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| Microsoft Azure has a variety of features that game developers can take advantage of to enhance the capability of their games and reach a global audience. Games studios from AAA studios to indie developers are using Azure to support their games architecture. Here are some examples: Palabra is a hybrid between poker and scrabble. This turn-based game uses Azure Mobile Services to authenticate users, send game data to SQL Azure and notification hubs to notify players that it’s their turn to play. Another example of games using Azure is Number-Tap, which was made by one of your fellow kiwi devs. This game uses ASP.NET API to hosted on Azure Websites and like Palabra, stores game data in SQL Azure. Wordament uses Azure to handle their infrastructure. The game is run on a Cloud Service, routing all game traffic through a ‘visitor centre’ which is load balanced over 3 instances of Web roles. The player will verify their identity using either an Xbox or Facebook account, and the Web role will send a URL to the game room in a region and language that is specific to the player. Once the game is over, the players score is temporally stored in Azure Cache and then presented back to the player through the game room. Even massive AAA titles such as Halo 4 are leveraging Azure for their games. 343 Industries used HDInsight to gain insights into player behaviour and user preferences. This allows them to tailor their marketing campaigns to improve players user experience and more. Read this case study to see what other benefits 343 reaped from using HDInsight. How does this apply to you? Well, next week we are running a Microsoft Cloud Camp to teach you how you can apply Azure in your games. In this interactive event, we’ll take you through an overview of how you can use Azure in your games and how successful titles such as Titanfall use Azure for their games. After that, you will dive into some hands on labs you can prepare for the big competition in the afternoon. The details of the competition will be revealed on the day, but we have a 12-month Xbox Live subscription up for grabs! Unfortunately we have had to cancel the event in Wellington, but there are still some spaces left for the Auckland event on December 2nd. Don’t miss out! Register now. |
Thiago Almeida Technical Evangelist Microsoft New Zealand ![MSDN Twitter]() ![NZ DX YouTube]() ![Dirk Linkedin Profile]() ![MSDN NZ Facebook]() |
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If you're a student who wants to compete in the Imagine Cup next year, then you need to act fast! The deadline for project proposals is December 5th. You need to register here, complete a maximum 5 page report on your idea and submit it to the NZ Education team. For more details, head here.
There's a brand new design for the global BizSpark website and we love it! Check it out. Remember, if you're a startup that's less than five years old, making less than US$1M in revenue and making your own software you qualify for BizSpark! Head to the global page to apply now!
Azure HDInsight is now generally available in Australia datacenters as well as in Japan East and China. Azure customers can now spin up a Hadoop cluster within minutes in these datacenters.
Today App Studio added the much-anticipated Twitter Data Source via OAuth integration. Along with this milestone addition, we have updated the Instagram Data Source, allowing you to authenticate using the OAuth protocol adding new search capabilities.
With the announcement surrounding Visual Studio 2013 Community, the Visual Studio team have updated the licensing white paper that clarifies licensing requirements for all versions of Visual Studio. Make sure that you are up-to-date with the new changes and how they affect your organisation.
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| Have a Windows app project on the side? Show it off! Share it with the rest of the community in the Kiwi Windows Apps Facebook group or send us an email to nzdev\@outlook.com. |
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2nd December (AKL) Join the Code Club team at the Microsoft offices in Auckland to discuss teaching code to students! Kick off is at 5:30pm and it'll be a great opportunity to chat and connect to like-minded volunteers about the Code Club movement. Drinks and nibbles provided.
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4th December (AKL) Have you been dreaming of building your own game that reaches players on a global scale? In this interactive DevCamp, we’ll take you through an overview on you can leverage the common features offered by Microsoft Azure for your games. Register now and take your game development to the next level!
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9th December (Online Event) Join Brian Harry, Microsoft Corporate Vice President ALM for this live virtual event. Brian will share insights about new technologies and features coming to .NET, ASP.NET, Azure, Visual Studio and Visual Studio Online for developers creating applications across a variety of platforms. This is your chance to ask the big questions and understand the future of development. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the future of Visual Studio.
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11th December (AKL) Equinox IT invites you to a free webinar ‘Learning the hard parts of agile software development’ at 12pm on Thursday 11 December. This will be a facilitated discussion with Equinox IT software development team members, exploring how they have learned the hard parts of making agile work in practice. Equinox IT is a Microsoft gold partner for the application lifecycle management competency.
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15th December (AKL) The final Auckland Azure Lunchtime Meetup in 2014 will be a special one as Ryan CrawCour from the engineering team in Seattle that created DocumentDB will be in Auckland to present all the awesome features that DocumentDB has to offer. As usual, we will be at the Microsoft Offices in Auckland starting at 11.30am! See you there.
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Successful developers are always upgrading thier skills. Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) offers online Microsoft training delivered by experts. Watch videos, download PowerPoint slides and test yourself as you learn at absolutely no cost. If you want to learn something different, head over to MVA here! Here are the three courses your Microsoft Technical Evangelists recommend this week:
If you want to get into the video game industry but don't know where to start, check out this course. Learn what skills you need, and get a look at many available tools and what you can do with them. Find out how games actually make money.
Web devs, want to use your existing skills and code to build apps across major mobile platforms on the market today? Watch as a team of experts show you how to go from web to apps.
Do you have a great idea for a 3D game? If you want to build it with the same open source framework used to create Assassin's Creed Pirates, check out this exciting course!
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