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Chukong and Microsoft extend Cocos2d-x hackathons to boost games on WinPho

Plus six best practices you'll need to make the leap

Chukong and Microsoft extend Cocos2d-x hackathons to boost games on WinPho

Chukong Technologies and Microsoft Open Technologies have announced more details on their collaborative, co-hosted hackathons aimed at bringing Cocos2d-x content to Windows Phone.

The first of these hackathons took place on 31 March in Microsoft's San Francisco office, and featured 15 developers who had built Cocos2d-x games for iOS and Android devices.

These developers were given technology demos of Cocos2d-x and technical support to help port their games to Windows Phone.

The hackathons will continue under the collaboration to give Cocos2d-x developers the opportunity to learn more about the Windows Phone platform while getting hands-on support for their ports.

Hack in the box

Speaking on the collaboration, Olivier Bloch - senior technical evangelist for Microsoft Open Technologies - praised its potential to broaden the Windows Phone developer base.

"We are always looking to build better relationships with developers to bring new games to Windows devices," Bloch began.

"The Cocos2d-x community is a vibrant group of game developers, and these events offer a great way to help them extend their reach to Windows devices and at the same time it helps us learn how they do game development so we can adapt and provide the right resources."

Kai Zhao, vice president of engineering for Chukong Technologies, was also enthusiastic.

"We are constantly looking to improve the Cocos2d-x engine using feedback from developers and platforms alike," he said. 

"We're delighted with the enthusiasm our developers showed for Windows devices, and look forward to hosting more of these events in the future."

Based on the feedback from the first hackathon, MS Open Technologies assembled a whitepaper list of six best practices for porting a Cocos2d-x game to Windows Phone.

The listed steps are as follows:

  • Create a Cocos2d-x project using project creator tool.
  • Create Windows 8 and Windows Phone projects in Visual Studio.
  • Copy the source code consisting of C++ and header files to the project Classes directory. Add these files to your project in Visual Studio.
  • Copy resources to the project Resources directory.
  • Modify a couple of project settings necessary for compilation.
  • For Windows Phone, convert any MP3 files to WAV files. Similarly, for Windows Phone replace fonts that are not supported by Windows Phone or update the code to use fonts available on the platform.

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