Phantom Light Games By – Tishawn Fahie

I gotta tell you at one point I was searching around looking for a decent way to create online leader board for games. Majority of the times i always relied on the fine folks over at mogade until the creator decided to shut it all down.

R.I.P Mogade you will be missed.

http://www.mogade.com – Free & open source. If you were into Ruby  you can actually host your own mogade server

Me using Windows all my life there was know I just purchase a book on Ruby on Rails. Therefore I said to myself there has to be a way.  Searched online and ran into Windows Azure.

This isn’t the first time I ran into Windows Azure.. The first time I looked at i did not sign up for it because the cost kinda scared me and to be honest it still does. They do have a calculator that pretty much allows you to estimate the cost based on the resources that you use.

So what is Windows Azure?

  http://www.windowsazure.com

Windows Azure enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any operating system, language or tool and then some.

I was able to get a leaderboard up and running in less than 10 minutes although it did take me some time to actually get my game to read and save to the leaderboard but guess what. It’s mine and I did it.

I’ll put up an tutorial on how to do this.

But wait there’s more…

I’m now use Push Notification inside my game and I gotta tell you its sweet! But more on that later.

Hello readers – Cruise Control HD update is now in the app store. A number of improvements:

• Touch controls response improved
• Difficulty settings adjusted
• Graphics textures updated
• Vehicles can now be unlocked
• Totally re-done main screen
• Minor bug fixes
• More to follow

If you have Windows 8 installed then download my new game Cruise Control HD its free

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/cruise-control-hd/511c683b-8e21-4f9b-9284-c4a97d109590

I’m very exited to announce Cruise Control HD is live in the Microsoft App store. If you have Windows 8 installed on your PC (which you should) then download my Game. It is free! 

A lot of work went into this game it’s. It’s hard to work a full time job, spend time with my fiance’e hang out with my daughter and still find time to work on a project. Some how I found the time and I gotta tell you this is my best work yet.

I’m some what of a 1 man team – I do all the Art work as you can probably tell any designer would look at the game and say what the????? As much tutorials as I watched on you tube regarding Photoshop i just cant find the time to really be good at art. 

But if you have played any of my games before you can see my art has improved!

When I start a project i tend to just start programming without anything in mind.. Yes bad practice - and trust me i payed for it plenty of times. This game started out a simple driving game. Collect gems you crash that’s it game over.

Then later on i thought to myself i kinda hate games like that. Those are more of cell phone games than anything. I wanted the user to be able to go back to the game. 

So the following was added -

Save and Load game.

Just to get on a touchy topic -

I saw that people found away to hack game saves  cheat. I didn’t want that but i didn’t know how to implement this feature. This is when I went to my genius friend Pavlo Maylen. In no time this was done – But obviously this meant I had re-arrange my code – (One of the many cons of programming without planning).

BTW – This is a XNA.XAML game.

Yes i know what how does this work on Windows 8 since microsoft dropped support.

Well thanks to the fabulous framework Monogame – these guys found a way to Allow XNA to work on Windows 8.

More to follow!

Press Release: Cruise Control HD now available for your PC/Tablet/Surface anything running Windows 8. Here is the link.

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/cruise-control-hd/511c683b-8e21-4f9b-9284-c4a97d109590

Details to follow!

Phantom Light Games – Privacy Policy

We aim to collect the minimum amount of information to provide a good game experience.

Windows 8 Customers.

We only ask for a tag name and score since asked information is uploaded to a leader board database. Nothing else is uploaded.

There is a companion app that is also capable of communicating with the game for windows phone. This will only work as long as both devices(Computer or tablet running the game) and (Companion App Remote/ Running on the phone) are both on the same network.

We do not collect any personal information. The only thing that is uploaded is what you will see in the leader board Menu. Tag name and score.

Thank you.

Copyright ”©” 2011-2012, Phantom Light Games. All rights reserved, human.

I will be adding a sub blog just for the Surface. I’m no fan boy at all but I do love technology.

This is not a review just some thoughts.

Why am I writing this – the problem with most tech blog’s isn’t the fact that majority of them receive these device’s free of charge therefor is not going to use it or test it as if it was their own(did that make sense)…

I commute to work from Brooklyn to the city about an 45 minute bus ride. (Very comfortable seats and outlets to charge devices) if I might add. This bus makes a few stops in Brooklyn before then going over the bridge to let passengers off in the city. 

All in a nutshell – I love the Surface. The touch cover works well although I’m still use to the tactile keys I might just invest in the type cover. Overall performance is great although I do have some gripes.

Pros:

Very light!

Keyboard touch cover works great – it’s a freaking keyboard that’s also a case! It works and it works well. No problem’s there.

Office Suite works great – Can load any Word/Excel/PowerPoint etc. file with no problems.

USB – So far everything I plugged in worked. Printers/Mouse/Keyboard thumb drives etc.

Kickstand – It works. I’m a system’s engineer at a Architecture firm – I sit at my desk take my surface out flip the kickstand out put my keyboard down. And that’s it. On my bus ride home I can put this thing on my lap and type away! Although I wish the kickstand was adjustable!

Battery life – I own a lot of tablets. I have an IPAD, Playbook, HP Slate 2, HP Web OS tablet, Kindle Fire Rooted, Xoom 2 etc….. (You get the idea). The problem with most of the tablets(Except IPAD), when Not using them the battery is some how dead.  Never made sense to me. I would go about 2 – 3 days without using the Playbook. When I grab it to use while on the bus to my surprise the device is dead. This never made sense. I’m happy to say with the Surface it is not the case. Battery life will last you the whole day and then some under heavy use.

There’s more but theses Pro’s stand out the most.

Video Playback – it played everything I threw at it (I threw at it) it played back flawless.

Cons:

Bluetooth – I own a pair of Dr. Dre beat’s Bluetooth headphones. On my commute to work I would like to listen to some music. I’ve added about 100 songs and even created a playlist from the surface. A positive is Microsoft has made it easy for users to add devices. Simply swipe from the left side of the device – from right to left. There you will be presented with the charms menu. From there simply go into Settings then PC settings. Find the Devices  option. From there you can add any or(Supported) Bluetooth device printer etc. So of course I paired my headphones with the surface before I left the house. To my surprise when I went to play a song – the music was coming from the speakers instead of the headphones. After minutes of tinkering with the settings it turns out I have to go into my sound playback options and make my head phone’s the default device. What’s worse I have to do that every time I want to use my headphones. Very Annoying Microsoft!

Music Player – Hmm not sure – The music player works for the most part just takes awhile to actually play a song. Not sure why it’s the case.. Nothing a software update cant fix.

More Coming Soon.