old school game that you can pick up and play them straight away, where there is no "learning curve". This is because we prefer playing these types of games. On top of that I want to be able to say things like "I made the game engine, the AI, he did the scoring system and .. and .. and ..".

I intend to run it in a browser, to target a broad range of platforms. I was thinking to use mainly C# and Silverlight.

So, if you were me then what approach would you take to develop an old school game?

EDIT

Could I use XNA? Is it free? Does it plug into Visual Studio 2010?

Answer

C# makes best combo for home development. There are two great platforms which are well suitable even for beginers. I expect that "old school game" means something like SNES games.

• XNA - is buid over directx and can ran on PC,XBOX and win7 phone. It is easy to use and learn. It uses shaders but you can evercome it by use basic effect classes which does the work for you and you don't need to touch GPU. And of course you can make simple 2D old school games which will run on todays hw with xna.


• Unity - Is today's "everybody-love" game development platform. You can write code in c# or javascript and it will run on almost everything (PC, web browser, mac, iphone, android, xbox and ps3). It is however not that good for simple 2D development as XNA is. But someone may disagree.

edit: if running in web browser is your "must have":

• Using java applets is also possibility to run games in browsers. If you use only canvas to which you can draw geometric primitives, it will be pretty near to the old school. However you can also use JOGL or similar to have access to the OpenGl functions.


• Flash - It is well used possibility for game development in a browser. It uses action script, which is similar to javascript.


• Javascript and html5 - Html5 canvas and javascript opens new ways to create games in browsers. You can control directly what you draw into the canvas and it will run with no need on of installation of any plugin in every browser (in near future). No hw acceleration seems like no problem for you.