Kickstarter for WP8 and Desktop is Launched

SinisterSoft

The next Raspberry Jam (for me) is on Aug 3rd - do you reckon you will have an alpha player by then?

john26

I'm afraid it won't be available for then. I'm currently trying to install Gideros on Ubuntu Linux -- and having a few problems as expected. Once that works I'll have a better chance of success on the pi as it is also Linux.

TBH, the WinRT and desktop targets have taken up much more time than I thought. The first official release with these new targets was 2015.6.30 but there were several problems and helping produce new releases has taken up all my spare time.

Hopefully 2015.8 is sufficiently polished that I can take some time away from WinRT/desktop to work solidly on the pi.

I intend to finish the pi conversion by the end of this year. But hopefully a beta (perhaps with no sound) will be available much before then.

unlying

Still waiting for a way to monetize our apps. Ads and in-apps. Without that export option looks useless.

john26

You are right, we need to get this working. We'll let you know when there is an update. I apologise for the delay. If anyone out there knows about XAML and wouldn't mind giving the Gideros code a quick look, I'd be most grateful!

unlying

@john26 thanks

ar2rsawseen

Based on this article:
http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2013/07/Trying-Out-the-New-Windows-8-1-DirectX-Project-Templates.html

You just create empty app from Direct3D +XAML template and copy rendering code from current project to multiple parts of new project.

Of course it won't be that easy, because Gideros is much more complex, but it is a start

john26

Trouble is the template code generated by VS is hugely complicated. Petzold spends thousands of words trying to describe it and it's still clear as mud! I mostly learned WinRT from here

http://www.directxtutorial.com/Lesson.aspx?lessonid=112-1-2

where he advises you to delete all the template code.

The problem is many people are coming to this with years of .NET experience and Petzold's article assumes that.

ar2rsawseen

No, he says, "We won't need these just now. You'll find them useful later on, but for now most of it will just get in our way"

Actually I don't see anything .NET related in the Petzhold's article. And there is even a visual cue for which files you will be modifying, which you don't need to modify and which can be removed, because they are examples.

Previously we had App.cpp which was responsible for everything.

Now we have App.xaml.cpp which is a root element and is responsible for starting up other elements

And DirectXPage.xaml.cpp which uses drawing pane which is added to XAML tree and does the rendering

It seems, if you create the project from DircetX+ XAML template, then you should remove /Sample3DSceneRenderer.cpp and do your rendering directly in DirectXPage.xaml.cpp

Unfortunately the rendering part is what confuses me the most

And I think the problem is that most of the rendering code is now in gideros library, and not in the project itself, so it could be that DirectXPage.xaml.cpp events should be hooked up to call gideros library api or something like that.

john26

Basically we need/replace to add a few lines of code around here.

https://github.com/gideros/gideros/blob/master/winrt/gideros/gideros.Shared/giderosapi.cpp#L191

I'd be happy to pay for anyone to do this work for a reasonable fee. I suspect a MS guru could do this in a few hours.

I think the whole XAML thing has its roots in .NET. That's why the tutorials are opaque to me as they assume .NET experience.

If I were to do the work myself I'd start by reading this book, I think

http://www.informit.com/store/programming-windows-9780735671768

ar2rsawseen

yes, but the point is, you don't have to do anything in xaml.

All xaml parts already setup and working, all that needs to be done is to write pure c++ directx rendering code to replace the one that is in the template. Or in this case rewrite gideros api to match existing approach in template.

I will try to have another go with it this weekend then

john26

OK, I ordered the book by Petzold (Programming Windows 6th Edition). Although we don't need to write the XAML code ourselves, it's important to understand what it is and how it works I think. I learned Win32 from another Petzold book so this will help me firm up my knowledge of WinRT (currently gleened from tutorials) as well.