Windows 8 apps event logs

While porting a rather large native application to Window 8 (Windows Store application) I encountered some startup problems. Errors like the following appeared:

—————————
Microsoft Visual Studio
—————————
Unable to activate Windows Store app ‘bf60ce1b-2569-4c4c-b319-0b3a2c9c1374_7qc4g378g6z3m!App’. The XXXXX.exe process started, but the activation request failed with error ‘The app didn’t start’.

The linked help page points to the event log located at:

Application and Services Log\Microsoft\Windows\Immersive-Shell folder.

However, there is no log at this place. The general application log then points to:

Activation of app 716190BC-25B0-45AB-A34E-4174A7ACEA5F_7qc4g378g6z3m!App failed with error: The app didn’t start. See the Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational log for additional information.

This log is also a bit difficult to find, it’s located below the “Apps” folder:

In the end the problems were caused by external dlls which were not build correctly.

C++ and Beyond 2011: Herb Sutter – Why C++?

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/C-and-Beyond-2011-Herb-Sutter-Why-C/player?w=512&h=288

Herb Sutter about C++, great keynote.

ActionLink with Image in ASP.NET MVC 2

As far as I know, this is one of the simplest ways to insert an ActionLink into your ASP.NET MVC 2 View with an image instead of text:

<a href="<%: Url.Action("Detail", new  { param1 = "blah" } )  %>">
  <img src="../../Content/images/magnifier.png" />
</a>

Any simpler solutions?

XNA Gaming Nights

Am vergangenen Donnerstag, sowie an dem davor war ich Vortragender auf zwei wunderbaren Microsoft Student Partners Veranstaltungen, naemlich auf zwei XNA Gaming Nights. Die erste war an der Uni in Bonn und die zweite an der Fachhochschule in St. Augustin. Das Format beginnt am fruehen Abend mit einem Vortrag/Workshop Teil, der die Grundlagen fuer ein 2D Spiel mit dem XNA Framework erklaert, also Texturen laden, Sprites anzeigen, Eingabegeraete abfragen, Sounds abspielen. Danach ist dann freies Programmieren angesagt, wobei die besten Spiele am Ende (1:00-2:00) praemiert werden.

Obwohl ich jeweils nur die absoluten Grundlagen erklaert habe und die Teilnehmer teilweise noch nichtmal Erfahrung mit C# hatten, sind bei beiden Terminen wirklich coole Spiele entstanden.

 

Abschliessend ist hier noch eine fruehe Version meiner Folien:

Ein PDF mit den fertigen und fehlerbereinigten Folien gibt es in den naechsten Tagen unter Downloads.

Insgesamt war das Feedback sehr positiv, alle Teilnehmer waren beeindruckt wie schnell und unkompliziert man mit XNA Spiele entwickeln kann. In der Zukunft wollen wir auf jedenfall noch mehr solcher Veranstaltungen anbieten und das ganze eventuell auch ausdehnen. Momentan schwebt mir ein laengerer Workshop-Teil (1-2 Tage) mit abschliessender Gruppenbildung/Ideenfindung und einer Preisverleihung bei Bier/Cola ein paar Tage spaeter vor.. Mal gucken, wie das endgueltige Konzept dann aussehen wird.

Required Reading: What Should We Teach New Software Developers

Go, read it: http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/1/55760-what-should-we-teach-new-software-developers-why/fulltext

H.E.L.D. Alpha 2

A few years ago, a small german amateur game development group called Elitepigs started a remake of the classic C64 “HERO” game. This game was called “H.E.L.D.” (german translation of hero). Last time I contributed only the level editor while jrk coded the actual game. But unfortunately the game was never finished as the game’s sourcecode got lost, so the only remaining parts of the alpha version are a compiled binary and the graphic/sound assets.

To practice and improve my XNA skills I decided to remake the remake in XNA. With permission of the original creators, I started today with the intro video (Remember: When making a game, always start with the intro and the mainmenu!). Right now I have a rough version of the original intro video implemented as well as an extention to the XNA Content Pipeline in order to process the H.E.L.D. level files.

Intro Video:

Update

First Gameplay:

Second Update

Only few parts missing:

Concepts won’t be in C++0x

On Monday I heard a talk given by Michael Wong (IBM Canada) and he told us – and he also wrote in his blog – about the last C++0x Standard Committee meeting in Frankfurt, Germany:

At this meeting, Concepts, the major feature of C++ 0x, which enables constrained genericity, or template argument prototyping, has been removed from the C++0x draft.

So at this point another major feature of C++0x won’t be included in the final release of the standard (and the ETA was shifted to 2010/2011 instead of 2009/2010). While C++0x has many features I’m very anxious about (think lambda functions, the auto keyword, double angle brackets in template declarations, etc.) I really wanted concepts in the new standard.

Over the past year I have been – and I still do – writing a linear algebra template library in order to try out new methods to exploit parallelization in an object oriented environment (my bachelor’s thesis titled “Exploiting Object Orientation to Parallelize and Optimize C++ Applications” will include a more detailed explanation and evaluation). It would have been really great to be able to specify certain contraints for the generic types the way, for example, C# allows you to limit the usage of parameters in Generics. With the removal of concepts, the only way is to use the STL convention of specifying Concepts, which types must adhere to, but with no real representation in the code and especially no checking through the compiler.

However, even though I was looking forward to this feature I understand the reasons for not including them (see N2906 by Bjarne Stroustrup), C++ is already a very difficult language to teach to beginners. In my opinion the real value and great advantage of C++ lies in the various usage possibilities of template (see template expressions, or general template metaprogramming) and when explaining these concepts to new C++ programmers you nearly always make their head spin..

UPDATE

There are now two new blog posts by Herb Sutter and Bjarne Stroustrup himself about this topic:

Herb Sutter – Trip Report: Exit Concepts

and Bjarne Stroustrup The C++0x “Remove Concepts” decision