The game development landscape, especially for Indies is certainly changing. With the recent XBOXOne and PS4 console releases show that skills like C++ are still very much in demand, as a fellow Indie this does concern be greatly. I left my C++ skills in the past once MDX and then XNA were born and the thoughts of going back does intimidate me somewhat.
Just to cross post back to my own blog (really did that the wrong way round 
) here’s my entry to the Intel App-Up competition now being run on codeproject, if you got an idea for an app or game for Windows 8 then you should write a short article for the comp about your idea and you may even walk away with a free Intel Ultrabook to build it with.
Boy what a crazy couple of months, to kick things off I got my first Windows 8 game up and running and through the App Excellence labs on to the Store in prompt fashion, not a glitch (if you do not count the first lab I attended not understanding what the labs were really there for, putting a tick in the box for your app to go on the store). Not one single issue in submission, it was in and done in about 4 days.
Like with any new system there are bound to be some kinks in the road, issues or just downright annoyances that will send you spiralling into the deepest dark pits of annoyance (the last has been me for the last few weeks).
*Note by popular requesthere’s a sample (pulled from the AdRotator site) showing AdRotator implemented in a Windows 8 app with AdDuplex, PubCenter and a local House AD.
There are probably a lot of people I could blame for me writing this article but at the end of the day it is my own damn fault for trying.
*Note , a minor update in the wake of recent Windows Store experiences, added an option for a privacy policy. I highly recommend adding one even you don’t think you need one, Just in case 😀
Quickly following up from my “Snapped View” article there was another little caveat I wanted to add, but it also deserved it’ own little post.
One of my biggest pains with porting my WP7 app to Windows 8 is the “Snapped View”, an interesting feature added to Windows 8 to provide “smart” docking for apps and properly allow 2 apps to run simultaneously on screen, as a user this looks great, as a developer it is a right royal pain in the rear.
Following the submission of my first Windows 8 app into the preview store I’m planning on a few quick posts on my experiences and helpful stuff I found/created during my journey.
A nice feature we had in the Windows phone days was the ability to plug in your device and test your code running on it, if you had more than one device (about 7 in my case) then you just had to swap the device over and you were off again, however this did have some drawbacks, namely:
*Note updated after a few bugfixes from use, mainly added some additional features and changed to allow for multiple folders to be used