Scenes From A Developer Memory

If you are in a hurry, you can try the game here and find the source code here . Match 3 games are pretty famous nowadays. From the original Bejeweled to Candy Crush Saga and even Evolve: Hunters Quest , many games are based on the match 3 mechanism while giving bonuses to the user. In this blog post, we’ll try to dissect in what is needed to build such a game, using Unity 3D and Visual Studio. Let’s start with a screenshot of the game running in the Unity Editor We’re using some candy graphics (found here ) and a cool sound (found here ) to build our game. User can drag (in an attempt to swap) one candy either horizontally or vertically, and, as soon as a vertical or horizontal match of three (or more!) is encountered, the three candies disappear. Remaining candies collapse, new candies get created to replace them and they get collapsed, too (imagine gravity acting upon them). The game checks if another match of three is encountered. If this happens, the matched ones disappear again, remaining candies collapse,

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I was really lucky lately to get my hands on a netduino. I’ve never programmed on such a small device before and I have to confess that it’s really fun and awesome! First, take a look at the video to see what’s going on. Basically, we are instructing the netduino to play a specific set of noted via a web browser on our PC. (Please visit the site to view this video) We’re using a netduino device. For the unaware, it’s a small device that runs a small version of the “big” .NET Framework, called .NET Micro Framework , so one can easily use C# and Visual Studio to code for it. It’s connected to a Piezo, a small component that can create some noise. We’ve connected the netduino to our PC via USB cable and via an Ethernet cable. The USB connection allows us to deploy and debug our stuff on the device whereas the Ethernet cable allows us to make a small LAN between netduino and our PC. Without any more hassle, let’s check the code! Playing music Code was found on Getting Started with Netduino book . It basically adds

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If you’re in a hurry, you can find the complete source code on GitHub: https://github.com/dgkanatsios/TowerDefense It is recommended that you read part 1 before proceeding on reading the rest of this tutorial, since it is heavily based on what we described in the first part! Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you!!! This is the second post in 2 post tutorial regarding making a tower defense in Unity. In the first post we described the game scenario and gameplay and we also mentioned the level editor, the XML file and structure that holds level information and the object pooler methodology we use. Again, if you haven’t read it, I strongly encourage you to do it ASAP, this post will be much clearer after that! We’ll start by exploring the prefabs we have in our game. The RootGO gameobject In the instructions we gave at the previous post about making a new level, we mentioned dragging a prefab called “ RootGO ” to the scene. Let’s see this object’s children in detail. PathPieces PathPieces is an empty game object that acts

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If you’re in a hurry, you can find the complete source code on GitHub: https://github.com/dgkanatsios/TowerDefense Unless you’ve been living in a cave in the recent years, you surely must have played a Tower Defense style game. Be it Plants vs Zombies, Kingdom Rush, geoDefense, Jelly Defense or any other, I’m sure you’ve spent much quality time setting up your defenses, killing enemies and advancing stages. So, since it’s one of the most common game types you can find on the application stores out there, I decided to try my luck and create one from scratch, using Unity3D and present it in this tutorial. Since it’s a bit bigger compared to my previous efforts, it will be split in two parts. In this first post, we’ll describe the game, the level editor, the respective XML creation and parsing and the object pool used in the game to increase performance. Check the screenshot below to get a taste of how the game looks like, running on the Unity editor. Scenario and gameplay are both pretty basic, actually. Badgers

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I’ve been using various small XAML storyboard utilities and behaviors in my latest Window Phone and Windows Store apps. I’ve just packaged them all and released them into GitHub . Universal Helpers may not be that good of a name since the library is pretty small (yet) but I hope to enhance it in the future with more utilities and behaviors. So, let’s jump right in and see what’s under the hood! First of all, there are some Blend Behaviors. I love behaviors! Easy just as a Drag’n’Drop, yet so powerful! What’s even more great is that Windows 8.1 SDK has a Behaviors SDK , which, to no one's surprise, works with Windows Phone 8.1 Store apps. A limitation right now is that you can’t (at least easily ) write Behaviors in a portable class library, that’s why I’ve implemented them in the Shared project. Let’s see them, one by one. DragElementBehavior This behavior allows any element with a CompositeTransform to be dragged. It has options for inertia plus a container, in order to never be out of bounds (either by dragging

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Last time I posted something around Angry Birds was 3 years ago, when I blogged about a 5’ creation of Angry Birds with 0 lines of code using XAML, Behaviors and Expression Blend . Well, it wasn’t exactly a clone, but it simulated on how to implement some basic dragging/collision/particles functionality with the Farseer Physics Engine. This blog post serves as an attempt to create a single level (with reusable components, long live the prefab!) of Angry Birds using Unity3D platform. The game features a single level, 3 birds for the user to throw, 3 pigs that the user has to destroy, parallax backgrounds, a maximum strength for the bird (we cannot drag the bird more than a predefined distance), animations with the help of the excellent GoKit library, a projection of the trajectory of the bird (so we can more or less predict where it’ll land), the user’s ability to drag the screen to see the entire scene, pinch to zoom ability (for multitouch devices) and a small trail that is left by the bird when it’s thrown.

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Unless you’ve been living in a cave or visiting outer space for the past months, you have certainly played Flappy Bird , one of the most successful games for mobile devices. Hence, I decided to give it a shot and recreate it using Unity. Needless to mention that all graphics and sounds found in the tutorial are used only for educational purposes and do not intend to harm any intellectual property at all circumstances. The sprite sheet used was found here http://www.spriters-resource.com/mobile_phone/flappybird/sheet/59537/ whereas the sounds were extracted from this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY0sZUJWwA8 So, let’s start with the small tutorial! This game’s development has many aspects, we’ll attempt to touch all of them one by one. First of all, we used Unity’s spritesheet editor to “slice” the spritesheet and get references to specific sprites Then, we created a small animation to simulate the flight course of the bird (this can be easily accomplished if you drag-drop the relevant sprites into

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I had blogged in the past about a simple puzzle game in XNA . Nothing better than to recreate it in Unity with a tutorial, of course! To begin with, here’s a screenshot of the game running on the editor The purpose of the game is to tap/click on the pieces next to the empty one so that they exchange positions. It goes on and one until you make the pieces appear as in the original photo. To begin with, we’ll need a photo. The best way to save yourself from copyright issues and not having to read licenses etc is to use a photo that you took! So, we need to slice it. For this purpose, we’ll use Unity’s native 2D tools and its sprite editor. Once we set the sprite mode to multiple, we can use the sprite editor to ‘slice’ our image. Since the image does not have an alpha channel, we’ll use Grid slicing. Moreover, we’ll name our exported sprites with a name that contains their location information (i.e. piece-0-0 => this implies that the sprite’s “correct” location is on the top left corner of our game). Plus, we’ll

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Some time ago I did a blog post about the famous Arkanoid game and its adaptation to Windows Phone using XNA. Couple of weeks ago, I attempted to recreate it from scratch using the Unity game engine and, to no surprise, it was pretty a piece of cake. Below you can see a screenshot from the start screen of the game. Let’s do a lap around the project. First of all, we have one and only one scene, the game one. We have a Camera, set to Orthographic projection (most suitable for 2D games) a directional light a GameManager gameobject which holds the GameManager script, in charge of running our game the Ball which goes around on the level the Paddle which is the means that the user will utilize in order to prevent the Ball from touching the floor the Floor, which if collided with the Ball will decrease player’s lives the SideBlocks which just make the Ball stay in our level and, of course, the Blocks which have to be hit by the Ball (via user’s assistance) and are organized in four BlockRow objects Purpose of the game

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About 4 years ago I had blogged about the creation of the classic Bubble Breaker game in XNA . Since I’ve recently started to get acquainted with the Unity3D game engine, one of the first things that crossed my mind was to try and recreate it using Unity. Why did I choose Unity? Well, one of the reasons is that it supports my favorite programming language C# plus games can be exported to my favorite platform, Windows Phone. Conversion from XNA was not that straightforward (well, I expected that, to be honest) in the matter that only the search and compare algorithms managed to survive. Game implementation is pretty basic, it contains 3 screens. First is the intro screen where you can select either to play the game or view the top 10 scores. Then, there is the game screen (we’re making a game after all!). All screens have an very strange script (I’m experimenting guys!) where the background dynamically changes color. Check out some screenshots from the game running inside Unity Editor. Well, basically each bubble

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[well, it’s been sometime since I wrote a technical blog post, hope you like it] Today I tried to find out how to animate a spritesheet in a Windows Store app. Turns out that it was much easier than expected! I used the spritesheet found here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5812752/spritesheet-in-silverlight and some ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames code and it worked like a charm. Some explaining regarding the attached code 1. We’re using a Rectangle and an ImageBrush to display the spritesheet’s data 2. Each “frame” in the spritesheet has a width of 240 pixels and a height of 296 pixels 3. Remember that Storyboards in XAML act as threads that modify a value in a specific amount of time 4. We’re using CompositeTransform (and TranslateX, TranslateY) to “move” the image and “crop” the portion we wish to display. Practically, we’re animating the ((Rectangle.Fill as ImageBrush).Transform as CompositeTransform).TranslateX and TranslateY properties 5. Each value alteration is happening in a DiscreteObjectKeyFrame 6.

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[ImagineCup] Αν έχετε μια ενδιαφέρουσα ιδέα για ένα καινοτόμο project, μην διστάσετε να δηλώσετε συμμετοχή για τους ελληνικούς τελικούς του Imagine Cup ! Μεγάλα δώρα σας περιμένουν! Για πληροφορίες δείτε εδώ [/ImagineCup] Θέλετε να γίνετε μέλη των ομάδων ανάπτυξης κάποιου εκ των Skype, Windows Phone, Windows, Office; Αν ναι, διαβάστε παρακάτω! Microsoft is Hiring for New Graduate and Intern positions in the US and Europe! Software Development Engineer Software Development Engineer in Test Apply NOW on our website www.microsoft.com/university to be considered for a first round interview! Have a question? Want to apply? Check out our website at www.microsoft.com/university Apply now for our hiring events with Skype, Windows Phone, Interactive Entertainment, Bing, Business Solutions, Server and Tools, Windows, and Microsoft Office! Check out our positions…. Software Development Engineer (SDE) Whether you’re creating new code, algorithms or data structures, you are the link between abstract concepts and the technology

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Templates για κατασκευή εφαρμογών για Windows 8 από τη Microsoft Ινδίας (original post: https://www.meetmyapp.in/meetmyapp/windows_8_build.aspx ) Template Name: Blocks Styled Colored Blocks Styled Colored template will help if you want to build an app which has asymmetric display of blocks in the hub page Template Name: Drawing Template The Drawing template is an emulation of a Painting app with placeholders for Drawing area, Color selection and Tool Box. Template Name: Blocks Template Blocks template will help you in building an App which has the ingredients like Game, Content and Details Block Template Name: Health Management Template The Health Management template is an emulation of a Clinic app with placeholders for Profile, Reports and Patient details. Template Name: Bricks Style Brick Style template will help if you want to adopt a brick style variable size display in your app's hub page. Template Name: Translator Template The translator template provides placeholders for translating one language to

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Σήμερα διεξήχθησαν οι ελληνικοί τελικοί του Imagine Cup 2012 στα γραφεία της Microsoft Ελλάς στην Αθήνα! Οι 6 καλύτερες ομάδες παρουσίασαν τα projects τους και στο τέλος ανακοινώθηκε η τριάδα των νικητών. To project Symbiosis ανακηρύχθηκε μεγάλος νικητής και θα εκπροσωπήσει τη χώρα μας στους Παγκόσμιους Τελικούς στην Αυστραλία, τον Ιούλιο. Αξίζει να σημειωθεί ότι ένας εκ των 40 κριτών στους Παγκόσμιους Τελικούς θα είναι ο κ. Διομήδης Σπινέλλης, ο οποίος ήταν μέλος και στην κριτική επιτροπή για τους ελληνικούς τελικούς, μαζί με τους κ. Γιάννη Ριζόπουλο, Σταύρο Μένεγο, Patrick Malone, Ελένη Ραχανιώτου και Φώτη Δραγανίδη. Ακολουθούν τα projects των ομάδων που κατέκτησαν τις 3 πρώτες θέσεις. 1η θέση – Symbiosis, Τμήμα Ηλεκτρολόγων Μηχανικών και Μηχανικών Υπολογιστών Symbiosis Η νόσος Alzheimer είναι ένα παγκόσμιο πρόβλημα με δραματικές επιπτώσεις, τόσο κοινωνικές όσο και οικονομικές, το οποίο λαμβάνει διαστάσεις πανδημίας στον 21ο αιώνα [35.6 εκατομμύρια παγκοσμίως νοσούν ήδη (2010), ενώ κάθε 69s εμφανίζεται ένα νέο

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Μπορείτε να κατεβάσετε και να δοκιμάσετε εντελώς δωρεάν τα Windows 8 από εδώ: http://preview.windows.com Για πληροφορίες δείτε εδώ: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/windows/  

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Κατεβάστε το εδώ ! Από σήμερα είναι διαθέσιμη η δοκιμαστική έκδοση του Visual Studio 11, την οποία μπορείτε να κατεβάσετε και να δοκιμάσετε για να δείτε τα νέα χαρακτηριστικά και αν θέλετε, να μας δώσετε το feedback σας για την τελική έκδοση! Συνοπτικά λοιπόν τα νέα χαρακτηριστικά: Κατασκευή εφαρμογών για Windows Βελτιώσεις στην παραγωγικότητα · .NET Framework 4.5 · Τα Productivity Power Tools είναι ενσωματωμένα · Συμβατότητα με παλιά projects · Ενσωματωμένη δυνατότητα για packaging εφαρμογών · Πλήρης υποστήριξη Windows 8 simulator με υποστήριξη αισθητήρων Testing και profiling · Profiling σε πολλαπλές πλατφόρμες · Unit testing για C++ Κατασκευή · Κλασσικών desktop εφαρμογών · Graphics intensive εφαρμογών · Device Drivers · Windows 8 Metro style εφαρμογών Βελτιώσεις στο ασύγχρονο programming · Ξεχάστε το XXXAsync και το XXXCompleted . Τα νέα keywords “ async ” και “ wait ” είναι εδώ για να σας λύσουν τα χέρια · Νέα εργαλεία για κατασκευή DirectX εφαρμογών Κατασκευή Windows 8 Metro style εφαρμογών · Ενσωμάτωση

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cross posted in http://blogs.msdn.com/b/devhellas/archive/2012/02/17/windows-phone-hackathon-day-1-recap.aspx Πρώτη μέρα του Windows Phone Hackathon σήμερα στη Microsoft Ελλάς! Τι μας έμεινε (random order): - πάνω από 100 developers - 3 αίθουσες, συμμετοχή σε ομάδες για κατασκευή εφαρμογών - ευχάριστο γεγονός η απρόσμενη συμμετοχή πολλών game developers! - οι developers που ήρθανε από κάθε γωνιά της Ελλάδος (Λάρισα, Καστοριά, Λευκάδα, Πάτρα, Θεσσαλονίκη κ.α.) - οι δυνατές παρουσιάσεις των ομιλητών, με το πολύ καλό feedback - τα αρκετά ενδιαφέροντα πρώτα prototypes των εφαρμογών που αρχίσανε να χτίζονται σιγά σιγά - οι πίτσες - η μουσική του djsolid που ακουγόταν σε όλο το ισόγειο - η coca cola που άργησε να έρθει (αλλά θα καταναλωθεί αύριο σε ελάχιστο χρονικό διάστημα) - η ομολογία της Μαρίας για την αντίδρασή της όταν είδε το Metro UI - οι γραφιστικές παρεμβάσεις της Ισαβέλλας - ο Windows Phone κύβος στην έξοδο που έγινε αιτία να χαλάσει ένα νύχι (δεν λέμε ποιας) :D - τα μπλουζάκια που έγιναν ανάρπαστα - οι συζητήσεις

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I’ve gathered some links and samples to allow anyone to get started quickly and easily with background agents and alarms/reminders on Windows Phone! Here are they are:   Background Agents Overview for Windows Phone How to: Implement Background Agents for Windows Phone Background Agent Best Practices for Windows Phone Unsupported APIs for Background Agents for Windows Phone Background Transfer Service in the "Tidy" application Adding Multitasking to Your Application http://www.jeffblankenburg.com/2011/11/25/31-days-of-mango-day-25-background-agents/ http://www.jeffblankenburg.com/2011/11/26/31-days-of-mango-day-26-background-file-transfer/ Skydrive folder with samples: https://skydrive.live.com/?sc=documents#cid=10E568ADBB498DC8&id=10E568ADBB498DC8%211668&sc=documents

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Σήμερα μου ανέφερε ένας γνωστός ότι η ελληνική του εφαρμογή “κόπηκε” λόγω γλώσσας κατά τη διαδικασία του ελέγχου από την ομάδα του Windows Phone marketplace, παρότι είχε επιλέξει να γίνει publish μόνο στο ελληνικό marketplace, είχε βάλει ελληνική περιγραφή, ελληνικό user interface κ.λ.π. Τι συνέβη; Ο λόγος που κόπηκε είναι γιατί το default language της εφαρμογής του ήταν Αγγλικά. Για να το αλλάξετε αυτό, θα πρέπει να κάνετε δεξί κλικ στο project, properties, assembly information στην καρτέλα application και από εκεί να αλλάξετε το neutral language της εφαρμογής σας, θέτωντας το σε ελληνικά. Με αυτό τον τρόπο, η ελληνική εφαρμογή σας θα φαίνεται ότι υποστηρίζει την ελληνική γλώσσα και θα γίνει δεκτή στο marketplace!  

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In this post, we are going to show hot to create a small Angry Birds clone for Windows Phone 7 in 5 minutes using Expression Blend and zero (yes, zero) lines of code. Of course, the game that we will create is far from finished but it can serve as a start for your new awesome game. Check the video explaining the tutorial (Please visit the site to view this video) We will use Windows Phone developer tools (they include Expression Blend for Windows Phone) which you can download from http://create.msdn.com and the free/open source Physics Helper library (download here: http://physicshelper.codeplex.com ). Physics Helper is a helper library for the popular physics engine Farseer ( http://farseerphysics.codeplex.com/ ). Basically, it adds some Behaviors inside Expression Blend in order to use the engine without writing any code at all! First of all, you download the Physics Helper library, extract the dlls. Then you open Expression Blend and create a new Windows Phone Application. Pay attention so that the version

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So, you just updated your beautiful Windows Phone device with Mango and you want to create a custom ringtone. Well, you can use any music file you want, if it fits the following requirements 39 seconds or shorter smaller than 1 megabyte (MB) saved in MP3 or WMA format not copy-protected (i.e. DRM free) Of course, your favorite songs are over 39 seconds. I found this great online service (no need to download anything to your PC) to cut an mp3 file. It’s called “MP3 cut” and it’s URL is http://mp3cut.net/ (however, you can use any online or offline software you wish) Let’s check the procedure. 1. First, you select to upload your favorite mp3 file 2. After a few minutes (even more, if your song is lengthy) you will presented with the following screen 3. Simply select the part of the song you want (you can even preview it!) and… 4. Click Split and Download! 5. Download, save the file and open Zune. It’s time to add the file to your collection (you can use a simple drag and drop operation to accomplish that). When

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Today I had the pleasure to present at Elearning Expo 2011, the premium conference/exhibition for e-learning in Greece. I presented at a session titled "Interactive Games" and the presentation was about the game I have codeveloped with Anlock Ltd, "First Words: Learning Animals" . People really liked our game and wished us good luck! Worth to mention here is that Greek and Spanish version will hit the Windows Phone marketplace in a few days, whereas "Vehicles" version is under heavy development! Check the presentation on slideshare here http://www.slideshare.net/dt008/first-words-learning-animals-at-elearning-expo-2011

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[This is a guest post from George Karavias of Anlock Ltd. creators of the Windows Phone 7 educational game First Words: Learning Animals ] So you’ve gotten over the hoopla of Geotrust and you have been registered as a Windows Phone developer. You are anxious to start submitting your applications. Hoping that Nokia and Microsoft get it together in the meantime and start selling smartphones, so the money starts rolling in! One thing is left though, filling out your “payout setup” … And that is when you come across some rather unclear and quite disturbing “Certification Instructions” about contacting the IRS and getting a US Taxpayer Identification Number. Otherwise you are subject to an automatic 30% US tax withholding, say what? 30%?, US Taxing? Why? Harsh truth is that if you are not based in the US and if you do not figure out the “Certifications Instructions”, Microsoft is going to withhold 30% of your sales, on top of the 30% commission to give to the IRS in the US. Fear not, we have been through it successfully

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  Phone · Windows Phone Programming in C# 8 lessons including labs, ppt, demos, & notes · Windows Phone 7 Sensors and XNA 5 lessons · Windows Phone 7 Developer Training Kit 3 lessons includes manual, source files to complete exercises, and links to videos · Designing for Windows Phone 7 lectures 7 lessons includes PDF file · Game Development with XNA using C# and XNA Framework Part 1 6 lessons includes roadmap, lesson plans, demo projects, video tutorials, lab assignments with solutions, student activities, assessment tools · Game Development with XNA Part 2 Games for All 7 lessons · Introduction to Mobile application Development using Silverlight 3 lessons includes Ppt, video, word and source files for assignments and demos Gaming · Game Development with XNA using C# and XNA Framework Part 1 6 lessons includes roadmap, lesson plans, demo projects, video tutorials, lab assignments with solutions, student activities, assessment tools · Game Development with XNA Part 2 Games for All 7 lessons · Artificial

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