In the last post I mentioned development using Visual Studio 2017 for developing a new app for Android, Windows and iOS. The Android app was released in late October and the Windows 10 version a week ago. For now the iOS version is on hold until next year. I still have to buy a Mac. The game using SDL2 is also on hold until funding is forthcoming.
This was my first experience with the Windows Store. I found it a much more mature experience than Google Play which has some things missing. For one, I was able to offer the Windows 10 app, which runs on both desktop and mobile with a 7 day free trial which currently is not possible on Google Play. Microsoft has 1, 7, 15 and 30 day free trial options. So unlike Android where I created some minimally functioning demo versions the trial version suffices.
I was also able to test the app with a Windows 10 8” tablet, the Digiland DL808W, which I picked up for less than $50 at Fry’s. Everything functioned perfectly on this little tablet except for Bing Maps. Looking at the debug monitor even when running on my Windows 10 PC, maps takes up a lot of memory so the 1 GB memory was not enough. Keep in mind that Google Maps will run on Android devices with only 512 MB of memory. Obviously Microsoft needs to do some optimization.
One thing about the Windows Store is that Microsoft signs the app so small developers don’t need to purchase a code signing certificate which can be very daunting. But since they sign the app they apparently want to check out every update so those don’t go up as quickly as they do on Google Play so I will stage update farther apart.
The app on Windows Store:
BTW, if you tried accessing this site recently it probably didn’t come up. My web hosting company somehow messed up the DNS. As soon as I noticed they remedied it quickly after I called.