Porting game to Windows Store

Ok, so my game is working pretty well on OpenGL but now I want to port it to Windows Store so I can make some sales.

I’m pretty confused about this Universal Windows stuff though, it seems to work much differently than the regular Windows versions. So I’m hoping someone who has figured it out can point me in the right direction.

I haven’t found any good tutorials on this, so I’m happy to contribute one to the community if you’ll can help me figure out some of these gotchas.

First issue is that I don’t know why in the top left corner of my game window and in the top right corner of my monitor window there is some black debugging box with numbers in it. I’m guessing that the top right corner might have a framerate but I’m not sure what the other numbers are. I’d prefer to disable it.

I also have no idea what this widget in the top middle of my game window is and what it’s supposed to do. If it’s important, I’d like to know what its purpose is. If not, I’d like to disable it.

Second issue is that I was using Properties.Settings.Default to store persistent data between sessions. For example, I was using Properties.Settings.Default.mute to store a boolean of whether or not to mute sounds.

I go online and it says to use Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.LocalSettings.Values. So I try setting Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.LocalSettings.Values[“mute”] and using that, but it crashes the debugger, so I can’t even debug whatever the issue is.

Third issue is that I don’t know how or where to set the game icons. I see there is this Assets folder, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be putting in there or where to find the information on what to use. When running, the game has no icon on the title bar or in the taskbar.

Fourth issue, although my debug build works fine, the release build doesn’t launch and crashes with some kind of debugging error. I go into the release folder and find the executable but it won’t launch. I guess this has something to do with Windows Store sandboxing, but I’m not sure where to look to learn about this.

Finally, I would like to just simply add one of their rotating banner ads to the bottom of my game, which I’d like the user to be able to turn off with an in-app purchase. I haven’t really found much info on how to do this with MonoGame.

From a technical standpoint, my solitaire game is finished, I’m just at the polishing stage at this point. Namely animations, sound design, asset tweaking, and aesthetics. It would be nice if I can get this launched in the next week or two so I can start recouping some of my out-of-pocket expenses.

I think I just got kind of burned out yesterday so I apologize if my tone was a bit irritable.

Hi SG,

I don’t ready anything product of irritability in your post. I’ve seen a lot lot worse in this forum :wink:

The problem is probably not the tone, but that all questions (maybe except the last, which would depend on the exception) are Windows Store questions and not MonoGame questions. Those would be answered better (and faster) in the msdn forums.

thanks @KakCAT, I’ll ask around there :slight_smile: