Mobile Game Update #6 (Windows Phone, touchscreens, menus)

Developing any game without hacking it together (at least by my standards) seems to take a lot of time. Since this is a long term project I don't want to make something I would have to tear apart at some point in the future. Game jams are fantastic but I don't think it should be where I form my habits for development. Even with the teething problems I have something on Windows Phone that works, well sort of works...
Porting games over from XNA to Monogame Windows Phone 8 is remarkably simple once you find the right way to do it. As a newbie to anything like this finding the right way did take some time but once I figured it out I was fine. It would have been a lot easier if I didn't try to neaten up my classes and assets into appropriate folders. Lesson there is keep things simple until you really benefit from making something more sophisticated and organised.

Oh and before I forget I added a menu to the game. A main menu, a pause menu and a game over menu. This is more of a proof of concept in the game and I found it pretty easy to implement. The game now has different states it can operate from so I guess it's looking more like a game in code than a first year's programming project, so that's good. It also means I don't need to end debugging once the player has lost. Instead of just ending the program I can just restart the game when over within the program and pause at any point to restart the game too. These two things are taken for granted in games and it was about time I added it. It works really well. I'm happy I made it although it definitely needs proper graphics. I wish I was able to make the art I want.

Anyway, back to the interesting part, I have made a game that runs on a Windows Phone device! Two problems which are probably down to me being a bit silly and new to the platform: Any touch input it recorded as infinity so no matter where you touch or do any gestures on the screen it does no work. The other problem is the screen is in portrait mode. These are the least annoying problems I've right now though because I assume it's some mistake I've made in my control class which isn't too complicated.

Either way, here's a video to prove I have indeed made something that runs on Windows Phone.

After I solve this issues I will probably give the game a fresh set of new graphics. The game looks awful and I'm getting quite bored of the placeholder graphics the game has. They did the job of showing me the entities within the game were moving and working but I'm working towards something I want people to actually play soon.

I'm getting excited for where this can go and I wish I had more free time to spare. My dream is for something like this to be my full time job. Hopefully in a few years it will be.