Windows 8 Metro. Has it been done?

[Ruben Gerlach]

Hello,

I have several successful games built with the beautiful Adobe Air runtime and I am looking to expand to Windows 8 Metro on all platforms (Desktop, Tablet, Phone). For this I would consider to port my codebase to haxe / OpenFL. Are there any case studies or successful examples Win 8 Metro apps with Haxe? Has it been done? Are there any hooks to get started? Everything I find on google or forums are year old posts about "in theory it should be possible, let's see when it's here".

Thanks

[Joshua Granick]

Hi Ruben,

This has been done using HTML5, OpenFL + HTML5 support has been improving, so although it is not as good as native, this is an existing option. Another development is that the ANGLE project (which implements OpenGL over DirectX, which is required for Metro apps) has been integrated into SDL, which we use, for desktop support, so that means that we may be able to "flip a switch" and have DirectX support in order to work as a Metro app.

Additional work involved would be to make sure that we can compile to WinRT, additional platform specifics (for accessing file paths, etc) as well as sorting out how we do the tool side of packaging, installing and running applications automatically. Unfortunately on this front, I've tried asking Microsoft evangelists many times about this, and never gotten a good answer. 

So a good push could turn it from HTML5 to native

--
To post to this group haxe...@googlegroups.com
http://groups.google.com/group/haxelang?hl=en
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Haxe" group.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

[Dion Whitehead Amago]

Another way is via Cocos2d-x.  The company I work for is currently adding the Windows 8 version of our main game via this route.  The windows output of Cocos2d-x is created and maintained by Microsoft themselves, it's a low-friction way for them to get existing games onto their platform..  If anyone is going to create a Windows metro output of openfl/nme, that's the first place I would look.

As Cocos2d-x supports full javascript bindings, you can write your game in Haxe and go that route.  

I'm in the process of adding Cocos2d-x as a platform for Flambe, so this process (if you use Flambe) will be transparent and require no change on the developers side. 

On a side note, if someone was serious about creating a windows metro output for flambe/nme, you could probably get all the software you needed, and maybe some devices (if you lived here and could meet with the developers) since they really want to support developers, and they're way behind.

[Ruben Gerlach]

Cool, thanks for sharing experiences. But no real world examples so far? I have not done anything with metro apps, (or Universal apps, which sounds more promising by now http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/04/14/microsoft-starts-accepting-developer-submissions-universal-windows-apps-windows-phone-8-1-apps/)

Will it be possible to take advantage of the tiles? Can I update the contents of the tiles through a Haxe project? (I have no idea how that's usually done, but I know it's possible).

Cheers,
Ruben