I'm about to have rant, so feel free to leave now.
We recently bought an Asus Transformer T100 as a cheap way of testing company software on Windows 8.1. It's a cute little thing with a 10.1 screen you can pull out of the docking station and use as a tablet. Cute as in a puppy - sweet, pretty to look at, and not much use.
I put the AppGameKit installer on a pen drive. I tested the installer on the host W7 machine running off the pen drive and it worked fine, from which most of us would reasonably conclude that the file integrity was fine. I put the pen drive in the T100's docking USB port, and - wow - it allowed me to browse it. Looking good. I ran the exe, or tried to, but it said the file was corrupt and wouldn't run it. I rebooted and tried again. Same result.
I fired up Chrome on the T100 and navigated to TGC. I was the assailed by adds all over the right-hand side of the screen, and they wouldn't go away. I hate pop-adds. I hate adds. I would ban adds. They are the minions of Satan sent to drive sane people mad. Let's face it - if your software is poo, give it away; if it's worth buying, sell it. Do not force me to watch ludicrous pop-ups advertising things I would never want even if I were last survivor of the human race. It was impossible to see the download section for AppGameKit on the Products section.
Fortunately, I installed AddBlock, which, after a few tweaks, exterminated the excreta from the right of the screen, and I was then able to download the latest AppGameKit installer. I tried to run it straight out of the download tab at the bottom left of Chrome. Oh the joy of watching a spinning "busy" pointer for ten minutes.
I rebooted - by which I mean I held the power-button for a while, which appears to be the logical thing to do on most tablets. Then I ran the installer out of the Downloads folder. It ran!!! Bliss. I noticed that it wanted to install into Program Files, which is BAD NEWS unless the software is smart about writable storage, which AppGameKit isn't. It installed - it ran - I loaded SmackIt - it compiled, but when it ran it said it could not find xAudio, then proceeded to play the music and present a blank white screen. Explain that, please! Why is xAudio needed? The Windows subsystem will handle MP3 and WAV quite happily. Why introduce a new sub-unit that plainly needs an installation it's not getting?
My conclusions are that:
* Windows 8.1 is crap
* People using adds should be burnt at the stake
* AppGameKit is showing signs of being sloppy and untested at base
* Out of the box, AppGameKit will install and run on W8.1 but what it produces will not, even on Windows
* I am not going even to attempt to do an Android build on W8.1 - the whole idea of installing the NDK etc fills me with dread.
Looking on the bright side - a week tomorrow I'll be on Kerkira (Corfu) eating moussaka and drinking local wine. I will not be taking the W8.1 cute puppy - I'll take a 17" laptop to deal with any urgent company issues - nor will I take any of the pile of company Android tablets, or iPads.
I know the young people love their tablets. I think they're s***.
Yammas, Γεώργιο - I will toast you from the Westerly limits of Greece across the mountains to the East.
-- Jim - When is there going to be a release?
