Cinder is a cross platform framework for C++ design engineering. In order to run and Apple, Android and Windows devices prior to Windows 8, the rendering libraries leveraged OpenGL as the open source, cross platform solution. Even though DirectX has been Microsoft's preferred rendering solution for...

Rapid2D v1.3 introduces Rapid2D Pro which allows you to deploy to Windows Phone ! Now you can release your game onto desktop, tablets and mobiles with a single click! Y ou now have greater control over your game’s objects ; adjust the finer details of how they behave, right in the editor...

   On the 3rd 4th and 5th of April, The Windows Games Ambassadors hosted the Scottish Universities Jam at the University of West of Scotland ‘UWS’ in Glasgow. The event was an intense weekend of game development based on Windows 8 games with ...read more

“We love Windows 8. The live tiles and the ease of operation makes it a magical operating system to work with…….. We are extremely proud of the Rapid2D engine and want as many developers, both professional and novice, to discover all the benefits of using ...read more

On the 26th of March we held an event to help raise awareness of the opportunity of Windows 8 and Windows Phone within academic gaming courses. The intention of the event was to.. 1. Introduce the latest technology released by Microsoft 2. Present the ...read more

If you are developing a Windows Store app using C++ and XAML and you want to use Microsoft DirectX to improve performance or to reuse the assets in your app more effectively, you can use this article to get started. XAML and DirectX Interop QuickStart You will learn How to perform interop between XAML...

With the launch of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, this academic year promises to be our biggest yet for the opportunity of building amazing games in a variety of technologies and frameworks including C#, HTML5/JS,  C++, DirectX , Unity , MonoGame ...read more

I was toying around with some code to sum up file and folder sizes on the disk from a Windows Store app and I hit what was, for me, a little bit of a snag. My first attempt (extracted into a smaller snippet) looked something like this; FolderPicker picker ...read more

Rapid2D is the only game engine that is specifically designed to produce Windows 8 The following Tutorials are available There will be 9 templates each with a basic description released at: http://www.rapid2d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=46 There ...read more

The Awesome team of Development: Den Delimarsky PM & Testing: Clint Rutkas , Dan Fernandez Code Review: Brian Peek Design: Arturo Toledo , Rick Barraza Audio: David Walliman From Channel9.msdn.com have released FallFury open sourced C++/DX 2D Game ...read more

Rapid2d.com C++/DirectX 11.1 Game Engine launches an awesome competition for students, startups and indie developers with a grand prize of £10,000 But that’s not all; there will also be runners up prizes of Xbox 360 consoles and bundles taking the total ...read more

  The DirectXMath API provides SIMD-friendly C++ types and functions for common linear algebra and graphics math operations common to DirectX applications. The library provides optimized versions for Windows 32-bit (x86), Windows 64-bit (x64), and ...read more

Guest blog by Dr Tommy Thompson. University of Derby   I’m Dr Tommy Thompson, a lecturer at the University of Derby. Since completing my undergraduate degree in Computer Science back in 2004, I have worked as a commercial software developer for a ...read more

  Are you using or teaching C++/DX? Teaching C++ is like teaching no other programming language or development tool. Among the complications in designing and presenting a C++ course are: The worst fault a C++ course can have is to focus exclusively ...read more

The Patterns & Practices team have been busy and have just released their latest sample called Hilo. The Hilo end-to-end photo sample provides guidance to C++ developers that want to create a Windows 8 app using modern C++, XAML, the Windows Runtime, and recommended development patterns. Hilo comes...

David Britch is a Senior Technologist at Content Master , and for the past year has been working on a number of projects with the patterns & practices group at Microsoft. David has authored and contributed to a range of recent software development publications including books, guidance documentation...

There have been a flood of Windows 8 announcements in the past few days… The RTM of Windows 8 has been announced and we know that from August 15th the RTM code will start to drop into the hands of developers and IT professionals who have MSDN and TechNet ...read more

Ok, I just wanted to see how many technologies I could get into the title of a blog post ;-) This one really falls into the category of ‘just for fun’. I wanted to experiment with writing a custom WinRT component in C++/CX and then try using it from ...read more

by David Britch I recently joined a project developing a Windows 8 Metro application using C++. It had been a while since I’d written any C++ and I subsequently discovered that C++ has changed. A lot. WinRT is the framework and library for building Metro applications. It can be used from...

One of the topics that’s been seeing some discussion both inside and outside of Microsoft lately is the idea of a “renaissance” for native code. It’s not my term but I’ve heard it used in a number of places and Channel 9 has just started a new TV series called “ Going Native”; where the “renaissance...

Last week, Microsoft launched the Windows SDK for Kinect beta. The SDK beta is a starter kit for applications developers that includes APIs, sample code, drivers and installation documents, with resource materials for developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic using Microsoft Visual...