Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Live tiles
Live tiles
are a unique feature of the Windows platform. They allow developers to in-
clude information in the "icon" of the application. A great example would be an e-mail
count indicator or a summary of the weather for the day. These tiles can update in the
background even if the application is not running and provide a rich out of app exper-
ience.
Games can take advantage of this feature in any way they want, and some examples
include showing a screenshot of a great achievement in the game, or showing the
highest score the player has achieved. We will be using the live tile system to display
the latest score of the player, and update it when the game ends. This way, players
can show off their scores to their friends in person, and see how they did, which can
lead to them playing the game even more because they don't need to enter the game
to see their scores and get inspired to play.
There are two types of Live Tiles:
•
Application tiles
represent the main tile of the application. This is what you
pin to the start menu and clicking on this will take you into the application as
normal. On these tiles you would display the main information you want the
user to see.
•
Secondary tiles
allow the application to provide shortcuts to different func-
tionality within the application. For example, an email application may provide
a Compose tile that exists as a shortcut to the compose screen within the ap-
plication. Another example may be having separate tiles for different folders or
email accounts. Each one can be a live tile and display information relevant to
its own context, such as the unread count for the folder connected to the tile.
You can use either one, but secondary tiles must be created from within the applic-
ation, while application tiles may be pinned by the user at any time, and are often
auto-pinned when the application is installed.
As mentioned in the previous section, we will develop this in C# using a WinRT com-
ponent, and then make use of it in our game using a single line of code.
