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WM7 Development

PostPosted: May 4, 2010 @ 4:49am
by j.edwards
Hi,

I've read that Microsoft is limiting development for WM7 to be .NET based only and it will not be possible to distribute C++ apps for instance within their ecosystem. Not sure if this is fact and actually confirmed by MS yet or not, but I can understand their decision to do this. However, a large number of those who have been developing for WM for many years and who used to frequent these forums probably have a lot of code in C/C++ which would be handy to reinvigorate to get some products going for WM7. Also, given how the market panned out, many devs probably have code in C++ for iPhone/Android etc that they would like to reuse for WM7 when it's released.

What are your thoughts about this?

Regards,
Joel.

Re: WM7 Development

PostPosted: May 18, 2010 @ 3:30pm
by mm40
From the wikipedia article on XNA, "Games that run on the framework can technically be written in any .NET-compliant language", which C and C++ are I think. There really isn't a good reason to not allow C/C++, anything that can be locked down via the language can be locked down and protected underneath the API, even a C one. All of my games are in C, there is no way in hell I'm going to port them to another language for WM7, as would be the case with nearly all iPhone games and Windows Mobile games. Just look at Andriod for example, the games on that platform suck in comparison to the iPhone, which is a direct result of C support I do believe. Hopefully MS realize this and will allow it.

Re: WM7 Development

PostPosted: May 18, 2010 @ 6:45pm
by Dan East
Note that Android does support the use of code written in C / C++, but it is a relatively new development (June 2009 I believe). It's called the . I've never used it, nor do I know what games, if any, do. Most likely many Android games are java based, and probably MIDlets designed to run on even the crappiest of ancient cell phones (which could run unmodified on that platform). You see the same thing for Blackberry (except they don't offer any type of "native" support at all).

One thing still hasn't changed in the world of software application development. C / C++ still offers the maximum amount of portability and overall code reuse over any other language. Especially if your code is properly organized to consolidate API specific stuff, like file IO, rendering, etc, so it can be easily modified for other platforms.

Goodbye Windows Mobile

PostPosted: Jun 16, 2010 @ 5:11am
by mm40
Goodbye Windows Mobile, it was nice knowing you! With what is posted in this article it looks like it doesn't support C/C++. If MS has to pay people to port their code from C shouldn't that tell them something, like how about C# sucks donkey balls and you should support C/C++ like the rest! Honestly, if this is the case WM7 is doomed before it is even released, without C support no one is going to write any serious games for it, and apps will be very limited until there are many users, which will create a chicken and egg scenario.

"Amounts are said to be substantial, although not enough to tempt the developer in question. Because Windows Phone 7 is limited to Silverlight or XNA Framework (C#) development, the cost of reworking its games from C++ remains too high."

http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Win ... sp?c=21387