Microsoft Demos Three Platforms Running the Same Game

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "Microsoft's Eric Rudder, speaking at TechEd Middle East, showed off a game developed in Visual Studio as a singular project (with 90% shared code) that plays on Windows with a keyboard, a Windows Phone 7 Series prototype device with accelerometer and touch controls, and the Xbox 360 with the Xbox gamepad. Interestingly, not only is the development cross-platform friendly, but the game itself (a simple Indiana Jones platformer was demoed) saves its place and lets you resume from that spot on whichever platform you happen to pick up."

Re:90% shared code?

[sourcerror]

Actions script is a dynamic interpreted, and it significantly limits its performance. Writing cross platform c++ code is significantly harder.* (Although, if you use a compilers by the same vendor it makes things easier.)
I guess this demo was about to showcase their cross-platform gaming libraries. I guess 10% non-shared parts were responsible for the different user-interface controls.

* I guess it's more likely some c++ libraries with .net bindings.

Re:90% shared code?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever played a Flash game with a joystick or a gamepad? On any machine without a keyboard or mouse? How about a Flash game that makes use of 3D hardware?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

dom

Re:Not Cross Platform

[UnknowingFool]

Funny thing about the "cross-platform" comment is the employee is admitting something that MS has tried to obscure from consumers: Their different product lines are not using the same OS. Techies have long known that Windows Mobile isn't anything like Windows desktop or their Xbox 360 OS. Whereas their competitor Apple is using OS X variants for their computers, iPhone/iPod Touch, and now the iPad, MS has tried to leverage the "Windows" name brand by putting it on different software in name only.

They've got their head in the sand

[PaladinAlpha]

I can see where this is news for Microsoft, king of platform-specific APIs. For those of us accustomed to developing using, say, SDL and OpenGL, this isn't news at all, as a properly written program using said libraries will need literally zero changes between several platforms. The input bit is tricky, but 90% reuse is low, I would think.

Re:90% shared code?

[gbjbaanb]

Nothing is going to be native C++ on Windows anymore. Microsoft is only interested in using .NET, probably C#, for *everything*.

Its their new lock-in. Developers write in C# and find their code only works on Microsoft platforms. Then they look at their developer tools and features MS has packed in there and think "I don't know/not interested in writing code that works on alternative platforms", as Ballmer grins and rubs his hands together.

I know the 'real' game studios all use C++, so I understand where you're coming from, but this is MS. This is their new strategy for even more dominance.

Only 90% of the code in common?

[argent]

God almighty, their code base is more fragmented than I ever imagined.

Even at the worst of the "UNIX wars", if you had to rewrite as much as 10% of your code to get it to run on (say) AIX, SunOS, and System V that meant you'd done a really bad job of isolating the platform-specific parts of your code. If Microsoft can't keep their code bases in sync when they control all of them and they have incentive to do so, they're really slipping.

Re:Cross platform - maybe not so awesome

[pcolaman]

There are a good number of people I know (including a few riflemen in the Marine Corps) who would most definitely disagree with your first statement. It's more of a matter of the ability of the shooter, not the accuracy of the rifle. The US Military has some highly accurate rifles, when put in the hands of the right shooter.