Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Summary
So now we have a game with a lot more polish. It ends, and displays the final score to
the user. It also takes advantage of unique Windows 8 features such as easy sharing
with the Share Charm and Live Tiles, allowing you to display information to the user
even when the game is not running.
There are many different ways to use these features depending on your game and
situation. Remember that you want to ensure that you provide the best experience to
your players if you want them to buy your games, and taking advantage of what the
platform offers is a great way to do this.
We also looked at Windows Runtime (WinRT) components and saw how they can
improve productivity by allowing you to develop in languages that have libraries or
features that make certain tasks much easier. If you can afford the tiny performance
impact then you should take advantage of this great Windows 8 feature in your game
development and use it to make your development experience even better.
Next steps
Now that we have the game in place, we aren't far from placing this in the store and
selling it to gamers around the world. Another feature found in many games is mul-
tiplayer, and in the next chapter we will take a look at how you can add this to your
game using the networking functionality provided by Windows 8. We'll look at how to
add a simple co-operative mode to the game so that a friend can play along or com-
pete for score in real time. To do this we'll take a look at the different systems avail-
able to discover new games, how to communicate between two devices, and how to
glue it all together with the menu system promised at the start of this chapter.
