I was poking around with excellent MonoGame framework by creating a simple game, or better, starting to create a simple game. So far I’ve spent a day to build some infrastructure from scratch and I am able to show a main screen with simple menu items. Nothing really ground-breaking.
The aspect I am most interested right now is cross platform development with MonoGame. Hence my simple game is built with cross platform support from beginning. Main development target is Windows 7 x64 because it is the easiest to debug the application on. I’ve ported the game successfully to Android as well by using Mono For Android – tested on both emulator and my Google Nexus phone. Port means just creating a bootstraper (an Android app that launches the game within an activity) and linking the sources to Mono For Android projects (here Project Linker comes to great help, though shame that Microsoft Patterns And Practices team seemingly abandoned it).
Windows Phone 8 emulator requirements are insane
Next I wanted to port it to Windows Phone 8 since its SDK is fresh from the oven and MonoGame supports it (not sure at what stage the support is). However, Windows Phone 8 SDK emulator requirements are just too much: Visual Studio 2012, Windows 8 Pro, 4GB RAM, and CPU with SLAT support to run the emulator which in turn runs on Hyper-V. I don’t have a Windows Phone 8 device so I wanted to give the emulator a test run. I have Windows 8 Pro on my laptop but, albeit perfectly functional, the CPU doesn’t feature SLAT. SLAT is required by Hyper-V on client versions of Windows 8. The interesting fact is that VMWare Workstation runs perfectly well without or with SLAT. Be also aware that VMWare Workstation and Hyper-V on Windows 8 won't coexist peacefully - Workstation will work only when Hyper-V feature isn't present. The bottom line is that the Windows Phone 8 emulator won’t run on my laptop. I could run it on my workstation but I haven’t migrated to Windows 8 at this time.
Windows 8 development license isn’t something for privacy consciousness
Next I wanted to run a Metro aka Windows Store Apps version of my game. Those should run just fine on my laptop. I started by creating a new Windows Store application and Visual Studio 2012 immediately notified me that I need a developer license for Windows 8 which is free. But reading its privacy statement made me wonder.
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When you request a developer license, Microsoft collects information about your PC and the apps installed on it. This information includes your PC’s name, manufacturer, and model; your IP address; a unique identifier generated based on your PC’s hardware configuration; and the edition of Windows you’re using.
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Microsoft may access or disclose information about you, including the content of your communications, in order to: (a) comply with the law or respond to lawful requests or legal process; (b) protect the rights or property of Microsoft or our customers, including the enforcement of our agreements or policies governing your use of the services; or (c) act on a good faith belief that such access or disclosure is necessary to protect the personal safety of Microsoft employees, customers, or the public. We may also disclose personal information as part of a corporate transaction such as a merger or sale of assets.
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Remember, I wanted to test my game locally. And for that I’d need to send all sort of data to Microsoft? What the heck? Furthermore those legal obligations are really flexible. Not that I have anything to hide or against Microsoft but still why do I have to disclose installed applications on my computer and such? Note that I wouldn’t send my data to any company just to test an application on the local machine. So, for the time being, I will skip Windows Store App version as well.
Progress so far:
- Windows Desktop [checked]
- Android [checked]
- Windows Phone 8 [unknown]
- Windows Store App [unknown]
- Windows Phone 7 [unknown,soon]
There is only one platform left to try – Windows Phone 7 where I don’t foresee any problems, just didn’t have time yet.