Adding trial mode and achievements to a Windows Phone 7 game? - windows-phone-7

How would I go about adding a trial version and achievements for my Windows Phone 7 game?
And how can I make the game upon finding it's a trial prompt the user to purchase the game and redirect him/her to the games page on the AppHub?

For a trial version you can use the IsTrial API call - information about it on MSDN - you call this once in your game and assign a TrialMode value in your game to it as checking this in a Game Loop is not recommended, then you can have logic in your game change depending on what this value is - the Marketplace process takes care of the process of Try & Buy once you mark your app during the submission process as having a Trial mode.
Achievements are only available for Xbox LIVE enabled games which requires a special publishing relationship with Microsoft, I'm not sure of the process but try the create.msdn.com App Hub website, there may be information there, this is not open for all developers, as even now there are very few Xbox LIVE enabled titles in Marketplace

Related

How to build a DIY Teams Panels device and integrate into existing DIY Teams Rooms Setup

I found some articles explaining quite nicely how to build and set up your own Teams Rooms device based on a simple computer with some peripherals.
I'd now like to take it one step further, and also build my own "Teams Panels" device.
"Teams Panels" is what Microsoft calls touch display devices, that are supposed to be hanging outside of the meeting room, showing info about the status of the room. More info here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/devices/teams-panels
By "Teams Panels" I do NOT mean the touch display device INSIDE the Meeting room, providing control elements for the current meeting. Those are part of the Teams Rooms DIY-setup itself.
While Microsoft does offer certified devices for Teams Panels, I can absolutely not see myself spending a 4-figure-amount for a 7 inch touch display, that does nothing but display the rooms status - for 10+ rooms. 200 bucks is the absolute max for this.
Has anyone ever attempted to set up a Teams Panels device, and could provide some guidance how to set this up?
Or, to be some more precise on the questions in my head:
In the Microsoft Doc they say, that Teams Panels devices log in with the same account as the Teams Rooms Resource account running on the Teams Rooms device. If it uses the same account, does it actually need to be a seperate physical device registered in Teams - or could it maybe be just another display attached to the actual Teams Rooms device, which is used to run the whole Teams Rooms setup.
If it DOES need to be a separate device, I understand it needs to be installed with the Teams Rooms software - but how do I assign the role of a Teams Panel to it, and how to assign it to a room?
Please note: This is to set up a test case. Wether it's feasible or not to roll this out into production will depend on how the test case works out.
Thanks for any input,
Marco

Can one sell notification area based application in Windows Store

Back when Windows Store started, it only supported distribution of sandbox-based applications. I could only write something that displays in the Metro-style window and didn't have much integration with a desktop at all.
I need to sell an application that mainly resides in notification area and reminds user of particular events. As of March 2015, does Windows Store supports selling this kind of applications through it?
You can list your app in the store. The listing will link to your own commerce site to actually sell the app. Desktop apps cannot be hosted in or sold directly from the store.
See Windows Store onboarding for desktop apps

Disappear internal purchases

There was such a problem. Users are upgraded to Windows Phone 8.1 and eventually they disappear internal purchases. This is repeateŠ² for not all users.
That is situation that a user makes a purchase on WP8 within an application and enjoys paid functionality. Updated on WP8.1 - internal purcahse disappears. I note that in the code there is a check in the store on the availability of purchase.
The same behavior if the user to reset the phone to factory settings - internal purchases disappear.
Nobody faced with such a problem?

Windows phone notification that stays till user checks

I am new to windows phone app dev. I want to know if there is any way to have a notification alive till the user checks it. I found that "toast notification" expires in 10 seconds irrespective of user checks it or not. And there is no way of finding out if a tile notification arrived or not. Is there any workaround? I want to have notifications that are similar to Android notifications which stay till user checks them.
Persistent on-screen notifications on Windows Phone are not possible, by intentional design. It's interesting to see how many users on Android disliked persistent notifications when applications started to interrupt and then disrupt the current foreground application experience.
The design philosophy is that they distract from the user experience and could be easily abused by applications.
The general Microsoft recommendation for the platform would be to use a combination of a notification, Live Tile (reference), and in application UI update.
In Android 4.3, the behavior was changed to highlight applications that were constantly running (interesting reference)
You can use "MessageBox.Show(String)".
Refer below for:
MSDN Doc
Example 1
Example 2

Windows Phone XNA Games Hangs on Resume when Guide is Visible on WP7.x

My Windows Phone XNA game calls Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput to get the user's name. While the Guide's input screen is shown, if the user presses the Home or Search (hardware) buttons, the game is deactivated as usual - but if the user then presses the Back (hardware) button, the game should resume but it doesn't. Instead it shows the "Resuming..." message until Windows Phone gives up trying to resume the game and kills the process.
Please note:
My app is failing Microsoft certification because of this problem - I really need to fix it!
This only happens in my game when the Guide input screen is shown - when it's not shown, the game
resumes properly after being deactivated.
This problem only occurs when the game is run on WP7.x (verified problem on WP7.5 and
WP7.8) - although the game seems to resume properly on WP8 devices.
I've created a blank XNA game project, called Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput and tested it using WP7.x devices, and this problem-behavior doesn't occur.
I've tested the game without enabling Music & my Trial License manager (they use timers) and it still does this.
Exact same behavior occurs in the emulator (resume-failure on WP7.x emulators, works fine on WP8
emulator)
I used threads to asynchronously download content during the loading screen - but they already completed and exited.
I don't believe other threads are running, although this seems like
it could be a thread-blocking issue.
Any other ideas on what could be blocking the game from resuming when the Guide.IsVisible or how to debug/resolve this problem?
The solution to this issue was simply to NOT use SuppressDraw when dealing with any operation that passes control outside of the app, e.g. Launchers, Choosers and the Guide.
Have you tried calling "Guide.EndShowKeyboardInput" in either the Deactivating or closing events?
So that the guide is closed before the app suspends, you do get 10 seconds to suspend so this might be worth looking into.
If you want the guide to re-show on resume, then in your state saving code just have a flag and open the guide if it's set.

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