Behold the inside story behind Carcassonne for Xbox Windows Phone

In the terminal week or so we've brought you interviews and announcements from High german developers Handy Games and Flare Games. Now we've made information technology a trilogy by speaking with Exozet Games, the studio who brought pop board game Carcassonne to Xbox Windows Phone last twelvemonth.

Matthias Hellmund, the Head of Mobile Development at Exozet, sat down with u.s.a. to discuss the development process of Carcassonne, its online multiplayer, and even the notorious grinding Achievements! Few game makers come prepared with equally many development stories. Head past the suspension to larn the full picture behind how Carcassonne arrived on Windows Phone.

The road from board game to Xbox Windows Phone

The physical Carcassonne board game was first published in 2000. In 2022, Exozet released their mobile adaptation for Blackberry, Coffee, and Android phones. The Windows Phone version began its earliest stages of development in early 2022 while Exozet worked to complete the Android version.

2011 was a happier time for Xbox Windows Telephone. Back then, Microsoft actually approached Exozet well-nigh developing a mobile game with the Xbox branding. The developer had already released a few Windows Phone apps for other publishers, and so they knew something well-nigh working with C# and Windows Phone 7. Exozet wanted to release Carcassonne on as many platforms as possible; hence they chose it as the game to port.

Evolution hurdles

Carcassonne's development was challenging for a number of reasons. For ane thing, Microsoft would denote and somewhen released the Mango (Windows Phone seven.five) update while Exozet worked on their game. This forced the game maker to flash and test various beta Mango builds along with their title, adding to the development fourth dimension.

In March 2022, some other product launched every bit Exozet toiled away on their game: depression-end Windows Telephone 7.5 Tango devices. These phones had just 256 MB of RAM instead of the 512 MB found in other Windows Phone 7 devices.

Naturally, the lower organization RAM meant that games and apps had less memory to piece of work with on these value-priced phones.  Because Carcassonne was so far along in development when Microsoft announced Tango, Exozet reluctantly abstained from reworking the game to run on 256 MB devices.

Xbox Live games don't simply release in one or two countries; they appear in a number of markets across the world. The extensive international nature of the release required Exozet to translate Carcassonne into more than languages than they had ever done earlier. The hardest part of the translation process was reworking the game's UI for Asian character sets (Chinese, Japanese, etc).

Paving the way for Online multiplayer

Finally, Carcassonne was 1 of the first Xbox Windows Phone seven games to support online multiplayer (Battleship beat it to release last summer). Considering nobody else had created online Xbox games on phone before, Exozet couldn't look to existing knowledge or lawmaking bases when creating their multiplayer mode.

The Partner.net test environment and the actual Live environment besides differed somewhat. The game experienced significant and frustrating online performance issues upon its release, which were nearly entirely out of Exozet'south control.

Xiii months afterward starting the projection, Carcassonne finally launched on Windows Phone in October 2022. Bank check out our total review to see how it measured up to expectations. And be sure to watch the video interview in a higher place to see Matthias'due south response to our review criticisms!

More board games in the future?

While there'due south no question that the developer's ability to test Carcassonne'south online mode earlier release was insufficient, Exozet still speaks fondly of the overall experience.  Microsoft responded to their communications quite promptly, oft providing highly technical feedback for the developer to use.

Windows Phone Carcassonne players might have noticed that the game supports downloadable expansions, simply none were ever released. Exozet really prepared at to the lowest degree one expansion, but Microsoft chose non to publish information technology. It'southward a shame – if Microsoft had connected funding Xbox Windows Telephone evolution, Exozet might have brought their adaptation of The Settlers of Catan lath game to Windows Phone also.

Carcassonne – Windows Telephone 7 and viii – 45 MB - $2.99 – Store Link

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/carcassonne-windows-phone-interview

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