Microsoft surface and transcendence

[Blitz]

I'm sure all of you have heard about Microsoft surface and how windows 8 will run on arm devices and tablets.

Not to mention that the desktop windows 8 and the tablet windows 8 are closer than ever.

I also remember that George was talking about porting transcendence to mobile devices. The only problem that porting to either android or iOS would require an extensive rewrite of the code. Also there's the matter of those two eco systems being saturated and it being hard to stand out.

With this new windows 8, those two problems are far smaller. Trans will have to he touch optimized but most of the code can remain the same??? Also the windows phone market is far less saturated than android or iOS. This makes me think that this is an excellent opportunity to gain some popularity. If it all works out well, then it becomes easier to port to android or iOS and make that all important splash in the beginning...

One of the issues I can think of is translating the transdata system into the mobile context. This could be easier on android than on iOS because of how the oses are laid out, but I'm really not sure how windows 8 for tablets is in that regard...

[Neuromancer]

I absolutely agree that supporting WinRT would be great. I'm looking forward to playing with the new Surface myself and while I'm probably going to be picking up an x86 win8 tablet if I get a tablet at all I'd say that WinRT is definitely worth supporting. If you could get into the marketplace early it could end up being quite a nice coup.

The transcendence controls are simple enough that a tablet touch interface could be done with the left thumb controlling movement and the right thumb firing weapons and docking. Movement might even be better with a touch based interface now that I think about it.

As for WP7.5 and WP8, I'm not sure how well transcendence would work there but it would be worthwhile to try. I have a Dell Venue Pro WP7 phone, and it does work very well for RPGs and such. You just might have to move around some of the UI elements like the shield and armour display to make way for touch controls.

[matix]

I agree that having Trans in the Windows tablet marketplace would be excellent for the game and community. The tablets would also pave way for trans on android and iOS

[Ttech]

I agree that having Trans in the Windows tablet marketplace would be excellent for the game and community. The tablets would also pave way for trans on android and iOS

Well, Windows RT (Metro et all) is significantly different from Android and iOS,

The problem with touch interfaces with a game such as transcendence is you have move forward and backward but also have inertia and directions to move in. So having touch controls similar to unreal mobile's design would or could work, however interaction with other elements such as docking would require a bit of work. Though it certainly seems possible, though it would need to be written in HTML/JS+microsoft special

Personally though after the stunt Microsoft pulled with metro and rt, I play to stay far away.

[Neuromancer]

I agree that having Trans in the Windows tablet marketplace would be excellent for the game and community. The tablets would also pave way for trans on android and iOS

Well, Windows RT (Metro et all) is significantly different from Android and iOS,

The problem with touch interfaces with a game such as transcendence is you have move forward and backward but also have inertia and directions to move in. So having touch controls similar to unreal mobile's design would or could work, however interaction with other elements such as docking would require a bit of work. Though it certainly seems possible, though it would need to be written in HTML/JS+microsoft special

Personally though after the stunt Microsoft pulled with metro and rt, I play to stay far away.

Turning and acceleration could be handled with an analog stick analogue for the left thumb like the Assassin's Creed touch games use. You could even have gradations between zero and full thrust that way which might be nice for fine scale manoeuvres. You could then have a large main weapon firing touch area with a smaller missile firing touch area for the right thumb, with buttons for docking, powers, and usable items higher up the right or left side of the screen. The context menus might have to be larger for touch interaction, but that should be easy enough. It won't be as fast as hitting I->A for instance, but it should still be pretty efficient. Maybe at some point an upper or lower dock menu could be implemented where players could drag common commands, like Large Armour Patch, Sustain, Jumpdrive, etc. I'm not going to deny that it would take a fair bit of work, but I think it would end up being pretty nice.

What stunt did Microsoft pull with metro and RT? I didn't hear about that.