Posts tagged '.NET'
Yesterday I posted some info that suggested a two-tier Xbox LIVE marketplace on Windows Phone 7, and that I thought it was a massive mistake on Microsoft's part. Today I had a lengthy chat with Paul Foster, a Microsoft Developer Evangelist, about that post. He wanted to give some more details about how things worked to avoid me having to draw my own conclusions.
We went into Xbox LIVE publishing in great detail, and I decided to get Paul to confirm some of the things we discussed by email so I could post them here, for those that had read my previous post and were worried. Paul was unable to answer all of the questions (due to various things being hush-hush at this time), but said he'll answer them when he can. Below I've included his answers, along with the outstanding questions we'll hopefully have answers for in the future!
Q: Will Microsoft engage directly with small companies/individuals that have great games, ready to publish (to become part of the managed portfolio)?
A: Microsoft's XBL team and importantly a range of 3rd party XBL publishers are looking out for new opportunities, in fact at GDC 2010 and Mix10 the wpgames@microsoft.com alias was advertised asking for indie games devs to submit their game concepts they are building. The important point here is that if you want your game to be a big success you have to do more than just post it into an app store. You need to think about it as a manuscript for a book and take it around various publishers to get opinion and seek publishing opportunities. Publishers have the skill and capability to market your game and find bigger publishing opportunities – such as XBL. Publishing by default into an app store isn't enough for success when big numbers of people are doing just that – you need to do more than just develop your game, you need to drive the commercial publishing of it and the ecosystem of XBL provides broad opportunities for publishing. If after doing all that, the best opportunity for you is to publish straight into the marketplace then work at advertising your game. Seek magazine or blog reviewers, publish videos of it and ensure you have a cool web landing page for it. None of this stuff costs much and can raise the profile of your game.
Q: How are managed/unmanaged portfolio games separated in the store (visually/category-wise)?
A: All apps/games are in the single app store, filed by various categories. There are various merchandising locations in the marketplace and in the Games hub – these will be driven by various metrics from the store as well as for apps/games of planned marketing activities.
The following questions are unanswered as yet, but it seems like the answers will be positive for indies!
Q: Will there be separate "top sellers" / "what's new"-type lists for managed/unmanaged portfolio games, or combined lists?
Q: Are managed/unmanaged games separated in search results (if I search by name)?
Q: Will there by managed/unmanaged portfolios of apps too, or games only?
Update: Today I had a lengthy chat with Paul Foster, a Microsoft Developer Evangelist, about this post. I posted an update here.
Ever since I had my first iPaq with the .NET Compact Framework, I've wanted to code for a Microsoft mobile device. Coding in C# and Visual Studio is by far the nicest coding experience I've come across in the 15 or so years I've been programming. Unfortunately, up until now, Microsoft's mobile operating systems have all been absolutely rubbish.
Windows Phone 7 is set to change all that. Everything I've seen suggests Microsoft have finally got their act together, and WP7 looks set to be a huge success. Finally I can have the Windows phone I've always wanted!
Over the past couple of months, I've been reading more about developing for Windows Phone 7, and in the last few weeks, I've been playing around with both Silverlight and XNA as part of this. The experience is great, and I've been really looking forward to working on a game for WP7. I've spent the last few months of my spare time working on an iPhone app, and it's so nice to be able to switch Xcode/Objective-C for Visual Studio and C#!
However, there may be a problem...
I was just pointed to this page by a fellow XNA coder. Although not entirely clear, my interpretation of this text surprises, and shocks me. (Emphasis mine).
To answer, it's important to understand that we have a managed portfolio for Xbox LIVE titles on Windows Phone 7. As we looked at how the mobile gaming industry was evolving, it was obvious that there's a significant problem with the "race to zero" – or having too many, mixed quality titles available on a marketplace. Too many offerings makes it very hard for any specific title to stand out (no matter how high-quality), and negatively impacts the overall business ecosystem by making it almost impossible for developers to earn a fair return on their work. Our goal with the Windows Phone 7 games that utilize Xbox LIVE services is to cultivate a portfolio of high-quality titles that are regularly released – this is very similar to the portfolio management we do for Xbox LIVE Arcade titles.
This sounds to me, an awful lot like the current Xbox LIVE Arcade situation. Indie titles (eg., those created by people that do not have commercial relationships with Microsoft) are relegated to a crappy sub-category of "Indie Games".
You may be wondering what the big deal is here - surely we want to keep all this "indie crap" generated by bedroom coders hidden away so we can see stuff output by the real companies, eh? Well, not so. Not only are there "real games companies" that develop this way (because they're just not big enough to have this kind of relationship with Microsoft), there are also a lot or really good quality games output by "bedroom coders".
If you look at the Apple/iTunes App Store, every application or game sits equal. A game I publish, sits alongside a game published by a large company like EA. There are "league tables" for ratings and sales, which allow the best games (whether they're from a large games publisher, or a single coder in his bedroom) to rise to the top. For all of the faults with Apple's App Store, this is how it should be. If an individual puts out some work that is better than EA, then it deserves to be above them. Consumers care games, not about the companies (or individuals) behind them.
I have no real idea, but I would estimate that at least 75% of all apps/games on the App Store are created by individuals or companies too small to have relationships with Microsoft. That is a huge portion of apps/games to relegate to "the shit section". One of the reasons the iPhone did so well was because of the third party software. If Microsoft screws over the huge majority of developers like this, it will absolutely affect the success of their platform. We're already lacking things like Achievements - it's already going to be hard to convince users they should buy our game instead of EAs's, so pushing us into the amateur category will just make things harder (And therefore, less worthwhile).
My interpretation of the quoted text may be incorrect. I really hope it is. It's also possible this affects only games, and not apps. Who knows? If games created by me are relegated on Windows Phone 7 like they are on the Xbox, then I'll simply put up with Xcode/Objective-C, and go back to coding for Apple's platform. And this means, despite my desite for a WP7 phone, I'd probably end up buying a new iPhone, and not a WP7 phone.
Until this little mystery is confirmed, one way or another, my WP7 game is on hold :-(
Sunday, 15 August 2010
0 comments .NET Games XNA Rob Hutchinson, a talented programmer I used to work with, from nullcity.com has just release a game called Breeze on the Xbox LIVE Indie Marketplace. It was built using Kitae, his 2D XNA Game Engine. I'm really impressed with how this game turned out, and I think it's going to do really well in the marketplace. I thought I'd plug it here, as I know many readers are XNA coders :-)
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
0 comments .NET Games XNA With the iPhone app I've been working on nearing completion, and Windows Phone 7 + XNA 4.0 in sight, I recently decided to get back into game creation. I've previously released a game on Xbox LIVE Indie Games, Jungle Blocks, but it wasn't very good, because I was somewhat excited about the idea of my game being live, and pushed the button before it was really finished.
So, here I am again. Take 2. This time, I want to finish something. A game to be proud of! It doesn't matter how long it takes to finish, I've already done the whole XBLIG thing, so I aim to take my time and do it right.
In order to keep me motivated, I decided to encourage my colleagues to get involved, by declaring a games programming competition. Until now, nobody else at work really knew XNA, so by getting others involved, there will be people to talk to and discuss ideas with. To encourage people to join in, even if they have other priorities, we set a 6 month deadline and set down minimal ground rules. To keep things fair, we decided:
- Games must be legally publishable - e.g. no copyright material
- No paid-for assets
We didn't define a platform/technology, to allow for iPhone, Android and other platforms, but as it turned out, all but one participant decided on XNA :-)
It would be kinda lame for someone outside our company to win the competition, so I'm afraid you guys are official excluded. However, if you're interested in learning something new, I encourage you guys to lay down a similar challenge at your workplaces. If you do, be sure to let me know - I'd be interested to see how other people get on with the same challenge :-)
I was toying with the idea of creating "Jungle Blocks 2" for the Windows Phone 7, since it wouldn't be hard to do, and if it was ready for WP7 launch, it could probably make a few quid before the marketplace fills up. However, because I have a (small, but real) advantage over my colleagues (having used XNA before) and because a few of them are ambitious enough to be doing 3D, I feel somewhat pressured into not being a wuss with a 2D game...
So, my plan is now to build a small 3D RPG for the Xbox, something not too different to Zelda 64 or Mario 64 (though on a much smaller scale ;-)). I've not really played with 3D, so this feels like enough of a challenge that I'll learn a ton of stuff, but simple enough that I (hopefully) won't just abandon it half-way through (something I may have a reputation for...).
Over the coming months, I'll blog about what I'm doing as I go. I can't promise I won't give up and go back to a 2D Jungle Blocks, but at least if I do, I can say I tried!
Sunday, 14 March 2010
1 comments .NET Over the past year or so we've been wrestling with an intermittent error from classic ASP when trying to instantiate .NET components with Server.CreateObject. Everything works fine 90% of the time, and now and then we'll start seeing this error:
Server object error 'ASP 0177 : 8000ffff'
Server.CreateObject Failed
<FileName>.asp, line <LineNumber>
8000ffff
Once this error starts happening, it generally persists until we move the application to another application pool or restart IIS. Recycling the app pool does not fix the problem.
Unfortunately, the error message and number are fairly generic, so it's been pretty tricky to track down. There are lots of people with very similar issues posting all over the web that have solved them in various ways. None of the solutions we found have ever worked for us. Most of them were people seeing the error all the time (eg. permissions errors), but we found very few people seeing our behaviour where the code would just randomly stop working.
After many, many months of searching, we found some reports of similar behaviour being caused by installing an Internet Explorer 7 patch. Many people were rolling the patch back with some success. Rolling back patches doesn't seem like the best thing in the world, so we've always avoided the complications that go with it.
The Solution
Eventually, we found the solution. It's in this Microsoft knowledgebase article KB945701. The problem appears to be a failure to read some IE-related values from the registry. The hotfix on the page above (which is included in the latest service pack, so you probably do not need the hotfix) adds the ability to ignore these errors by setting a registry key:
- Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\
FeatureControl\FEATURE_IGNORE_ZONES_INITIALIZATION_FAILURE_KB945701
Note If the FEATURE_IGNORE_ZONES_INITIALIZATION_FAILURE_KB945701 subkey does not exist, you must manually create it. - Right-click FEATURE_IGNORE_ZONES_INITIALIZATION_FAILURE_KB945701, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
- Type w3wp.exe to name the new registry entry, and then press ENTER.
- Right-click w3wp.exe, and then click Modify.
- In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
After setting this registry key, a simple app pool restart will apply the change. No longer will your .NET COM components randomly stop working with no real solution except shuffling application pools!
Yesterday I finally got around to do something I've been planning on doing for a number of weeks. I uploaded Google Wave Notifier to Google Code. From today, Google Wave Notifier is Open Source!
In hindsight, I should have done this much sooner. The app is now very stable and contains all the features that I planned to implement (and more!). I'm still getting lots of feature requests, and I really wish I could implement them all. However, in reality, I just don't have time. By sharing the code with the world, all of these features need not go unimplemented!
I still intend to work through bugs and some feature requests myself, though it's unlikely to be at the rate of previous releases. With help from the community, hopefully we'll still see regular releases and new functionality.
For more info, or to download the source, please visit the Google Wave Notifier page on Google Code.
You probably haven't noticed, but this blog serves up different ads depending on where you're visiting from. Or at least, it'll serve Amazon UK ads if you're near the UK, and Amazon US ads otherwise. Serving up US ads to UK visitors (and vice versa) is pretty pointless, and I've always tried to avoid showing any ads unless they're relevant and at least targeted to the right country.
There are a number of ways to determine where your visitors are coming from, so I spent some time yesterday trying to find the most reliable way (and preferably one that didn't involve having a huge IP database sat alongside my site!). After much hacking and testing, I found what I believe to be the best way. Google.
Google has a JavaScript loader API, which allows developers to load JavaScript libraries from Google with various benefits. That's not really what we're interested in though, it has something more exciting:
google.loader.ClientLocation
It appears that you do not need an API key to use the JavaScript loader, you can simply reference it at http://www.google.com/jsapi. If you look at the JavaScript served up (which is incredibly fast), you'll see something like this:
google.loader.ClientLocation = { "latitude":50.123, "longitude":-2.876, "address": { "city":"Liverpool", "region":"Merseyside", "country":"United Kingdom", "country_code":"GB" } };
Not only do you get the country, but you get the county, city and even lat/lon pair. For me, the location given was within 2-3 miles of where I live, so if you wanted, you could really localise your ads!
On this site, the country is just sent to a script that will serve up some ads based on keywords I've tagged against a post. You might wish to be a bit more exciting and show your users places or people nearby. This could be especially useful for mobile applications/sites, though be sure to read any associated terms and conditions before using it!
Over the past few weeks I've been playing with Google App Engine. I find the best way to learn a new language/framework/platform is to just jump in and write something in/on it. So that's what I'm doing. I've decided to write my blog in Python for Google App Engine.
As I may have blogged about in the past, I wrote a blog engine in Microsoft ASP.NET MVC not so long ago with the aim of moving away from Blogger. It was around 90% complete when I abandoned it for a variety of reasons (one being Azure pricing).
It's entirely possible the Google App Engine blog engine will also be abandoned, but since the hosting is free it at least stands a good chance of seeing the light of day! It'll also make an interesting comparison to the ASP.NET MVC version.
I started writing code a few nights ago, and currently the blog stands at 159 non-blank lines. I'm actually quite impressed with how little code I've had to write to get up and running. Currently there's no back-end, but the displaying of posts, comments, tags and archives are all working. Here's a quick screenshot to prove it exists! :)
Over the coming weeks I'll blog about how I've built it (including code), the pitfalls and the the experience of moving from .NET and C# to Python and App Engine!
As a .NET developer, I was quite excited to hear about Windows Azure. It sounded like a less painful version of Amazon's EC2, supporting .NET (less painful in terms of server management!). When I saw the pricing, it didn't look too bad either. That was, until I realised that their "compute hour" referred to an hour of your app running, not an hour of actual CPU time. Wow. This changes things. To keep a single web role running, you're looking at $0.12/hour = $2.88/day = $20.16/week = $86.40/month.
Anyone that's bought hosting for a small site/app recently will know that this is not particularly cheap!
So, recently I've been playing around with Google App Engine. It has this massive problem called Python (and an even bigger one called Java ;o)), but it's such a nice framework/engine to work with that I've somehow overlooked this and started coding with it. There's so much to like about it. Everything is so simple to deploy, and it scales "out of the box". Want Cron jobs? No worries, specify them in a file in your app, and when you deploy, App Engine will pick them up and schedule them. Want to queue up work to process later so that your pages return faster? Task queues do just that. What's more, you get a ridiculous free quota every day. It may be Python, but this sounds tempting, no?
So, I thought it'd be interesting to compare the costs of App Engine vs Azure. I understand this isn't really a like-for-like comparison, but both can achieve the same sort of things, and while all programmers will have a preferred language/framework (I'm no exception), many can be swayed by a cool framework or hosting.
First off, let's compare what you get for free. Bear in mind that Azure is free until the end of January, but since this is a CTP and won't end soon, I'm going to exclude it. Google's free quota currently has no time restrictions.
| Windows Azure | Google App Engine |
| CPU Hours | - | 6.5hrs/day |
| Bandwidth (out) | - | 1GB/day |
| Bandwidth (in) | - | 1GB/day |
| Storage (DB) | - | 1GB |
| Storage Transactions | - | 10,368,000/day |
Well, for free, I think we have a clear winner. If you can run your website/app within the limits above, then you can do it for free with Google. It's worth mentioning that Google let you have 10 apps per account (though you may not balance a single site/app across app instances - they are specifically for separate projects).
But what if you're bigger than that? What if you get Slashdotted or Dugg a lot? You might find you quickly break out of the free limits. How do prices compare?
| Windows Azure | Google App Engine |
| CPU | $0.12/hour | $0.10/hour |
| Note that MS bill "per hour app is running" whereas Google bill "per CPU hour consumed" |
| Bandwidth (out) | $0.15/GB | $0.12/GB |
| Bandwidth (in) | $0.10/GB | $0.10/GB |
| Storage (Files) | $0.15/GB/month | Pricing unavailable (Blobstore) |
| Storage (DB) | $9.99/month (SQL Server up to 1GB) | $0.15/GB/month ($0.005/GB/day) |
| Storage Transactions | $0.01/10,000 | ? |
| I can't find any prices for Google App Engine storage transactions, so it's possible there is no charge (though a limit of 140,000,000/day applies) |
Well, that's interesting. I was going to try and calculate at what point Azure would become cheaper, but looking at those prices, it just isn't going to happen. Now it's worth pointing out that not all of the comparisons are fair. Google bill per actual CPU hour (so if nobody visits your site, it's not costing you), whereas Microsoft are billing for each hour your app is live and able to respond. There's also a significant difference between SQL Server and App Engine Datastore (and depending on what you're doing, one will have advantages over the other).
I really hope Microsoft re-evaluate their pricing for small apps. It's too expensive to play around with small prototypes at those prices, whereas Google's offering will let me get started completely free, until my app is churning a considerable amount of traffic, and even then, it'll work our cheaper for the same processing/transfer.
Sorry Microsoft. I love .NET and Visual Studio, but Google App Engine is just so easy and cheap that it's going to be my "toy of choice" for my hobby coding for the immediate future!
Over the years, I've written (and re-written) many blog engines with the intention of hosting my blog on my own code. I'm a programmer, that's what we do. We don't like the thought of other people writing our HTML!
If you've been following my blog over the last twelve months, you'll probably know what my language/framework of choice would be when writing a web app, based on my previous posts...
As a .NET developer by trade, I'm experienced with C#, .NET, ASP.NET MVC etc. and it's always been the logical choice. There's nothing I like to write more than C#/.NET
So why are you hosted on Blogger?
An interesting question :) Unfortuantely the answer is not interesting. The answer is simply: Hosting. Windows hosting is a pain in the ass. I've had many bad Windows hosts that have dodgy control panels, poor performance or a lack of required features. Most of this is addressed with IIS 7 because we can now do most things via XML config files, but it still leaves one issue: Price. Prices seem to vary wildly, and it's such a pain to set up that I'm often put off signing up in case it turns out to be a lemon. This is the reason I have a fully working .NET MVC blog engine ready to roll in my Documents folder that's never made it to the big cloud in the sky.
What about Azure?
A few months ago I was really excited about Azure. It looked ideal for what I wanted, and looking at how EC2 is priced, I suspected it would be cheap if you're only getting a few hundred visitors per day. Then Microsoft announced the prices... To run a no-to-low traffic blog would cost more than getting a virtual server! On top of that, it seemed quite hacky to get MVC working, and it's still only in preview.
Enter, Google App Engine
While playing around in Google Wave, I downloaded the Google App Engine SDK and had a play. While Python isn't exactly my language of choice (I've never written it before!), it struck me as quite a good deal. Five million page views per month... for free! It's hosted on Google's infrastructure and scales well, and there's no way I'd hit those limits anytime soon.
So, now I'm having thoughts... Do I become a hacky Python programmer, putting aside all the .NET experience I have, for free hosting with Microsoft's biggest competitor?
If anyone has any experience with running blogs on Google App Engine, I'd be very interested in hearing from them. Should I run with it, or should I stop being tight-fisted and just pay for some Windows hosting?
To be continued!
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