Wondering where the best place to start when considering building Windows 8 games?

 

Win8_logo

The following blog is a great basis to start from when considering developing for Windows 8:

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2013/03/22/developing-windows-store-games.aspx

Another great link is:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/apps/hh452744

This includes an excellent post on moving from DX9 to DX 11.1

So if you presently studying or teaching DX9, DX10 it will cover the how’s and why’s of moving from DX9 to DX11.1:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/dn166872.aspx

As well as moving to DX 11.1 a few more things to consider are below. Further links/info on all of these can be found in the top two links above.

  1. Design of the game UI to fit with Windows 8 design guidelines. Try and keep the canvas clear and use settings charm and app bars for game UI elements if appropriate.
  2. Windows 8 games can be designed for touch but must also support keyboard/mouse at a minimum - to cater for devices that do not have touch
  3. If you choose to use sensors such as accelerometers then you must also provide fallback/alternative methods since not all devices will have this functionality.
  4. You must deal gracefully with snap/fill mode
  5. You must deal gracefully with orientation (landscape/portrait) - you can fix to one if preferred - usually landscape.
  6. Consider adding live tiles
  7. Consider using contracts such as share, devices (support output to DNLA devices).
  8. Ensure that your games options/settings reside in the settings charm.
  9. Your app must provide privacy policy in the settings charm if internet connection capability declared.
  10. Your app must supply app support info/contact and version info in the settings pane/contract
  11. Consider adding support for in app purchase, trials (feature and time)
  12. Consider adding support for Azure Mobile Cloud Services so that you can easily synchronise iOS, Android, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 game state, leaderboards, authentication etc.
  13. Consider saving game state and UI settings etc. in the Windows 8 romaing data storage - this provides free, automatic synchronisation across all devices with the game installed on that the user owns under his user account.
  14. Consider game analytics. Two 3rd party ones that may be worth looking at:

Flurry:

https://www.flurry.com/flurry-analytics.html

Markedup:

https://markedup.com/