If you’ve been away for a while, you may not have heard that WebGL is supported in Internet Explorer, starting with version 11, currently available as a preview release, either as part of the Windows 8.1 preview, or as a stand-alone release for Windows 7. And I have the proof right here:
If you’ve written a game for the Windows Store or for Windows Phone, you may have noticed that some markets require the use of game rating certificates. If you’re like me, your initial reaction may have been “that looks hard” and as a result just skipped the process and only published where certificates aren’t required (for example, here in the United States, ESRB certification is optional).
Continue reading Getting a Game Rating Certificate for Windows Store and Windows Phone
There’s a new kid in town, maybe you’ve heard of him…Windows 8? Or maybe you’ve heard about his sibling, Windows RT. Maybe you’ve heard that over 60 million licenses for Windows 8 have been sold as of January, and recognize what that means in terms of a large and growing potential customer base.
Or maybe you’ve heard about the Keep the Cash offer, which provides $100 per eligible app published to either the Windows Store or the Windows Phone Store between March 8th and June 30th, 2013 (for up to $2000 per developer), and want to take advantage.
Or maybe you’re a student, and you’ve heard about the Windows 8 App Madness Challenge, in which students can receive $100 per app (up to 5) they successfully submit to the Windows Store.
However you got here, you may have the question…how do I get started? I’m here to walk you through, step-by-step.
In this issue, I’ve got some great resources for app developers, as well as for user groups:
If you’ve done some web development, but want to kick your skills up a notch, check out Learn HTML5 with JavaScript & CSS3 Jump Start Training, a course from Microsoft Virtual Academy. The course covers HTML Semantic Markup, CSS3 Selectors, Layout and Animation, JavaScript Core and DOM Interaction, and more.
Continue reading Quick Hits Issue #5: Resources for App Developers and User Groups
I’m pleased to announce a new Meetup group for Windows App Developers in the DC area. The group will focus on local workshops, hackathons, office hours, and other events featuring myself and other local technical evangelists.
If you’re not in the DC Area, check out these other meetups, featuring some of my peers in the east region:
Continue reading Quick Hits Issue #3: New Meetups, Game Development, and more!
…but didn’t know to ask.
OK, perhaps not everything…but certainly all the options for developing great games on Windows 8.
Bob Familiar, who manages some of my fellow Technical Evangelists on our East Region team, managed to find time between updating SharePoint and emailing Excel files to do some really thorough research on the state of game development for Windows 8, and shares his results on his blog:
Continue reading Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Windows 8 Game Development…
In this post, I’m going to kick off a series in which I’ll walk through the creation of a back-end service for a Windows 8 app. This first post will provide an overview of the series, and introduce a couple of potential technologies you can use to build your back-end services.
As an example of a scenario that might merit a nicely abstracted back-end service, I’m going to create a simple leaderboard service that can store and retrieve high scores and win/loss/tie stats for a variety of games. Since it’s where I’ve spent the majority of my time lately, I’m going to focus on games built with HTML and Javascript, but the platform choices I’m going to describe will work just as well for games and apps build with C# or VB and XAML.
Continue reading Building Data and Services for Windows 8 Apps
I wanted to take a moment to thank all the folks who came out to Columbia University for last Friday’s HTML5 Game Camp event that I presented with my colleague Lindsay Lindstrom. It was great to see so many folks interested in HTML5 and gaming, and in particular how many folks stuck around on a Friday evening to hack some code.
I promised to get my decks uploaded, so here they are: