Windows 8 Platformer Game Starter Kit

Platformer Game Starter Kit(includes 2 HTML5-based examples)

Don't start from scratch. Our Platformer Game Starter Kit for Windows 8 will get you going with full code & free game art.

How

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Feel free to take the examples, mix them up and build your own great game for the Windows Store following these steps:

1. Download your free Visual Studio for Windows 8 for all the tools you will need.
2. Download the Platformer Game Starter Kit.
3. Mix it up and build your own epic game.
4. Open a Windows Store Developer Account.
5. Let us know about it and we can even give you free advice on making it great and help pass store certification.
6. Publish it to the Windows Store.

We know everyone is not a game artist, so we have provided you with some free game art and other places you can find royalty-free art for your game.

Ludus Game Starter Kit

An HTML5 Platformer Game Starter Kit for Windows8 Store

by Christer (McFunkypants) Kaitila http://mcfunkypants.com

Source: https://github.com/mcfunkypants/ludus

Demos: http://www.mcfunkypants.com/ludus

Welcome to Ludus, brave adventurer!

Ludus is a dirt-simple game engine that uses html5 canvas. It was designed specifically for mario/sonic style platformer games but could be used for any genre with minimal changes. It boasts great performance, and requires only free tools.

The word Ludus means PLAY/GAME/TRAINING in latin. The Ludus engine is designed to be a great way to learn to make games.

Sure, there are bigger and more complex game engines.

This one is designed to be easy to play around with.

Why? It was created to run real-world games that have a beginning, middle, and end. It was optimized to run on less powerful systems and touch-screen tablets. It is simple, but goes beyond the level of a "tech demo" to encapsulate all the required functionality you might need to make a polished game, such as GUI and sound.

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IT'S POSSIBLE TO MAKE A GAME USING LUDUS IN A WEEKEND.

You could make your own game just by changing the artwork: it is possible to make a new game without ever touching a line of code. All you would need to do is modify the .png and .mp3 art assets as well as the level#.js level data files.

The best tool to create in-game worlds is TILED (http://www.mapeditor.org) which exports data in .json format.

Check out the example .tmx source files and see if you can make your own game! Once you've made a level, export as .json and then run the _buildlevels.bat file to convert JSON to JSONP data to a new level#.js file.

The one important thing to remember is that each layer is important. The order matters. The bottom-most layer is for regular world tiles that the player will collide with. The rest are for pickups, bouncy platforms, dangerous spikes, and so on.

Additionally, you should modify the game settings in the MAP MENU -> MAP PROPERTIES dialog. Gravity, speed and the player's starting position are all stored there.

HACKING THE SOURCE CODE

The only source code file you will want to modify, if you choose to start coding, is ludus.js. Inside, you'll notice all sorts of variables at the top which you can modify to your heart's content. Note that some of these variables are overwritten by whatever is defined inside the level data.

With regard to the structure of the code, the most important thing to know is that the game is controlled by STATE objects.

Each state (title screen, in-game, and between level transitions) is a class object that has a .setup(), .update() and .draw() function. You could add new states for things like boss battles, inventory screens or a high score table.

See these class constructors: function TitleScreenState() function LevelTransitionScreenState() function PlayState()

HAVE FUN!

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Let's take a peek at the two included example games (In Visual Studio of course!)...

Both games ran for me the first time with no issues and were fun (in a platformer kind of way). Sure there's only 3 levels, but hey, if there was too much done it would take all the coding fun away!

So either start from scratch or copy off of these, this kit and the provided free artwork, framework and code will have you building your next great Windows 8 game...

Resources:
Defrag Tools: #23 - Windows 8 SDK
Defrag Tools: #29 - WinDbg - ETW Logging
Windows Performance Analysis Developer Center
Windows Performance Toolkit
Channel 9 Videos
NTDebugging Blog Article
PFE Blog Series

Timeline:
[00:00] - UI vs. Command Line
[02:15] - wpr.exe -profiles
[02:48] - wpr.exe -profiledetails <profile>
[05:30] - wpr.exe -start <profile>
[06:06] - wpr.exe -stop result.etl
[09:25] - xperf.exe -help
[09:30] - xperf.exe -providers kg
[12:18] - xperf.exe -providers kf
[16:47] - xperf.exe -on <FLAG+FLAG+...>
[18:17] - xperf.exe -stop -d result.etl
[21:42] - xperf.exe ... -BufferSize <Size in KB>
[25:55] - xperf.exe ... -MinBuffers <Number> -MaxBuffers <Number>
[27:08] - xperf.exe ... -MaxFile <Size in KB>
[27:44] - xperf.exe ... -FileMode Circular
[30:42] - xperf.exe -merge <in-file1> <in-file2> <out-file>
[32:28] - Andrew's Scripts on SkyDrive [link]
[33:15] - xperf.exe -help stackwalk
[35:10] - xperf.exe ... -stackwalk <Stack+Stack+...>

Examples:
wpr.exe -start GeneralProfile
pause
wpr.exe -stop result.etl

xperf.exe -on Base -stackwalk Profile -BufferSize 1024 -MinBuffers 256 -MaxBuffes 256 -MaxFile 256 -FileMode Circular
pause
xperf.exe -stop -d result.etl

• [01:07] Introducing a new Windows Dev Center experience, Windows Dev Center
• [02:25] Windows 8.1 at //build (Windows Keeps Getting Better) (Brandon LeBlanc)
• [03:25] Channel 9 Highlight: Programming Windows with Charles Petzold (Charles Petzold, Jaime Rodriguez)
• [04:44] MissionControl - A Flexible API for Remote Device Control (Clint Rutkas, Den Delimarsky)
• [06:08] Visual Studio ALM Ranger Solutions Catalog (Willy-P. Schaub)
• [07:30] Testing with Visual Studio 2012 Agile TMap The QUALITY A-Z Roadshow (Clemens Reijnen)
• [08:20] Channel 9 Highlight: Getting started with Cinder for Windows Store Apps (Rick Barraza)
• [09:30] Solving Mazes with AI Pathfinding Techniques: A* vs Tremaux (Kory Becker)

Picks of the Week!

• Mark's Pick of the Week:[12:04] Farticus (Sayed Hashimi, Mads Kristensen)
• Dan's Pick of the Week:[13:27] Blue Screen of Death: Who designed the original Windows Blue Screen of Death? (John Vert)

Links to deck, demo source code and update shown on the show follow:

• Slides presented 
• What's new in Service Bus for SDK 2.0 release
• Code samples: OnMessage, Message Browse, SAS

Like Cloud Cover on Facebook!

Follow @CloudCoverShow
Follow @cloudnick
Follow @ntotten
Follow @abhishekrlal

• The Complete Foundation Session list
• Details on the Microsoft Store
• Get the Windows Phone App for Channel 9 events

Get out there and interact Online:

• C9 TechEd Forums (NorthAmerica and Europe)
• Twitter: use the #msteched hashtag for NA, #TEE13 for Europe.
• Facebook: NorthAmerica and Europe

Get out there and REGISTER if you haven't already!

Xbox points for dollars  [04:57]

Microsoft tramp stamp!  [11:24]

Star Trek and Microsoft  [17:07]

In this Episode, Thomas Robbins, Chief Evangelist at Kentico CMS. Thomas outlines the features of Kentico CMS and talks about their full range of support for Windows Azure.

Follow Brady Gaster

Follow Cory Fowler

Next, at [11:55] the team walks through an installation of Hyper-V Server 2012 using Windows 8 Client Hyper-V, taking advantage of the lightweight installation package and small storage footprint. Symon then uses RDCMan to manage a new Hyper-V Server 2012 host and discusses some password management features. Then, Rick talks about the GUIless configuration options used to join the Hyper-V Server to the domain, and also discusses different GUI-based remote management options.

Symon then [16:20] installs the iSCSI Software Target, creates an iSCSI target and virtual disks, and connects both hosts to the target through their iSCSI initiators. Next, the team uses PowerShell to initialize and format the newly created iSCSI disks. The team then [28:25] switches to using RSAT for remote server management of the Hyper-V hosts from a Windows 8 laptop. After connecting to the hosts, they install the Failover Clustering feature and being to build the cluster. After validating the Hyper-V hosts and iSCSI storage, the team ends the demo by creating a Failover Clustering.

News:

• [00:20] Join the System Center 2012 Live Q&A event on May 21st: http://aka.ms/Earn-SysCtr (this link will redirect you to the recording approximately one week after the event)
• [01:10] Register for TechEd North America (http://northamerica.msteched.com) and TechEd Europe (http://europe.msteched.com) before they sell out!
• [01:45] 5 new System Center 2012 SP1 virtual labs are now available from TechNet: http://aka.ms/SCLabs
• [02:25] Check out the exciting news about the upcoming Windows 8.1 from the Windows blog: http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2013/05/14/windows-keeps-getting-better.aspx
• [03:15] A new System Center 2012 Operations Manager (SCOM) Management Pack has been released to monitor Amazon Web Services (AWS): https://aws.amazon.com/windows/system-center/     
• [04:15] Learn more about creating a OEM Appliance OOBE for simplified Failover Clustering deployments: http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2013/05/08/oem-appliance-oobe-update-set-up-a-4-node-cluster-in-30-minutes.aspx

Connect with the Edge Team: Facebook – Twitter - Email

Imagine this...

Building Windows 8 MVVM app... Gaa, don't like the available templates, but good enough to start with. hack, hack, hack.

Building second app. Ahh, templates again... hack, hack, hack...

Third app. Project templates... Oh this is silly, enough! Creating own darn project templates. And while I'm at it, Item templates too!

That took a bit, but now, wow, building app's is faster, with much less hacking.

App four, five, six... This is nice! You know, having gotten so much from the community, it would be cool to gave back. Bet there are others who could use these templates! ...

Windows Store MVVM Templates for Visual Studio

If you have ever tried to create a Windows Store application using the MVVM pattern then you will probably have found that the Visual Studio project and item templates are a bit cumbersome. I often find myself adding a new page to my projects using one of the default templates, only to need to rewrite it to follow the MVVM pattern before I can even start adding application specific logic. What if there was a way to take advantage of the selection of project and page templates provided by Visual Studio, but have them produce fully MVVM compliant code?

Well today I’d like to announce the release of a free extension for Visual Studio 2012 (including the Express editions for Windows 8) that provides just that. It is based upon the open source Okra App Framework, and provides almost all of the Visual Studio Windows Store templates in an MVVM friendly manner.

Installing the Extension

The “Windows Store MVVM Templates for the Okra App Framework” ...

What Templates are Provided?

There are two types of template included, project templates and item templates. The project templates are designed to get you started with a new application and provide exactly the same behaviour as the default Visual Studio templates (but written following the MVVM pattern).

• Okra Basic App - A single-page Okra App Framework project with no predefined controls or layout.
• Okra Grid App - A three-page Okra App Framework project that navigates among grouped items arranged in a grid. Dedicated pages display group and item details.
• Okra Split App - A two-page Okra App Framework project that navigates among grouped items. The first page allows group selection while the second displays an item list alongside details for the selected item.

...

Also included are a number of item templates that allow you to add new pages to any existing Okra App Framework based application, whether created using the project templates or not.

• Basic Page (MVVM)
• Split Page (MVVM)
• Items Page (MVVM)
• Item Detail Page (MVVM)
• Grouped Items Page (MVVM)
• Group Detail Page (MVVM)
• Search Contract (MVVM)
• Share Target Contract (MVVM)
• Settings Pane (MVVM)

...

What do the MVVM Pages Look Like?

All the page templates (and each of the pages in the project templates) include the following files,

...

If you're building Modern UI MVVM app's, looks like this should really help speed up your delivery and help you focus on what will make your app great...