Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Think we forgot about LCARS Interface for Windows 8? Think again!

It may seem like Windows Phone has gotten all of the attention lately, and that may be somewhat true, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes for the Windows 8 app as well!

You may have heard that Windows 8.1 is coming in about a month. There are some pretty significant changes that are going into that update which will allow us to do a lot more with the app! That is in addition to all of the other stuff we are already working on.

A couple of the major features in progress are:

  • Transporter module
  • PDF viewer
  • More sounds and animations
  • Modules related to sensors (for tablet devices)
This has probably been the longest period this app has gone without an update, but it is coming, and once it starts there will probably be a few that come in succession. We are also still working on converting the whole Windows 8 app to use our new back end framework that all of the phone apps are using now. This means stripping out lots of unnecessary code and going for the most unified code possible with the Windows Phone app. As Windows RT and Windows Phone OS grow closer together, so will our apps! All of the code running the LCARS Simulator app is also being integrated into the Windows 8 app, so the Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Windows Phone 7 apps are all using the same code base now. What this means is faster bug fixes, and when we add functionality, it's coming to them all at once! We have too much planned for these apps to spend time doing the same thing 2 and 3 times to update them all.

We've already got all 3 Windows Phone 7/8 apps running lean and mean with the new framework...LCARS Interface for Windows 8 is also well on its way. We hope to complete this process in the next couple days. Testing to make sure everything still works takes a bit of time due to how much larger the Windows 8 app is! And it's going to get even bigger soon...

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