Comments on: Windows 7 mobile – a rant. [...] Windows 7 mobile – a rant. « #AltDevBlogADay No [...] [...] Windows 7 mobile – a rant. « #AltDevBlogADay No [...]

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By: Windows 7 mobile – a rant. « #AltDevBlogADay | Windows (7) Affinity/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-6381 Windows 7 mobile – a rant. « #AltDevBlogADay | Windows (7) Affinity Sat, 02 Jul 2011 03:41:11 +0000 [...] the rest here: Windows 7 mobile – a rant. « #AltDevBlogADay No [...] [...] the rest here: Windows 7 mobile – a rant. « #AltDevBlogADay No [...]

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By: Windows 7 mobile – a rant. « #AltDevBlogADay | Windows (7) Affinity/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-6378 Windows 7 mobile – a rant. « #AltDevBlogADay | Windows (7) Affinity Sat, 02 Jul 2011 03:37:08 +0000 [...] original here: Windows 7 mobile – a rant. « #AltDevBlogADay No [...] [...] original here: Windows 7 mobile – a rant. « #AltDevBlogADay No [...]

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By: Glenn Watson/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-547 Glenn Watson Wed, 26 Jan 2011 05:44:40 +0000 I’m going to stick my neck out and say the development environment is pretty much irrelevant.<o:p></o:p> If Microsoft gets the numbers going so its profitable to sell a game on the Windows 7,    developers will jump through whatever hoops they need to  to get their content onto the platform.<o:p></o:p> I’m going to stick my neck out and say the development environment is pretty much irrelevant.<o:p></o:p> If Microsoft gets the numbers going so its profitable to sell a game on the Windows 7,    developers will jump through whatever hoops they need to  to get their content onto the platform.<o:p></o:p>

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By: Glenn Watson/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-545 Glenn Watson Wed, 26 Jan 2011 04:45:08 +0000 ./altdevblogaday.org/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-544 Yeah, but you still need to be able to ping between the machines before any networking lib will work.<o:p></o:p> From: Posterous [mailto:comment-zmyktowiwzuHfhI=posterous.com@sendgrid.me] On Behalf Of Posterous Sent: Wednesday, 26 January 2011 9:30 AM To: podesta1971@gmail.com Subject: [altdevblogaday.com] Comment on "Windows 7 mobile - a rant."<o:p></o:p> Yeah, but you still need to be able to ping between the machines before any networking lib will work.<o:p></o:p> From: Posterous [mailto:comment-zmyktowiwzuHfhI=posterous.com@sendgrid.me] On Behalf Of Posterous Sent: Wednesday, 26 January 2011 9:30 AM To: podesta1971@gmail.com Subject: [altdevblogaday.com] Comment on "Windows 7 mobile – a rant."<o:p></o:p>

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By: Sven Bergström/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-543 Sven Bergström Tue, 25 Jan 2011 23:30:03 +0000

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By: James Podesta/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-542 James Podesta Tue, 25 Jan 2011 23:26:05 +0000 ./altdevblogaday.org/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-542 Yeah, we tried that originally and had it working,  but for some reason my PC just couldn’t PING my iPod a lot of the time.<o:p></o:p> Never resolved it and had to move on..<o:p></o:p> From: Posterous [mailto:comment-zmyktowiwzuHfhI=posterous.com@sendgrid.me] On Behalf Of Posterous Sent: Wednesday, 26 January 2011 9:22 AM To: podesta1971@gmail.com Subject: [altdevblogaday.com] Comment on "Windows 7 mobile - a rant."<o:p></o:p> Yeah, we tried that originally and had it working,  but for some reason my PC just couldn’t PING my iPod a lot of the time.<o:p></o:p> Never resolved it and had to move on..<o:p></o:p> From: Posterous [mailto:comment-zmyktowiwzuHfhI=posterous.com@sendgrid.me] On Behalf Of Posterous Sent: Wednesday, 26 January 2011 9:22 AM To: podesta1971@gmail.com Subject: [altdevblogaday.com] Comment on "Windows 7 mobile – a rant."<o:p></o:p>

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By: Sven Bergström/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-541 Sven Bergström Tue, 25 Jan 2011 23:21:51 +0000 I do 99% of my iOS development in Visual Studio.  It’s right to mention XCode’s failing, but the statement “IOs developers are forced to work with XCode” is misleading.<o:p></o:p> Using openGL and some simple input layers and making sure you provide ortho modes that match iPad and iPhone4 means 99% of your game development can  be crossplatform.<o:p></o:p> Even with a game like Venger where the gameplay is all accelerometer and multi-touch we were able to map that to keyboards and mouse so most of the work could be done in Visual Studio.<o:p></o:p> - Visual Studio<o:p></o:p> IOs developers are forced to work with XCode. The issues with this IDE are numerous. I will not annotate them here apart from one recent example where I was unable to perform a find/replace operation in a text selection.<o:p></o:p> I do 99% of my iOS development in Visual Studio.  It’s right to mention XCode’s failing, but the statement “IOs developers are forced to work with XCode” is misleading.<o:p></o:p> Using openGL and some simple input layers and making sure you provide ortho modes that match iPad and iPhone4 means 99% of your game development can  be crossplatform.<o:p></o:p> Even with a game like Venger where the gameplay is all accelerometer and multi-touch we were able to map that to keyboards and mouse so most of the work could be done in Visual Studio.<o:p></o:p> – Visual Studio<o:p></o:p> IOs developers are forced to work with XCode. The issues with this IDE are numerous. I will not annotate them here apart from one recent example where I was unable to perform a find/replace operation in a text selection.<o:p></o:p>

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By: TheJakeSimpson/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-539 TheJakeSimpson Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:45:20 +0000 Dammit. I wrote a massive comment and it's just gone. Dammit. I wrote a massive comment and it’s just gone.

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By: TheJakeSimpson/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-537 TheJakeSimpson Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:44:09 +0000 I didn't mean to sound harsh either,I can't agree with most of what you are saying, in my experience, the development on the other platforms hasn't been so difficult. For me the common factor would be that someone has used eclipse, and VS before. Jumping to a new OS, new language, new IDE at the same time often leaves a bitter taste no matter the platform...As for eclipse comparable to VS? I really really can't make that leap :) I recently integrated the eclipse platform into my game engine's scripting runtime and my god, i want to cut my hands off half the time :) Of course, that is my opinion as always, and i am spoiled by XCode and VS.On another note - All the nice stuff on Wp7 and c# can actually be quite a crippling thing for 3D or higher end mobile games. For one, i think we did almost a whole replacement of a lot of the XNA internals just to get basic performance that seems obvious on device. The 'little speed loss' is actually quite drastic on mobile, at least in practice as i have seen, and our team experienced constantly.And just to note - I am countering stuff for discussion sake, i have no real particular favourite - only experience with all of the 3 main platforms i see as important... They all have their own perks and downsides... some more so than others but some like that : one mans trash, another mans treasure. I didn’t mean to sound harsh either,I can’t agree with most of what you are saying, in my experience, the development on the other platforms hasn’t been so difficult. For me the common factor would be that someone has used eclipse, and VS before. Jumping to a new OS, new language, new IDE at the same time often leaves a bitter taste no matter the platform…As for eclipse comparable to VS? I really really can’t make that leap :) I recently integrated the eclipse platform into my game engine’s scripting runtime and my god, i want to cut my hands off half the time :) Of course, that is my opinion as always, and i am spoiled by XCode and VS.On another note – All the nice stuff on Wp7 and c# can actually be quite a crippling thing for 3D or higher end mobile games. For one, i think we did almost a whole replacement of a lot of the XNA internals just to get basic performance that seems obvious on device. The ‘little speed loss’ is actually quite drastic on mobile, at least in practice as i have seen, and our team experienced constantly.And just to note – I am countering stuff for discussion sake, i have no real particular favourite – only experience with all of the 3 main platforms i see as important… They all have their own perks and downsides… some more so than others but some like that : one mans trash, another mans treasure.

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By: @lx/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-535 @lx Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:22:42 +0000 Didn't mean to troll, apologies if my comment was curt.What I meant was that WP7 brings three highly developer centric elements to the table:- C# (and with it the whole managed language feature set)While superficial characteristics such as syntax are definitely a matter of taste, C# was designed explicitly to be easier to parse, compile and debug than C++. Even simple actions like renaming variables or in-editor code completion are very difficult with C++ due to the complex nature of the language.The managed environment adds another set of features to help the developer in the form of enhanced security and the garbage collector.The trade-off, of course, is speed. However this only becomes an issue when the platform isn't fast enough. Perhaps when porting Infinity Blade the environment becomes frustratingly restrictive, but for your average mobile game there should be few problems.- Visual StudioIOs developers are forced to work with XCode. The issues with this IDE are numerous. I will not annotate them here apart from one recent example where I was unable to perform a find/replace operation in a text selection.- XNAThe above two points focus mainly on WP7 versus IOs, Android has Java and Eclipse which are very comparable to C#/VS. What pushes WP7 over the edge is the XNA framework. Specifically designed for games it offers a lot of utilities to ease development, from a simple game-loop to resource management to standard libraries for things like displaying sprite-texts or playing sounds.These three aspects make WP7, to me, by far the best developer experience. The tragic part is that as the smallest of the three operating systems, they end up hurting the WP7 more than helping it.In the end it might be a moot point anyway, as cross platform game engines such as Unity swallow more and more of these details. Didn’t mean to troll, apologies if my comment was curt.What I meant was that WP7 brings three highly developer centric elements to the table:- C# (and with it the whole managed language feature set)While superficial characteristics such as syntax are definitely a matter of taste, C# was designed explicitly to be easier to parse, compile and debug than C++. Even simple actions like renaming variables or in-editor code completion are very difficult with C++ due to the complex nature of the language.The managed environment adds another set of features to help the developer in the form of enhanced security and the garbage collector.The trade-off, of course, is speed. However this only becomes an issue when the platform isn’t fast enough. Perhaps when porting Infinity Blade the environment becomes frustratingly restrictive, but for your average mobile game there should be few problems.- Visual StudioIOs developers are forced to work with XCode. The issues with this IDE are numerous. I will not annotate them here apart from one recent example where I was unable to perform a find/replace operation in a text selection.- XNAThe above two points focus mainly on WP7 versus IOs, Android has Java and Eclipse which are very comparable to C#/VS. What pushes WP7 over the edge is the XNA framework. Specifically designed for games it offers a lot of utilities to ease development, from a simple game-loop to resource management to standard libraries for things like displaying sprite-texts or playing sounds.These three aspects make WP7, to me, by far the best developer experience. The tragic part is that as the smallest of the three operating systems, they end up hurting the WP7 more than helping it.In the end it might be a moot point anyway, as cross platform game engines such as Unity swallow more and more of these details.

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By: Sven Bergström/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-533 Sven Bergström Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:08:54 +0000 The tragedy is that WP7 offers by far the best developer experience. The tragedy is that WP7 offers by far the best developer experience.

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By: Sven Bergström/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-531 Sven Bergström Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:00:35 +0000 It’s a shame that Microsoft haven’t made the WP7 app list available on their website, as they have done for Xbox games right down to XBLA Indies. I assume that’s just a matter of time though.It was QuizQuizQuiz – I put a few pictures up at To be fair the 99% was obviously an exaggeration, but the number of titles in the list that were ports was staggering compared to ones that came new, or from PC straight across. Here is the one list, i can’t seem to find the other one : I'd like to see where that 99% figure came from, though granted one of those launch titles I ported from iOS heh. I think it's too be expected that when a new platform launches that they'll be an influx of ports trying to jump on the (potential) band wagon, it's the easier option when dealing with an unproven platform. However, I think we'll see that figure reduced as developers start to create original games for the platform. I also feel that in the future WP7 will have more original developed games than Android being released (proportionally to the market size of course).Sure, talk about XNA more, but the statement that "All development on the windows mobile has to be done in XNA / C#" is wrong and as such misleading for readers. XNA is a nice set of libraries and it isn't the only tool at the developer's disposal. Take a football management game for example, it's a game but it would be far easier to implement using Silverlight than XNA. I’d like to see where that 99% figure came from, though granted one of those launch titles I ported from iOS heh. I think it’s too be expected that when a new platform launches that they’ll be an influx of ports trying to jump on the (potential) band wagon, it’s the easier option when dealing with an unproven platform. However, I think we’ll see that figure reduced as developers start to create original games for the platform. I also feel that in the future WP7 will have more original developed games than Android being released (proportionally to the market size of course).Sure, talk about XNA more, but the statement that “All development on the windows mobile has to be done in XNA / C#” is wrong and as such misleading for readers. XNA is a nice set of libraries and it isn’t the only tool at the developer’s disposal. Take a football management game for example, it’s a game but it would be far easier to implement using Silverlight than XNA.

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By: Sven Bergström/2011/01/25/windows-7-mobile-a-rant/#comment-527 Sven Bergström Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:29:55 +0000 Thanks for the interesting post.I think it’s worth stating that WP7 developers aren’t limited to XNA, indeed most application developers (and some game developers) will be taking advantage of Silverlight and the various Microsoft Expression tools (which should not be overlooked.) You talk about XNA a lot, in some cases I believe you mean the .Net framework and in others the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools?”You get automatic access to all the Xbox Live api’s that already exist in the XNA environment for the Xbox 360″ now as far as I’m aware this is no the case for your average WP7 developer, to gain access to Xbox data officially from Microsoft you need a special agreement with Microsoft (and unless you’re selling copies like Angry Birds that probably means having a publisher on board with you.) See: I would argue that you have to deal with differing target abilities on iOS as well, given that not everyone has an iPhone 4 or iPad, even between those two you're looking at different resolutions and performance. I would argue that you have to deal with differing target abilities on iOS as well, given that not everyone has an iPhone 4 or iPad, even between those two you’re looking at different resolutions and performance.

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