Book Image

Learning Windows 8 Game Development

By : Michael Quandt
Book Image

Learning Windows 8 Game Development

By: Michael Quandt

Overview of this book

With the recent success of a lot of smaller games, game development is quickly becoming a great field to get in to. Mobile and PC games are on the rise, and having a way to create a game for all types of devices without rewriting everything is a huge benefit for the new Windows 8 operating system. In this book, you will learn how to use cutting-edge technologies like DirectX and tools that will make creating a game easy. This book also allows you to make money by selling your games to the world. Learning Windows 8 Game Development teaches you how to create exciting games for tablets and PC on the Windows 8 platform. Make a game, learn the techniques, and use them to make the games you want to play. Learn about graphics, multiplayer options, how to use the Proximity + Socket APIs to add local multiplayer, how to sell the game outright, and In-App Purchases. Learning Windows 8 Game Development guides you from the start of your journey all the way to developing games for Windows by showing you how to develop a game from scratch and sell it in the store.With Learning Windows 8 Game Development, you will learn how to write the code required to set everything up, get some graphics on screen, and then jump into the fun part of adding gameplay to turn a graphics sample into a proper game. From there, you'll look at how to add awesome features to your game like networking, motion controls, and even take advantage of new Windows 8 features like live tiles and sharing to make your players want to challenge their friends and keep playing. This book wraps up by covering the only way a good game can finish development: by shipping the game on the Windows Store. You'll look at the things to remember to make certification painless and some great tips on how to market and sell your game to the public.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Learning Windows 8 Game Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 1. Getting Started with Direct3D

They say the first steps are the hardest, and beginning a new game is no exception. Therefore, we should use as much help as possible to make those first steps easier, and get into the fun parts of game development. To support the new WinRT platform, we need some new templates, and there are plenty to be had in Visual Studio 2012. Most important to us is the Direct3D App template, which provides the base code for a C++ Windows Store application, without any of the XAML that the other templates include.

The template that we've chosen will provide us with the code to create a WinRT window, as well as the code for the Direct3D components that will allow us to create the game world. This chapter will focus on explaining the code included so that you understand how it all works, as well as the changes needed to prepare the project for our own code.

In this chapter we will cover the following topics:

  • Creating the application window

  • Initialising Direct3D

  • Direct3D devices and contexts

  • Render targets and depth buffers

  • The graphics pipeline

  • What a game loop looks like

  • Clearing and presenting the screen