Tag Archives: indie games

Kinect v2 Development: From Weather Report to Minority Report

By Shahed C on December 4, 2013
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Ever since The Minority Report was released in 2002, gesture-based computer control has been compared to the NUI features shown in the movie. Sure, the Nintendo Wii came out in 2006 with built-in motion control, but it still required the user to hold a controller in their hand.

Minority Report, from Dreamworks Pictures

Fast-forward to 2010, the original Kinect was introduced as an Xbox 360 accessory. This brought gestures and voice control to a home console like never before. In 2012, Microsoft released Kinect for Windows, which allowed any hobbyist developer to build an app or game for Windows using a slightly-modified version of the Kinect.

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OnekSoft Games/Labs Q&A with Microsoft Technical Evangelist Frank La Vigne

By Shahed C on July 14, 2013
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Earlier this week, I spoke to Frank La Vigne, a Microsoft Technical Evangelist, for his YouTube
channel: Frank’s World TV.

See the entire video here:

FWTV: Indie Games, Windows 8 and Ninja Cats:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRjrQPvVOpo


 

 

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Ninja Cat Runner: My First Windows 8 Game!

By Shahed C on June 23, 2013
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Download: Download Ninja Cat Runner for free from the Windows Store!

Web: Play the web version on your smartphone, tablet or desktop browser!

Download: Download Ninja Cat Runner for free from the Windows Phone Store!

Having published 2 XNA games on Xbox Live Indie Games, I have been interested in looking at new platforms for future game projects. When Windows 8 was announced, I was disappointed that Microsoft didn’t officially support XNA for Windows 8. I looked at the other options for Microsoft game development, and even wrote a blog post about it.

But recently, I learned about a game creation tool called Construct 2, which provides a UI for quick game design. The games can be exported to all major platforms, as an HTML5/web game, a PhoneGap package, even a Windows 8 game.

Construct 2, from Scirra

Construct 2, from Scirra

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Game Development with G. Andrew Duthie

By Shahed C on May 27, 2013
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Last week, I had just attended a user group meeting for DCDNUG, hosted by G. Andrew Duthie, a Technical Evangelist for Microsoft. The topic was “Developing Games for the Windows Store with HTML5 and JavaScript” and was a great introduction to creating games for Microsoft’s new platform using familiar web technologies.

I downloaded Andrew’s Community Megaphone app for Windows 8 after the meeting, and learned about the interactive event, Game Development for Beginners, at Microsoft’s Reston VA office. This is one of many free Game Dev events from Microsoft listed in the app.

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The Future of Microsoft Game Development

By Shahed C on March 2, 2013
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When Microsoft first showed off Windows 8 and its development stack, their diagram answered some lingering questions and posed a few new ones.

Win8 Platform and Tools

In the world of Indie Game Development, we had many questions. Can we make any game for Windows8 and release it in the Windows Store? Will we be tied down to C++ and DirectX? Wait a minute, where is XNA?

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