Installing Android sdk in Windows 8

If you're having the java.exe not found problem while installing android-sdk (failed to find java version for 'C:\windows\system32\java.exe': The system cannot find the specified file.", you might want to check out the following steps.

Firstly you must install JDK to your windows and it's a must as the android-sdk depends on the JDK.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1637583.html

Now download and install the android sdk from the location below.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

If you've installed JDK, you may still facing the same problem as java installation path might not already exist in the environment variables.

Go to the system settings by right click my computer->properties->advanced system settings->advanced tab->click environmental variable.

Finally add JAVA_HOME varible and value as the path of your jdk installation files.

Here is where the Android SDK is located in the Windows 8.
C:\Users\%profile%\AppData\Local\Android\android-sdk

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Installing Unity 3.x and 4.x on the single machine

Unity announce it's latest version of 4.0 a while ago and revealed all the new features included in Unity 4.0 at Unity 2012. New great features includes
 - Direct X 11 Rendering Supports
 - New 3D GUI framework
 - Mecanim animation system and so on.

Unity is now offering the beta access to version 4.0 for it's licensee which pre-ordered the 4.0 license. If you're still using unity 3.x, it's recommended to not install Unity 4.0 as you might have to upgrade to all your projects done so far and you can downgrade the previous project once you've done upgrading of your project into version 4.0 . Here is the way of installing Unity 3.x and 4.x together for more comfortable uses of Unity 4.0

Note : Please do backup of projects before installing Unity 4.0 

Step 01

Rename your current Unity folder located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Unity to some obvious name such as Unity3_5 . To rename, just right-click the mouse and hit rename or you can just press F2 to rename the folder.

If you're using asset server or something related to your current unity build, you might get error of the folder used by other processes. In that case, download unlocker for windows here to unlock the folder that's being accessed from other programs such as asset and cache servers.

Step 02

Now you're ready to install Unity 4.0 and so just install Unity 4.0 as normal procedures and you're now ready to rock on Unity 4.0 . You might have to re-activate the previous Unity 3.0 license and of so just re-activated it back to use Unity 3.x for your current project.

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Using CloudyRec Code Generator

The greatest CloudyRec feature among other backend service provider is the Code Generator where it can generate the native modal source code with the specified schema in the previous "Getting Started" section.

Sandbox Environment

When you’ve satisfied the attributes and resources for the applications, you can start loading into the sandbox to make the apps ready for testing.  Go to the Define tab of the dashboard and click the “Load to sandbox” button located at the right side of the application name as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1.0 Loading to Sandbox environment

Note : In CloudyRec, there are two types of development modes available called Sandbox and Production. Sandbox is for testing the applications while developing and it’s totally free and developer doesn’t needs to pay a penny while using Sandbox.  I would recommend to put into production mode once you’ve published the apps as the data from the Sandbox will be flushed in timely manners and it’s not safe to put the data into sandbox once your apps goes live to public.

Production Mode

Production mode offers  developers  the following great features.

•     Versioning where developer can create versions of the apps and it’s backward compatibility.
•    Faster API calls and fully scalable.
•   Analytics so you can track how many hits does you apps get.
•   OAuth authentication to prevent unauthorised access to your app etc..

If your app is in the sandbox mode, you can generate the source code (Modal code) for your apps to integrate in the project. 

Go to Generate tab and generate the source code for your development environment. In this example, I will generate the source code for WP7 but you’re not limited only to WP7 and you can generate source code for 7 different platforms which can easily make your apps as a cross-platform compatible mode. 

Figure 1.1 Generating source code using code generator

Once you’ve clicked the generate button, you needs to wait for a while to complete the code generation queue and after a while refresh the page to see the button for downloading of the actual code.

After you’ve downloaded and extracted the generated source code, it's recommended you to change the main folder of the source code to “CloudyRec” as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1.2 Downloading and extracting the source code

The app is now ready to integrate in the Windows 8 Metro apps project. Let’s begin writing the todo-list cross-platform cloud based application by clicking here.

Note : You're allowed to generate the source code for as much platforms as you can and make your apps cross-platform while accessing to the same datasource from different mobile platforms.

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Getting Starting with CloudyRec

Part I Creating a new CloudyRec App

Welcome to the CloudyRec. CloudyRec is the fastest mobile backend solution for your great applications. Let’s see how fast you can integrate CloudyRec in your project.

After you’ve registered a new developer and logged in, you can go to the dashboard and define a new app. In this example, I will create a project named “TodoList” as shown in the figure below. 

Figure 1.0 Creating a new app

Let’s define the resource called “user_account” and make it authenticable. Authenticable means that you want to include username and password attributes in this resource and also there will have “Authenticate” function available when you’ve generated the code and you can call this method to authenticated users of your application. I’ll discuss more about this method in the later sections.

Note : if you click the “user_account” resource, you can see the “_passwd” and “_uname” attributes are already added automatically as you’ve marked as authenticable for the “user_account” resource.

After you’ve created the “user_account” resource, let’s create a new resource called “item” and make it as child object of the “user_account” resource by clicking edit button available at the right side of the resources.

In the edit mode of the resource, you can specify which resource to belong in the dropdown list. In this example, I will chose "user_account" as its parent object.

Figure 1.1 Defining a child resource

You can also define the children of children's object. For example, todo_items can also contains the item list while useraccount can contain the number of todo_items as well.

Figure 1.2 Defining another child resource of previous child resource

So what's next after defining the outline schema for our backend? It's time to add some details schema to our outline schemas. If you click on the todo_item resource from the Resources tab, you can be able to add the specific attributes for the resource. I am gonna add the following attributes with certain datatypes for this tutorial.

Figure 1.3 Adding todo_item attributes

Now lets add the remaining attributes for item_details. I will add the following attributes for item_details resource.

Figure 1.3 Adding item_details attributes

If you've completed adding the attributes for each resources as shown in the above, you are ready to start developing a todo-list app for any mobile platform that you're targeting to. For this tutorial, I will guide you to develop the metro style app for WinRT but you're not limited to do only for WinRT app as you can use the same database for your iPhone and android apps too.

The next section for this tutorial will be about how to use CloudyRec code generator to generate the modal code for your project. Please click here to continue to the next section.

Adding Backends to WinRT Metro Apps( Windows 8 app backend )

If you're really into the app development, WinRT is one of the most interesting new platform which is coming to release soon. App developer like myself can't wait to develop fun and utility apps for the new platform. Nowadays, every app contains social and backends features to make the app always connected through different devices and platform.

WinRT main feature is the connectivity and you can imagine how beautiful your app will be if they looks the same on the Desktop PCs, Tablets and Phones as well. What even all the data are sync through all the devices. For example, a to-do list which is created with the desktop PCs can also be able to view the same data from the mobile while going out?

With the help of CloudyRec, it becomes to add backend service in a very easy and handy way.

CloudyRec is a server-side backend platform for mobile apps and games. Backend implementation for mobile apps typically requires complicated server setups, API developments, server monitoring, management and maintenance processes. CloudyRec provides a complete managed backend platform for mobile apps that can be set up and ready to use instantly.

CloudyRec is free for all developers in any development stages and it means that the developers don't have to pay a penny while testing or developing the app. 

You can go to http://CloudyRec.com to sign up to start adding of backend database into your uber Metro app development.

I am planning to write a tutorial of creating a simple Todo-List metro style app using CloudyRec as a backend service. Please subscribe the blog to read more about CloudyRec tutorials to boost the games  and app backend development.


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Getting Started with Monogame for WinRT

Monogame is the opensource XNA development framework where the XNA developers for XBox, Windows and WP7 can be able to port their games for iOS, Android, Mac OSX, Linux, Windows 8 Metro Style apps and PlayStation Mobiles.

As XNA framework is not allowed to create Windows 8 Metro App anymore,  Monogame becomes the best framework to port the current games written in XNA. Monogame framework rewrite the XNA wrappers using SharpDX which is the current fastest Direct X Wrapper for C#.

Although there are opensource game development frameworks for WinRT is available, Monogame is the one that shouldn't miss if you're a former XNA developer or C# programmer.

You will need the following software and tools if you're really new to WinRT development environments.

Windows 8 Release Preview 

Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate 

They're currently in beta, so you can go unlimited trials for these until the final releases comes out.

If you're not planning to integrate XAML to your project, you should download the Monogame Metro Template from here. 

If you are willing to integrate Monogame with XAML, you can click here to see the tutorials.

You can download the Monogame Binary Built from here if you're not willing to make a binary build from your self.

Step 01

Extract the template folder in the  following path

C:\Users\%Profile%\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#

Step 02

Create a new monogame project using the template as shown in the figure below.

Step 03

Now, the new project has created automatically for you to start building games using Monogame in XNA style. You can see the errors if you runs the project now because the binary file hasn't added as a reference yet. Please add the dowloaded binary built for Monogame as shown in the figure.

Step 04

If you run the project now in the simulator mode, you can see the blue screen where you've seen it in the normal XNA blank project window as shown in the figure below.

Now it's time to show your XNA skills to start developing a fun game. It's always better to have an eye on the latest releases of Monogame here.


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How to build asset files to be used in Monogame for WinRT

Building asset files to be used in Monogame for WinRT

Let's start preparing the assets (.xnb) files for used in Monogame using XNA Game Studio 4.0. If you missed the article about installing XNA Game Studio, please have a look at @
http://gamedevresources.blogspot.sg/2012/08/installing-windows-phone-7-sdkxna-game.html

Step 01

Create a new XNA Game Project for windows as shown in the figure below.

Step 02

In the project pane, you will see that the WindowsGame1 project is referenced to the Content project where you can actually add all the contents that you required for the game.
In this example,  I added several folders where each folder contains relative assets to be built to use in Monogame WinRT.
SpriteFont are also accepted in Monogame and you can also put your spriteFont in the content folder to get built too.

Step 03

Now hit, F5 button or run the project and the blank windows will comes out as you're running the game. By the time the game is running, all the assets are compiled into .xnb file automatically from the XNA build pipeline.
These .xnb files are the one that you can use for your Monogame WinRT Project which is located in your project bin folder as shown in the figure below.

Thanks you for your reading and I hope that you enjoyed the blog.

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