Posts tagged as:

Counting Down to Seven

Counting Down to Seven: XNA Game Studio 4.0!!!!

by Joey deVilla on March 9, 2010

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series.

Xbox 360 Achievement: "Achievement Unlocked: New Version of XNA!"

"Counting Down to Seven" badge

The Game Developers Conference is a good time to make game development announcements, and that we did: version 4.0 of XNA Game Studio, Microsoft’s framework and toolset for easier game development. Here’s what it means in a nutshell:

  • No matter whether you develop with managed or unmanaged code, it’s what you’ll use for game development on Windows Phone 7.
  • You’ll create better mobile games faster, thanks to a powerful and comprehensive set of tools.
  • Xbox LIVE comes to mobile, meaning that you can take advantage of the Xbox’s popular gaming social network.
  • For those of you already building games with XNA, you’ve got a brand new platform, and it’s one that you take everywhere you go.

Games pages on Windows Phone 7

You’re going to see all sorts of details about XNA Game Studio 4.0 over the next couple of weeks, and here are some of the best places to get them…

Follow the “Seven Samurai”

By “Seven Samurai”, I’m referring to the Windows Phone 7 Series development team:

Check Out These Sites

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tagged as: , , , ,

{ 1 comment }

Counting Down to Seven: Charlie Kindel Demos His Windows Phone 7 Handset to CNET’s Ina Fried

by Joey deVilla on March 9, 2010

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series.

"Counting Down to Seven" badgeIf you’re a developer itching to get started writing apps for Windows Phone 7, you’re going to want to follow Charlie Kindel’s blog and Twitter stream (as well as Yours Truly and this blog, of course). Charlie’s one of the developers on the Windows Phone team, and while he won’t be delivering the first presentation on WP7 at MIX10 (Windows Phone’s VP Program Management Joe Belfiore will do that), he’ll be delivering the first technical presentation later that day.

The video above shows an interview that’s as informal as it gets. It’s a hand-held camera interview featuring CNET’s Ina Fried and Charlie on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, talking about what Windows Phone 7 will be like for developers, with Charlie demonstrating on his Windows Phone 7 prototype. I’d love to get my grubby paws on one of those!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tagged as: , ,

{ 0 comments }

Counting Down to Seven: User Experience with Microsoft User Experience Gurus Bill Buxton and Albert “Windows Phone 7” Shum

by Joey deVilla on March 8, 2010

Get Microsoft Silverlight
Don’t have Silverlight? Get it here or download the video in
MP4, WMA, WMV, WMV (High) or Zune format.

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series.

"Counting Down to Seven" badgeWe’re a week away from the start of the MIX10 conference! I like to refer to this as Microsoft’s most “right-brained” gathering, as its target audience and topic isn’t just developers and writing software, but designers, design and user experience.

With designers and design in mind, it’s only fitting that I show you a video featuring Nic Fillingham interviewing a couple of Microsoft User Experience gurus who also hail from Canada:

  • Bill Buxton: He’s a Principal Researcher for Microsoft Research, and before that, he was Chief Scientist at Alias Wavefront and a professor at University of Toronto. And I’m pleased to report that he got his bachelor’s degree – in music – from my alma mater, Crazy Go Nuts University (which some of you may know as Queen’s University). He was the guy who thought of applying Fitts’ Law to human-computer interaction, did some pioneering work with multi-touch interfaces and invented the pie menu (which means that we owe weapon selection in Saints Row 2 and the full combat/spellcasting system in Dragon Age: Origins to him).
  • Albert Shum: He’s the Director of Mobile Experience Design for Windows Phone 7. Albert’s from Winnipeg, studied engineering and architecture at University of Waterloo and went on to do design work at Nike before joining Microsoft. You can watch a video showing him talking about the new Windows Phone 7 experience and the thinking behind it in a previous article of mine, Albert Shum on Windows Phone 7.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tagged as: , , , ,

{ 0 comments }

Counting Down to Seven: The Windows Phone Sessions at MIX10

by Joey deVilla on March 7, 2010

Explore the software that powers the Windows Phone 7 Series. Free development tools and support for all MIX10 attendees.

"Counting Down to Seven" badgeWelcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series.

For the longest time, the sessions listed under “Windows Phone” at the MIX10 conference (taking place in Las Vegas from March 15th through 17th) have had no details – just a “more details coming soon” message. That changed yesterday, and now the sessions have full names and abstracts, which I’ve listed below in chronological order.

Monday

  
Changing Our Game: An Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Series
Joe Belfiore
Monday, March 15th
11:30 a.m.		 Major changes are coming to Windows Phone! This session goes in-depth on the design and features of Windows Phone and gives a comprehensive picture of what’s coming in this exciting new release.

Joey’s note: Joe Belifiore is the VP Windows Phone 7 Program Management and the guy giving Laura Foy a walkthrough of the features in Windows Phone in that first Windows Phone video that got released during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Overview of the Windows Phone 7 Series Application Platform
Charlie Kindel
Monday, March 15th
2:00 p.m.		 The new Windows Phone is coming! Get a high-level overview of the new application platform and a complete picture of the developer story. Learn about the developer tools, the application frameworks, the support for Silverlight, and the support for XNA.

Joey’s note: Charlie isn’t exaggerating in his Twitter profile when he says that the future of application development for Windows Phones is in his hands.

Windows Phone UI and Design Language
Albert Shum
Monday, March 15th
3:30 p.m.		 Windows Phone constitutes a dramatic new user experience paradigm. This session will provide prescriptive guidance, tips, and techniques on how designers & developers can build beautiful, compelling user experiences that are consistent with the built-in Windows Phone 7 Series experiences.

Joey’s note: Albert Shum is Director of Microsoft’s Mobile Experience Design Team. If you want to find out more about him, check out my article Albert Shum on Windows Phone 7.

Tuesday

  
Microsoft Silverlight “Media”: Moving at 60fps
Eric Schmidt
Tuesday, March 16th
11:00 a.m.		 From HD delivery to dynamic advertising models, Silverlight has rapidly become the industry leader for enabling rich, interactive media scenarios. This session will review the media focused technology strategy behind Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework, IIS Media Services, Microsoft Expression and Windows phone. Highlights for this session include: efficient media player development, 3-d rendering, real-time ad injection, leveraging multi-cast, managing large media delivery farms, choosing the right content protection strategy, real time media pipeline monitoring and a drill into what’s new in Silverlight 4. If you are building or want to build video based Silverlight applications this session will provide technical guidance and give you an opportunity to voice your needs about the future of media and Silverlight.

An Introduction to Developing Applications for Microsoft Silverlight
Shawn Oster
Tuesday, March 16th
11:00 a.m.

New to Silverlight? This is the session for you. This session will cover: how to get started building your first application, tooling, extensibility and deployment. We’ll also highlight the capabilities of Microsoft Silverlight on the PC, as well as support for Windows Phone.

Joey’s note: Shawn Oster is a Program Manager at Microsoft who works on Silverlight. One of his current projects in the Silverlight Toolkit, a way to give users new controls, fixes and updates at a rapid pace.

Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 1
Mike Harsh
Tuesday, March 16th
1:30 p.m.		 Together with part 2, these sessions give an overview of the functionality for Silverlight applications that is unique to the Windows Phone application platform. Part 1 will cover new input paradigms including multi-touch, software keyboard, accelerometer and microphone, as well as the APIs to leverage phone applications like email, phone dialer, contact list and more.

Joey’s note: Mike is a Program Manager at Microsoft working on Silverlight.

Unit Testing Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Applications
Jeff Wilcox
Tuesday, March 16th
2:05 p.m.

Learn how to create and maintain Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Series applications using the Silverlight Unit Test Framework. See what tools are available to easily validate controls and application interfaces, add automatic testing to builds, and gain a solid understanding of test principles to deliver great experiences for your clients and customers.

Joey’s note: Jeff is a Senior Software Development Engineer at Microsoft, working on the Silverlight Toolkit. He is the creator of the Silverlight Unit Test Framework.
Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 2
Peter Torr
Tuesday, March 16th
3:00 p.m.

Together with part 1, these sessions give an overview of the functionality for Silverlight applications that is unique to the Windows Phone application platform. Part 2 will cover the new application model, updated control templates, themes, and services available to applications, including new Windows Phone web services.
Windows Phone Application Platform Architecture
Istvan Cseri
Tuesday, March 16th
4:30 p.m.

Windows Phone 7 Series represents a significant change from the past. The entire stack, starting with the operating system, user experience, and the application platform have been engineered to build a new class of phone that users will just love. This session will go under the covers and describe how to think about applications and games from the perspective of user experience, security, packaging, cloud services and performance. Details on the new application model, device capabilities, location, sensors, and other platform capabilities will be covered.
Silverlight Performance on Windows Phone
Seema Ramachandani
Tuesday, March 16th
4:30 p.m.

Learn how to optimize your Silverlight code for Windows Phone. This session will discuss common bottlenecks using the graphics and managed stacks, and will highlight how to optimize startup and reaction time.

Wednesday

  
Development and Debugging Tools for Building XNA Games for Windows Phone
Cullen Waters
Wednesday, March 17th
9:00 a.m.

This session covers tools available to the developer for building XNA games including debugging, emulation, and performance. Special emphasis is placed on best practices for managed code performance and .NET profiling tools you can use to optimize your games for Windows Phone.
Distributing and Monetizing Windows Phone Applications and Games
John Bruno and Todd Biggs
Wednesday, March 17th
10:30 a.m.

Windows Phone Marketplace will revolutionize distribution of Windows Phone applications, games, and content, and is designed to solve the two largest problems of the Windows Phone consumer-focused developer community: distribution and monetization. This session will provide application developers with the insights, tools, and processes necessary to begin distributing and monetizing their applications on the Windows Phone platform.
Building Windows Phone Games
Michael Klucher
Wednesday, March 17th
12:00 p.m.

With the release of Windows Phone, game developers will be able to create amazing content rapidly through the power of Silverlight and the XNA framework. This talk will outline the basic application model of Windows Phone, enumerate Windows Phone core device characteristics, and walk through highlights of Silverlight and XNA Frameworks on the phone.
Building a High Performance 3D Game for Windows Phone
Shawn Hargreaves and Tomas Vykruta
Wednesday, March 17th
1:30 p.m.

This session will detail how to use XNA to develop 3D games for Windows Phone, with a special eye towards the special characteristics of Windows Phone application platform. Special attention will be placed on optimizing high-performance managed code games for the platform, to help you squeeze out every last drop of performance.

Joey’s note: Shawn’s a developer on the XNA team and a character-at-large in the XNA Creators Club forums. Tomas is a Senior Software Development Engineer with Microsoft’s Advanced technology Group and a Senior Xbox Engineer.
Designing and Developing for the Rich Mobile Web
Joe Marini
Wednesday, March 17th
3:00 p.m.

The Mobile Web has been a long time in coming, and now that it’s here, it’s a force that you and your business can’t afford to ignore. What has made all of this possible is the combination of ever-more-powerful devices, fast network connections, and highly capable mobile browsers. In this session, you will learn how to build sites that work well and look great on Windows Phone and across mobile devices. We’ll cover the core mobile Web scenarios, preparing content for mobile, and tips and techniques for debugging and testing your sites.

Joey’s note: I would argue that the mobile web has been around for a couple of years now, but it’s nice to see it done properly on a Microsoft platform at long last.

 

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tagged as: , , , , ,

{ 0 comments }

Counting Down to Seven: “Platformer” Running on Windows Phone 7

by Joey deVilla on March 7, 2010

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series.

In my last article in the Counting Down to Seven series, I showed you Platformer, the game starter kit that comes with XNA, the toolset/framework for developing games for Windows, XBox and Zune:

image

Let me now show you this – Platformer running on Windows Phone 7:

That’s Microsoft’s Eric Rudder, Senior VP Technical Strategy demoing Platformer at the TechEd Middle East conference. Not only does Platformer play on Windows Phone, Windows, XBox and Zune, but he also demoed saving the game state on the phone and resuming it from the saved state on an Xbox 360.

Eric also showed that even though Platformer runs on a number of platforms, it’s based on a single codebase with slight platform-specific tweaks for the platforms it targets. This isn’t new: XNA has been about targeting Windows and Xbox 360 from the very beginning, and with version 3.0, the Zune was added to the set of target platforms.

Take a look at this screenshot of the Solution Explorer from Visual Studio 2008 with XNA 3.1 with a Platformer solution loaded. Note how the solution has three projects, one each for targeting Windows. Xbox 360 and Zune:

image

All three games share the same sounds, but the Windows and Xbox 360 versions use a set of higher-resolution graphics while the Zune version uses a lower-resolution set.

XNA also makes use of compiler directives to handle the differences between platforms. For example, here’s a code snippet from Platformer from the Player class, which manages the player’s character in the game:

#if ZUNE
        // Constants for controling horizontal movement
        private const float MoveAcceleration = 7000.0f;
        private const float MaxMoveSpeed = 1000.0f;
        private const float GroundDragFactor = 0.38f;
        private const float AirDragFactor = 0.48f;

...

#else
        // Constants for controling horizontal movement
        private const float MoveAcceleration = 14000.0f;
        private const float MaxMoveSpeed = 2000.0f;
        private const float GroundDragFactor = 0.58f;
        private const float AirDragFactor = 0.65f;

...

#endif

Note how the Zune version has scaled-down values of those used in the Windows and Xbox 360 versions. That’s to account for the Zune’s smaller screen.

XNA on Windows Phone 7, with the ability to save game state on one platform and resume playing on another opens up a world of “ubiquitous gaming” possibilities. I hope that this will bring about some interesting mobile games and bring some attention to the XNA, which I always felt was underappreciated.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tagged as: , ,

{ 3 comments }

Counting Down to Seven: Exploring XNA

March 5, 2010

Welcome to another article in the Counting Down to Seven series and the first article in the Exploring XNA series — it’s like the chocolate and peanut butter of mobile development! If you haven’t read Windows Phone team member Charlie Kindel’s latest blog entry yet, do so now. In explaining what’s different in Windows Phone [...]

Read the full article →

Counting Down to Seven: The Most Active Mobile Social Networkers Are…

March 2, 2010

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series. A report from Nielsen – as in the ratings company that got their start with television [...]

Read the full article →

Counting Down to Seven: Millennials and Mobile

March 2, 2010

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series. Who are the Millennials? In Andy Hunt’s book, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning (which we’re covering in [...]

Read the full article →

Counting Down to Seven: 7 Rules for Your Mobile Strategy

February 26, 2010
Cover of

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series. In an earlier article, I wrote that Brian Fling’s book, Mobile Design and Development, led me [...]

Read the full article →

Counting Down to Seven: Charlie Kindel and the Windows Phone 7 Team’s Focus

February 24, 2010
Focus

Time for another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series. If you’re following what’s happening with Windows Phone 7, you should follow Charlie Kindel – both [...]

Read the full article →

Counting Down to Seven: The 7th Mass Medium and its 7 Unique Qualities

February 23, 2010
Mobile Design and Development

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series. You’re going to have to wait a couple more weeks before I can tell you the [...]

Read the full article →

Windows Phone 7: Challenge Accepted!

February 22, 2010
Hands holding a Win 7 phone

Over at Wired’s Gadget Lab blog, there’s an article titled Microsoft’s Challenge with Windows Phone 7 is Wooing Developers. They saved the most important line for last, and in case you missed it, I’ll repeat it here: The company plans to preview its development tools at its MIX developers conference next month. If you can [...]

Read the full article →

Counting Down to Seven: Lou Reed, Mobile App Designer

February 22, 2010
Lou Reed

Three Weeks to Go! We’re three weeks away from the day when a lot more about Windows Phone 7 will be revealed. On Monday, May 15th, the MIX10 conference in Las Vegas is expected to open with a bang as developers and designers will learn about “WP7’s” programming and design models as well as the [...]

Read the full article →

“Our Fine Tradition of Clumsy Names”

February 17, 2010

Nice phone, shame about the name. As I quipped in an earlier post, the name “Windows Phone 7 Series” is a bit long, and suggests that the people who do Microsoft’s branding get paid by the syllable. This is the sort of left-brain-lopsided mindset that has produced names like “Windows Server 2008 R2”. My fellow [...]

Read the full article →

Albert Shum on Windows Phone 7

February 17, 2010
Albert Shum

Whenever Microsoft needs to make a radical change in the way they do things, they bring in a hip Asian guy. That’s why they’ve got me shaking things up on Microsoft Canada’s Tech Evangelism Team, and it’s also why Albert Shum is redefining the way Microsoft does mobile phones in his role as the Director [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries