This is the fourth time I participate in the University of Hull Three Thing Game 24h Jam, so I already got some experience with them. We (team 1.21 Gigabytes) decided to participate with the same line-up. We decided to use game engine from our previous game (Stand-Out) which is based on MonoGame.
Recently, I have been working a lot on Raspberry Pi server and as it had more functionality and useful data, problem of automatic backup became quite critical. As I am an active user of SkyDrive (OneDrive) I wanted to do a backup there. But after quick search it appears quite hard to do (if not impossible), so I decided to use Dropbox instead.
The first tutorial I found was this one from Dave Hope. Quite a nice script, doesn’t use any dependencies, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to run it (probably because of my lack of experience with Linux in general). So I decided to use Andrew Fabrizi’s Dropbox Uploader and write my own script.
This Global Game Jam 2014 was different to me than previous – I had a team from the start (1.21 Gigabytes), venue has been changed and we planned to make local-coop game from the start. Unfortunately, not everything went well from the beginning: we could not find a place to work and my plans to find a designer have failed. But finally we found a quite place to settle in and I decided to do graphics for a game myself. And so it started.
Recently I was wondering how to specify right information in the application manifest (appxmanifest) so it would pass certification. There is much more complicated rules compared to Windows Phone Marketplace. For example: all names are unique, so name inside manifest of uploaded application should be the same as reserved name in Windows 8 Store, otherwise certification would fail.
That was a sad day 🙁 Because we had to leave. Apart from that it was great !
There was nice Tech talk session from Martin whom I have met before on Tech Days in June and surprisingly he have recognized me (Microsoft people starts recognizing me, wow, lol) It nice and very informative, except the fact I have seen them before and there was no C++ at all.
The second day at Microsoft Reading was an app idea sharing day. And that was the most amazing part of this 3-day event ! There was many ideas and every was different, unique and interesting. Actually, during pitch session (where all ideas was presented) I really wanted to develop some of them. But I will stick to my idea. 🙂 (I was surprised so many people liked it)
I was very exited when I received reply from Microsoft that I am accepted into Apps in August event. But I completely didn’t know what expect.
While on the way there I met few other student-participant and we made our way to the Microsoft building (from second try) I was quite happy to actually see some people I met before (Ben Nunney), finally meet someone I have seen online many times (Phil Cross) and of course get to know some new faces (Natasha Joseph).
So there it is, I have Windows 8 Store developer account. I guess that I can’t talk much about it for now as it is not opened yet. But there is surely one biggest difference between Windows Phone 7 Marketplace and Windows 8 Store.
So, it feels like I should create application submissions with names I desire 🙂
Surely need to pick an Angry Birds))
Recently I was trying to share an image from my app using contract. It is always good to provide as much as possible sharing ways, so target app could choose the best one. But to do it image should be loaded to StorageFile^ format first. There is how to do this: