Chapter 1, Getting Started, introduces the Windows Phone platform, and especially its newest version named Windows Phone 8, as well as managed, native, and hybrid development approaches. You will get to know how to install necessary software, as well as create the developer account, and register the phone. Then, a concept, rules, screens, and architecture of the exemplary game is described.

Chapter 2, Game User Interface, presents the XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) language, as a way of creating the user interface. You will get to know the application lifecycle, controls, resources, styles, and data binding mechanism, as well as learn how to run and debug Windows Phone 8 applications.

Chapter 3, MVVM Design Pattern, covers implementation of the MVVM (Model-View-View Model) design pattern to improve the code quality. Such an approach is really useful while developing Windows Phone 8 applications.

Chapter 4, 3D Graphics Basics, introduces basic topics regarding three-dimensional graphics, such as vertices, transformations, and matrices. You will also get to know the automatically generated native part of the project, which uses Direct3D.

Chapter 5, 3D Game World, presents development of the simple 3D game world with Direct3D. You will learn how to create a simple model, load it, and place it in a particular location inside the game world.

Chapter 6, Steering, Sensors, and Collision Detection, explains how to obtain data from sensors, such as an accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass. You will also learn how to use these data to move objects in the game world, as well as how to detect collisions between them, and support multiple game levels.

Chapter 7, 2D User Interface in 3D Game, deals with using 2D graphics and fonts in the 3D game, with the DirectXTK library. You will get to know how to configure this tool, place textures, write text, as well as create menus with localized strings.

Chapter 8, Maps, Geolocation, and Augmented Reality, describes the maps, geolocation, and augmented reality features, which can be included in Windows Phone 8 applications and games. You will also learn how to start a navigation mechanism to particular GPS coordinates.

Chapter 9, Exchanging Data via Web Services, introduces the Windows Communication Foundation Service project as a way of exchanging data between players. You will get to know how to create a simple web service, deploy it locally, as well as allow the game to consume it.

Chapter 10, Social Networks, Feeds, Settings, and Local Rank, describes how you can easily integrate Windows Phone 8 applications and games with social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. You will also learn how to read data from RSS feeds, implement game settings, as well as create the local rank.

Chapter 11, Improving Game Experience, covers many topics that improve the overall quality of the game, including saving and loading the current state, as well as supporting background music, sounds, video clips, and vibrations. You will also get to know how to recognize and synthesize speech.

Chapter 12, Game Publishing, explains a process of testing Windows Phone 8 applications and games, as well as their submission to the Windows Phone Store. You will learn how to test various aspects of the project, including performance and working in real-world conditions, as well as prepare the final version, and submit it to the store.

Appendix A, Useful Resources, suggests additional resources regarding the content of all chapters. It presents addresses of many websites, where you can find more information about topics presented in the book.

Appendix B, Languages and Technologies, introduces programming languages and technologies used in the exemplary game. You will get to know some basic information regarding C#, C++, XAML, Direct3D, WCF, and .NET Framework.

Windows Phone 8 Game Development book is a practical, hands-on guide that shows a step-by-step description of how to create a 3D game for the Windows Phone 8 platform. It presents the whole process of game development, from setting the environment to publishing the game. Thus, it gives a good grounding for the further game development adventure!

The game will combine the native and managed development approaches, and use a few languages and technologies, including C# and C++, as well as XAML and Direct3D. It will not be just a simple game. You will create a complex application that presents many interesting functionalities, including 2D and 3D graphics, audio and video support, maps, geolocation, augmented reality, speech recognition and synthesis, and even exchanging data via external services, and sharing data with social networks.

This book presents a development of the game for the Windows Phone 8 platform. Thus, you need a set of tools that make it possible to create the game, test it, as well as run it on the emulator and the phone. Fortunately, the Windows Phone SDK 8.0, together with the Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone as the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), should be sufficient at the beginning. A process of its installation is described in the first chapter of the book.

To use the IDE together with emulators, the computer has to run under the 64-bit Windows 8 operating system in Professional edition or greater, with the Hyper-V enabled. What is more, the processor has to support the hardware-assisted virtualization, the Second Level Address Translation (SLAT), as well as the hardware-based Data Execution Prevention (DEP). More details and other requirements are mentioned at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ff626524.

It is assumed that you will create the developer account, as well as register the Windows Phone 8 device. Such steps are mandatory to test the software on a real phone and to publish the solution. If you do not have the developer account, you will not be able to run the application on the phone and to submit it to the Windows Phone Store. However, you can still develop it in the IDE and run it on the emulator.

This book is dedicated to beginners in the field of game development and the Windows Phone 8 platform, who want to learn how to create their first game!

No prior experience regarding 2D and 3D games development, the mobile platform, as well as XAML and Direct3D technologies, is necessary. However, some basic knowledge of object-oriented programming (OOP) (especially in case of C# and C++ languages) is required to understand parts of code described in the book.

The book content, together with the exemplary game, aims to present many interesting features of applications and games created for the Windows Phone 8 platform. However, to keep it simple, described examples may differ from "best practices", as well as may have limited security checks and functionalities. Before publishing your game, you should always test it precisely to ensure that it works correctly in normal, special, and erroneous scenarios.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: Every call of the Geolocator_StatusChanged method causes translation of the status into a text message and assigning it to the GeolocatorStatus property.

A block of code is set as follows:

public class PlayerData
{
  public string Name { get; set; }
  public GeoCoordinate Location { get; set; }
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

public class PlayerData
{
  public string Name { get; set; }
  public GeoCoordinate Location { get; set; }
}

If a part of a code block is deleted to improve legibility, remove repetition, or simplify the content, the relevant parts are replaced with (…):

<phone:PhoneApplicationPage
  x:Class="SpaceAim3D.Views.MenuPage" (...)
  FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyNormal}" (...)> (...)
</phone:PhoneApplicationPage>

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

ISETool.exe EnumerateDevices

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: Choose the Add and New Folder options from the context menu of the project in the Solution Explorer window.

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