Tech

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. ...

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] ...

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. ...

HTML5 Free Udacity course: WebGL and Three.js Microsoft will join Khronos and will participate in the webGL working group The power of WebGL – Assasin’s Creed Pirates, using BabylonJS Gaming / Game Dev Night Trap Revamped Kickstarter How to get your game covered by YouTubers – Gamaasutra Xamarin’s new 2D C# crossplatform gaming framework Universal Apps in Unity – Unity Blog Marketing tips from devs who have over 3 million downloads – MSDN How to reach the press as a game dev – John Polson John Romero is making another shooter – Joystiq The js13kGames HTML5 and JavaScript Game Development Competition Has Begun Dan Adelman’s advice for indies Why I’ve said goodbye to mobile, in favor of PC – Gamasutra Tech ...

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. ...

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) ...

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. ...

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: ...

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. ...

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. ...