Tech on Dave Voyles

Tutorials: Creating your first website with Azure

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

My Tech Evangelist colleagues, Joe Raio and Brian Sherwin, have create a great set of video tutorials on how to create your own website using Azure. This is part of Microsoft’s Choose to Code campaign, which guides your middle and high school students through a series of online tutorials walking them through the process of creating and publishing their own website.

If you are using Azure Passes, watch this video

If you are using DreamSpark, start with this video

Still need Azure? Reach out to me to inquire about BizSpark

My 10th weekly newsletter is out!

Fri, 17 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

If you find some links that you think would be useful, feel free to share! You can always subscribe (or unsubscribe) by clicking on the MailChimp widget on the right-hand side of this page. Here’s a link to the original file.

Gaming

Game Dev

Reverse engineering Yoda Stories

VC / Startups

Nerdy / Tech

100 Technical Things Non-Technical People Can Learn To Make Their Lives Easier

HTML5

prime[31] Azure plugin for Win8 Unity games (Part 3)

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Unite 2014 keynote recap

Fri, 22 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’m still at Unite 2014 this week, so I thought I’d deliver a quick recap of the Unite 2014 keynote, courtesy of Jaime Rodriguez, of Microsoft.

Here was my favorite talk of Unite as well:

[Unite 2014 – IL2CPP: The next generation of scripting in Unity](Unite%202014 - IL2CPP: The next generation of scripting in Unity)
Unite 2014 – WebGL Deployment in Unity 5

Opening stats:

[David Helgason, CEO]

600k active montly game developers .. [compared to 120k users, 3 years ago]
54% of games use middleware [compared to 10% 4 years ago]
47% mobile developers use Unity [17% in 2009]
8.7B Unity mobile app installs [not all inclusive, that is people who opt-in to analytics]
PC has strength [mobile devs targeting PCs as they get better]

Industry:

[David Helgason, CEO]

BizSpark: Free software and cloud services for your startup

Sun, 17 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Jennifer Marsman wrote a great post on her MSDN blog about the benefits of BizSpark and how to get started with the program. This step-by-step tutorial can help get you enrolled as well.

Perks of the program:

http://wootstudio.ca/startups/bizspark.aspx
Windows 10 developer accounts (Xbox, Windows)
Visual Studio Ultimate licenses
Windows licenses (multiple versions)
Office 365 developer account
$150 / month Azure credits (for each dev on your team, up to 5 total, $750 value)
Website hosting, virtual machines, databases, & mobile services
Visual Studio Online (Formerly TFS)
90 Days of pluralsight + DigitalTutors training
Free marketing support with Microsoft

Who qualifies?

Actively engaged in development of a software-based app, product, or service that will form a core piece of your current or intended business. (NOTE: you must be building a product! Startups providing consulting services are not eligible.)
Your company is privately held, and in business for less than 5 years.
Makes less than US $1 million in annual revenue

Whether you are a student, startup, or an indie game developer, Microsoft views you as a welcome addition to our startup program.

My third weekly newsletter is out

Sat, 16 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

HTML5

Gaming / Game Dev

Tech

prime[31] Azure plugin for Win8 Unity games (Part 2)

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

RESOURCES: You can find the source for this project on my GitHub.

In part 1 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.

Now that we have the project built, let’s open it up the metro folder, and launch the Prime31 Visual Studio solution.

Boost productivity: Convert YouTube videos to MP3

Sun, 10 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’m an avid runner and cyclist, but I can’t stand exercising in silence. Sure, I have tons of nerdy video game music (woohoo, Yuzo Koshiro), but sometimes I also want to learn.

I peruse YouTube for different things to learn every day, and generally listen in the background as I work. I find that tech talks from user groups are the best. (Check out this video from David Catuhe, on how to write WebGL games with Babylon.js)

Stacey Mulcahy writes: Internet of Things with Unity3d, Arduino and Spacebrew

Wed, 30 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

My co-worker, and web dev ninja, Stacey Mulcahy (@bitchwhocodes) put together a great series of blog posts on how to use Spacebrew ( a web sockets solution built on Node that enables you to create interactive spaces with several clients ) with Unity3d and Arduino & Processing. This is the beginning / start of next week’s bit where she shows how to build your own DDR mat and hook it into Unity3d, Arduino, and Processing.

How does Microsoft compare in the Fortune 500?

Thu, 24 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Before I joined Microsoft, I was an engineer at Comcast, on their COAM (Consumer Owned and Maintained Devices) team, where I worked on their Xbox 360, Xbox One, and SmartGlass apps. Now that I’m at Microsoft, another Fortune 50 company, I’ve kept a close eye on all of the large tech companies, to see how they weigh against one another. Here are some results from the recent Fortune magazine analysis:

Examples of apps published with the Web App Template

Fri, 18 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Switching from the iPhone 5 to the Lumia 1520

Fri, 11 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Today I made the switch from the iPhone 5 on Verizon, to a Lumia 1520 on AT&T. I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem for the last 3 years, so making the change was nerve-wracking, to say the least.

Calculating the cost

I have a number of AT&T devices through work, but I could never use them outside of locations where I had Wifi, because I was locked to Verizon. To weigh out the cost of switching over, I looked at what my early termination fee through Verizon would be, as well as what I could fetch if I sold my 64GB Verizon iPhone 5 in the wild.

Windows 8 app development for beginners

Thu, 22 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

[iframe src=”http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/34969684″ width=”676″ height=”600″ frameborder=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″ scrolling=”no”]

Finishing the Web App template

Fri, 16 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

You can download the app from the Windows 8 Store, for free.

In my last post, I mentioned that I began using Microsoft’s new Web App Template, to quickly and easily create an app out of my website, while using very little code. Now that my app is finished, I wanted to walk you through the steps, so that you can do the same. In total, it only took me about 2 hours to have my app created from scratch, and in the store!

Apache Cordova integrated in Visual Studio for Multi-Device Hybrid App development

Mon, 12 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been pushing HTML5 cross platform applications for some time now. I frequently give talks on how to use tools like Telerik’s App Builder, Adobe’s PhoneGap Cloud, and my personal favorite, Intel’s XDK. You can find my open sourced Cordova app here.

Previously, Cordova was a cumbersome command line tool for building cross platform HTML5 mobile apps. it was not fun, and was incredibly painful to use, due to the constantly outdated documentation. Even worse, even if you did get an HTML5 app running on Windows Phone, you didn’t have a debugger!

Intro to the Web App Template

Wed, 07 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

You can find Part 2 of this tutorial, here. I’ve also compiled a list of great apps published with the WAT.

On Venture Capitalist Chris Dixon’s blog, he recently highlighted the decline of the mobile web.

“People are spending more time on mobile vs desktop, and more of their mobile time using apps, not the web This is a worrisome trend for the web. Mobile is the future. What wins mobile, wins the Internet. Right now, apps are winning and the web is losing.

Professional Game Development Tools

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post is part of 3 week series giving current and aspiring game devs the tools, resources, and advice they need to get started building for Windows. We also have a great video course on [game production basics](http://Game Production Basics) at Microsoft Virtual Academy.


Visual Studio Community Edition	visual-studio-logo

You need an IDE, or Integrated Development Environment, to write code for your games. Visual Studio Community edition is FREE from Microsoft, and allows you to use a multitude of languages.

Unity shmup template (JS and C#)

Sat, 15 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been a huge fan of shmups for as long as I can remember. If it’s good, I’ve played it (and it’s probably Japanese). I wrote my last one in JavaScript using the Impact.js framework, but this time around I wanted to do it in Unity and really test the performance of the engine.

When looking for Unity shmup templates, I came across this great set of posts on the Shmup-dev website. One post includes an excellent talk on unity shmup development, with slides and source code to go along with it. It really touches on some of the basics and key points for creating a shmup, including performance considerations. Object pooling is absolutely necessary when creating a high performance game, and the author monoRAIL explains it very neatly for readers.

Super Rawr-Type is released for Windows 8

Tue, 25 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Play Super Rawr-Type for FREE in the Windows 8 Store

Super Rawr-Type, my 2D sidescrolling JavaScript shooter, is finally available for Windows 8. I actually finished working on it in August, but needed to change a few lines of code to have it pass certification, and completely forgot to resubmit. On Friday I made the final necessary changes, submitted, and it’s up in the store today.

The project is open source, and you can find my GitHub here.

How do I get my game on Xbox One?

Fri, 07 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Update 3/29/16

With today’s announcements at //BUILD, some of this information will be out of date. I will make changes in the very near future.
Updated, 9/24/15
TLDR: Middleware engines work great and support for Xbox one is continuing to grow within new tools each day. I have a more recent post with more information following Microsoft’s presence at GDC 2015. Here is the latest.

For developers to focus on building for the UWP. Building UWP apps today is the best way to make sure apps will work on the Xbox when UWP is available on the Xbox. Similarly how different device families have specific APIs (GPIO, Hardware buttons, etc), Xbox will have a set of APIs that developer can use to extend experience to match the Xbox One, and those APIs will be used on top of the core UWP functionality that developers are building today.

How to write engaging second screen experiences, using SmartGlass or Win8

Fri, 07 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Start making games, even if you don't know how to program

Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

“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.

Welcome, students of Philadelphia!

Sun, 26 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

My goal right now is to build a network for students around Philadelphia to work on projects together, ask questions, and share their work.

Feel free to ask me questions. I’m here to help! Want to know how to get started with an HTML5 project, mobile apps, or how to get started in the games industry? Ask me!

I met some of you this weekend at the Global Game Jam, and others at the**Tri-Co Hackathon.** If you were interested to see what was happening at either event, click on the links above.

My next game will be made with Unreal Engine 4

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

So now that November 15th has finally arrived, I can say what I’ve been working on lately; a new game with the Unreal Engine 4.

I’m still under NDA, and I can’t post any screens just yet, but rest assured that the engine is vastly improved from what UDK was, in terms of both usability and performance. Epic has a number of videos available online, so you can see what the workflow is like.

Former 2d shooter sample, now working as a C++ / DirectX 11 sample

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Charles Humprey (@NemoKrad) was kind enough to help me get his 2D side scrolling shooter sample working in C++ / DX 11 this morning. You can find the source code to the project here. He’s a fellow MVP who has been extremely active in the XNA community, and provided numerous samples in the past. You can find more of his work here.

Requirements:

Windows 7 or 8 should work fine. I use Win 8.0 and he uses Windows 7, and the project works fine on both of our machines. I’m not sure if it is compatible with Visual Studio 2012, but I do not believe so. Regardless, the express version of 2013 is free.

Super Rawr-Type Redux is released for the browser

Sun, 03 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Click here to play Super Rawr-Type Redux

Source Code: https://github.com/DaveVoyles/Super-Rawr-Type-Redux

I’ve spent the last 3 months working on the follow up to my previous game, Super Rawr-Type. It was a simple side scrolling 2D shmup, which I wrote in JavaScript and also ported to Windows 8. One bug prevents me from getting it into the store, and I’m not able to replicate it, so who knows if it will ever be released there.

Hacking jQuery to work in Windows 8

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

For some time now I’ve been building HTML5 apps for Windows 8. I had previously done work in C# and XAML (Spell and Speak, Pizong, and two Unity games), but prefer HTML5 and JavaScript for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it allows me to build apps for multiple platforms while only having to make marginal tweaks for each one. Naturally, each platform comes with its own ups and downs, but I haven’t really had any issues with Windows 8 until I started integrating jQuery.

Adding touch controls for Windows 8

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Loading Super Rawr-Type within the Win8 touch simulator

For the last two weeks or so I’ve been working out bugs in Super Rawr-Type and integrating touch controls for the Windows 8 port. This is the first time I’ve ever created touch controls, so it took a bit to understand how they work, specifically with toggling the joystick for movement and stationary buttons for shooting, switching weapons, and activating powerups.

What proved most difficult for me really was not having a machine to test my controls on. I’ve had to rely on the simulator thus far, which basically runs a virtual machine on your desktop, wrapped a shell that appears like a Win8 tablet. The buttons on the right hand side emulate figure gestures, so you can view and understand how your own touches will affect the game.

Creating the random enemy spawner, improving performance

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

When building my Win8 port of Super Rawr-Type, I ran into all sorts of performance issues, due to lack of optimization. This was to be expected, as I on gave myself 1 month to complete the base game, then I would take the second and final month to port it to different platforms and worry about optimization.

The design of my levels is where most of my issues came from. I explain it pretty well in this post here. The gist of it is this: When the map loads, it is filled with ~150 enemies, which are constantly being updated. Obviously this comes with quite a bit of overhead. The browser version played well, but on a dedicated OS it chugs.

Object pooling optimizations – not so much [yet]

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

[UPDATE] Clarified that I have two classes for my bullet. One which uses pooling, and another that does not use pooling.

So my object pooling optimizations don’t seem to be working.

I thought I would have seen some improvements in terms of my performance, but I’m just not seeing it. I think one issue is due to the fact that with more objects lying around, the garbage collector takes longer to run. Essentially, the pooling reduces how often the collector runs, but makes those runs more noticeable.

Video update of my 2D shmup using the JavaScript framework Impact.js

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

So I’m quickly progressing in my newest game, Super Rawr-Typeand am just about to put the finishing touches on it. I’ve given myself one month (30 days) to work on this bad boy. GDC and PAX took up quite a bit of time recently, so I’ve got a few days left to go. It’s far from perfect, but it’ll do.

Next month, I’ll focus on publishing to The Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Stores, as well as wrapping the code in the iOS wrapper.

My book, UnrealScript Game Programming Cookbook has been published!

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

My first book, UnrealScript Game Programming Cookbook has been published by Pakt Publishing today. It covers a variety of topics, from creating your own modular camera system, crafting AI, creating intelligent pathfinding for bots, and manipulating weapons.

A free sample chapter is available as well, which covers creating a modular camera system, from beginning to end.

It’s available in a number of formats, including a physical copy, as well as Kindle and .pdf formats. You can find the book here, or also at Amazon.com here.

[Tutorial] Design Time Data + Passing Data Across Pages (WP8)

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

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”

The final chapter of my book on UnrealScript Programming was completed today

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier today I completed the final chapter of my book The Advancaed UnealScript Programming Cookbook. The book covers a number of topics ranging from creating custom weapons, advanced AI for navigating tight paths and following pawns, drawing a HUD without the use of ScaleForm, and adjusting crosshairs based on the actor your pawn’s eyes are tracing.

It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Initially I wasn’t completely confident that I could complete the book within the restrictions of such a tight deadline (less than 3 months), especially when I hadn’t used the language or Unreal Development kit in almost a year. I had previously been focusing my efforts on C#, XNA, and Unity.

My first XBLIG, Piz-ong, is on the Xbox Live Marketplace this morning!

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So it’s been a long time coming, but my first Xbox Live Indie Game, *Piz-ong,*finally appeared on Xbox Live this morning.

It took me a few attempts to get it through peer review, and it was always for something silly, like forgetting an “if”statement for the trial mode (which I later found out from James Silva that you don’t even need, as the game automatically prompts for the trial to tend after 7 minutes).

Dream.Build.Play dev diary 2

Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Just placeholder art for now

Update: I’ve found the thread where in the App Hub where I got the original idea for the powerups. It is now linked.

This is part 2 of my Dream.Build.Play journal, where I outline what it’s like to learn the technical side of XNA and C#. You can find my first part here.

As I mentioned in my previous posting, a few members of the XNA community have been key in helping me learn the ins and outs along the way. I was looking for a framework to build my game on top of, and in doing so I came across a few which caught my attention, but Oneksoft’s Basic Starter Kit really had a lot of features that I was looking for. He frequently updates it, which gives you an added incentive to check out the page often as well. Essentially it is a combination of items from developers within the community, all of which are designed to make the experience of a novice developer easier.

The Molyjam title I worked on is out now!

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This weekend I had the pleasure of working with a great bunch of guys to put together a fun party style game for the first “What Would Molydeux?” game jam. It was my first game jam, but a great one nonetheless. I wasn’t sure of what to expect, but in the end I things turned out great. I had a chance to meet up with some great people, collaborate on a new project, and learn quite a bit along the way.

New UDK vehicle camera tests posted

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I haven’t updated my blog in a while, so I figured it was time I put some work up here. I’m still working on the Mega Man 2 project, more specifically, creating the models for the enemies on the stage. It’s all blocked out at this point, and much of the environment art is in place.

Until I have more to post on that, enjoy the vehicle camera test I created when working on a project similar to Soviet Strike during the PSX era. I found out the hard way that vehicles and pawns adhere to two completely different camera systems in the engine. Vehicles it seems, require a camera per seat, whereas pawns use one camera, and one camera only. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Programming pickups for vehicles in UDK tutorial is up

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve just finished creating a tutorial on programming pickups for vehicles in UDK. This covers both ammo and health. I noticed that it was something that I felt wasn’t covered in depth when I needed to learn how to do it for Death Sentence, so I figured I would save others the time. At the end of the tutorial you’ll find the .uc code for both items, and instructions on how to implement it into your game. What are you waiting for? Check it out! And be sure to let me know what you think of it as well.

Death Sentence website is live!

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

See, I really do make games and not just write about them! Take a gander at the site I created for Death Sentence. It is still very It’s a great team so far, and I’ve been fortunate enough to hop on, although later in development to work as both an environment artist and web developer. It is a vahicular combat title in a similar vein to Twisted Metal. We’ve created it using the latest Unreal Engine, and it should have a release on the PC and perhaps iOS at some point after.

Developed Conelle Construction Group's website

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Flexing my creative talents, I’ve recently finished Conelle Construction’s website. They are a general contracting firm out of Manhattan, NY, who speciailizes in high-end residential and commercial renovations. I also work there as a field supervisor, and AV / IT tech. Check out some of our work in the photo galleries.