Bringing Minecraft: Story Mode to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and Windows Store

Telltale Games has established itself as the microsoft closing stores master of the episodic adventure game with hits like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, Tales from the Microsoft edge virus Borderlands and, most recently, Minecraft: Story Mode. These storytelling-centered games, in which player choices have long-term effects Microsoft Support Phone Number, are playable on a wide variety of platforms Support.Microsoft.Com/Help, including Android, iOS, PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam.

In December of 2015, Telltale Games brought Minecraft: Story Mode to the Windows Store. To make this possible, Telltale Games ported their game engine to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). This port not Microsoft Support Phone Number only allows Minecraft: Story Mode to ultimately be played on a wide variety of Windows 10 Intel and ARM-based devices, but also clears the path for bringing Telltale’s large back-catalog of games to Windows. Today, we’ll look at their porting story and the choices they made along the way.

The Telltale narrative engine

 For those unfamiliar with Telltale Games, their adventures are compelling, playable stories; much like a playable movie or TV show. The narrative is tailored to choices that the player makes through both action and dialog, crafting a unique experience where they carve their own path through the core narrative Microsoft Support Phone Number. Their decisions affect the potential outcome of different situations Microsoft Support Phone Number – ranging from details as small as the microsoft closing stores  armor the Microsoft edge virus player character wears, to hugely significant repercussions such as the death of another character who might otherwise live. The player’s actions also affect how other characters Support.Microsoft.Com/Help relate to them throughout the game, allowing them to “own” these relationships and creating what is often a deeply emotional experience.

Another important aspect of Telltale’s games is their episodic nature. Like a season of a TV show, each game has an overarching season story arc, split into a number of separate downloadable episodes released several weeks apart. In this way, players have the opportunity to discuss the most recent story developments with friends (either in person or online), debate their choices, and generate theories microsoft closing stores and excitement for what’s coming next.

What’s particularly impressive about the way Telltale Games manages the release cycle for its titles is that each episode is released on multiple platforms at the same time. In the videogame industry, diehard fans don’t like having to wait when other players on other platforms are already able to play ahead. A simultaneous release strategy across different platforms is especially important for Telltale Microsoft Support Phone Number, as their titles are so tightly story-focused and many players Microsoft Support Phone Number are keen to avoid spoilers until they’ve had a chance to play each episode for themselves. So how does the studio manage to synchronize their fast release schedules across multiple devices and platforms?

According to Zac Litton, Telltale’s VP of Tech, they accomplish this by cleanly separating their game creation from their game engine: “We support, I think, up to 14 platforms right now. We have a single toolset we use to build content for all those platforms. Support.Microsoft.Com/Help So we’re kind of always in the state of porting. The studio builds the game with our toolset. And then that Microsoft edge virus same code base cross-compiles to every single platform we’re going to support.”

Thanks to their architecture, Telltale doesn’t need to port each and every episode of Minecraft: Story Mode over to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) in order to get it into the Windows Store. Instead, they only needed to port the Microsoft Support Phone Number Telltale engine once, and from there microsoft closing stores, all episodes will run correctly Microsoft Support Phone Number. Based on their code check-in history, Zac estimates that it took a couple of developers only about three months to go from an initial build to getting Minecraft: Story Mode shipping on the new platform.

Porting tactics versus porting strategy

Benn Herrera and Michael Schwartz, both senior software engineers who worked on the port, say that a large chunk of the initial time spent on the port didn’t even have to do with UWP, in particular, but with the story behind some of the engine’s past migrations. From a tactical perspective, much of the porting involved working with different versions of DirectX.

We started with a PC DirectX 9 engine version,” said Benn, “and the Xbox One DirectX 11 with Xbox extensions engine and sort of combined these build configurations to create a desktop DirectX 11 version—and then did the UWP version. So that first initial step is one not a lot of developers are going to have, because most of them Support.Microsoft.Com/Help are going to probably be starting from DX11. So if you skip that part, the transition to working with UWP was fairly straightforward.

Once the port of the Telltale engine Microsoft edge virus was completed Microsoft Support Phone Number, Telltale Games was in a good place to accomplish  microsoft closing stores several strategic goals, the most obvious Microsoft Support Phone Number of which was getting their games onto a wider variety of platforms through a variety of channels.

While Steam was their starting place, it lacked Microsoft Support Phone Number the sheer breadth of reach, particularly to casual and first-time gamers, that the Windows Store and UWP could offer. In short, the port to UWP was a tactical move to allow Support.Microsoft.Com/Help Telltale to find additional ways to get their games in front of a larger audience of players.