Preparing for Windows 8 App Review

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I recently went through the Windows 8 App Review for a game I am working on.  What I found out:

WACK

The application passed the WACK test, an automatic test that tests the inner workings of you project.  What I round is that the fails are not “linear” so look for things that cause other errors, don’t do the list from top to bottom or bottom to top.  Read the list of fails first and then try to figure out the connected errors.

Snap View

Ok, I didn’t get this working, turns out that all I had to do was have a little form show up that said that the app doesn’t support the snap view.  I had a fancy thing designed but didn’t get it to work.

No Chrome

This isn’t about the browser, keep the user interaction simple and clean.  You might ask: “What does that mean?”  This is a vague thing, but it takes a long time to write so read the other design text.

Dumb things that I should have caught:

Full Screen, there very few reasons an app shouldn’t run full screen in Windows 8

Resume, Suspend and Save: Really I hadn’t put that code in, dumb, WHY!? No good reason.

Things I didn’t think about but should have:

Tile, yeah, the tile, that really needs to be beautiful, if you have to hire someone to make a good looking tile, then hire them

Secondary Tile: For a causal 2D game not needed.

 

App Bar

App Bar good, but… Do NOT PUT navigation into the App Bar, not that I did, but don’t.  So to be clear: Do not put Navigation into the App Bar.  App Bars are easily implement and for a game could hold your treasures, etc.  If you are using an App Bar you should follow the Metro Design no matter what, unless it looks good.

Touch, Mouse and Keyboard

This is a big deal, all three should appear to have a good experience and I had made an error on the arrow keys that they didn’t replicate the touch and mouse functionality.

Memory Recycles

If you are building a game, make sure to stop image generation at the end of the game.  If you don’t understand this issue then talk to someone who does.  If you do nothing else, destroy anything that goes off screen

Portrait, Landscape, on your head

Games don’t really have to switch, so if they don’t, don’t sweat it.