Construct 2 Advanced Game Development – Microsoft Virtual Academy

FINALLY!  I have finally finished all of my blog posts and samples to go along with my second Microsoft Virtual Academy Course, Construct 2 – Advanced Game Development.  I have spent the last couple of months trying to detail every piece of my efforts through blog posts and sample projects.  Everything that I do in the course will be accessible to YOU!  That was my goal from the beginning, and after hours of work, it is ready!

I am excited to say that I will be recording with, same as last time, fellow Technical Evangelist, Shahed Chowdhuri.  We will have a similar format to Part 1 where we will have about 4 hours of total content and we will more or less split that time two hours a piece.  In my two hours, here is what I am thinking!  I want to focus on two different high level topics, Windows 8.X features and Monetization with your games!  Because of the Windows 8 object that already exists inside of Construct 2, it should be fairly easy to get started with Windows 8.X features.  That said, I will be looking at adding About, Support, and Privacy pages as well as Share support through the charms bar.  In addition to the Windows features built into the Windows 8 object, I want to take a look at creating global leaderboards via Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform.  With Azure Mobile Services, you have the ability to create tables (ex. a high scores table) and access them through HTTP requests.  This table storage, being cloud based, can grow as much as you need it to.  As I said, the second focus is Monetization.  Obviously, creating games is only part of the fun.  Trying to make money and hopefully succeeding is another part.  I will focus on two of the three main ways to monetize with games, Advertisements and In App Purchases (IAP). 

With that said, you can find links to all corresponding blog posts below.  In these posts you will have links to other blog posts for deeper background (if necessary), and for some of them, links to sample projects on Github.

 

Windows 8 Features

Windows 8 Object

Global Leaderboards with Azure Mobile Services

Monetization

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IAP