Windows Phone 8

RESOURCES: You can find the source for this project on my GitHub. Power point slides Video Walkthrough Get this working on Windows Phone In part 2 of my tutorial, I showed you how you how to set up the initial project with prime[31]. Now that we have it built, I’m going to walk you through the code, as well as how it all works. Insert Let’s test this out by running the project from Visual Studi and inserting a new object into our leaderboard. Deploy the sample, connect to the Azure service, then insert a new username and score. ...

A few months back, I wrote a piece on a high level overview of Microsoft’s Web App Template. I’ve recently learned that it not only works on Windows 8, but is also applicable to Win Phone 8, with Universal support coming soon. So why would anyone ever wrap their site and turn it into an app? Well for one thing, it can quickly and easily net you 300+ 4+ star reviews on the store, and takes no more than an hour to create. ...

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This ties into my previous post, where I spoke about how to get your game or app on Xbox One. Microsoft unveiled quiet a bit of information regarding SmartGlass during BUILD 2012, and much of it is available **via this Power Point presentation.**Ignore most of the C++ in there; I never had to touch any of that. All of my work was done via JavaScript and it worked fine. I also spoke about SmartGlass development on this week’s Hanselminutes podcast. ...

“I want to get started with making games, but I don’t know how. Where should I start?” It can be overwhelming when you are starting off, because there are so many options available to you. I mean just look at plethora of game making tools at Pixel Prospetor, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. If you have zero programming experience, then I’d suggest starting with Construct2. Construct 2 allows you to create HTML5 games without ever having to write code. Everything is handled in the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which has a GUI (Graphical User Interface) that anyone could use. You simply drag-and-drop objects into your scene, and can make changes to the objects properties by right clicking. Even better, it’s free! There are premium versions available, but if you’re just starting off, then the free version offers more than enough to get you going. ...

The most difficult part of this project thus far has been understanding the idea behind MVVM, or Model-View-View Model. Wikipedia defines it as: “MVVM facilitates a clear separation of the development of the graphical user interface (either as markup language or GUI code) from the development of the business logic or back end logic known as the model (also known as the data model to distinguish it from the view model). The view model of MVVM is a value converter, meaning that the view model is responsible for exposing the data objects from the model in such a way that those objects are easily managed and consumed” ...