Super-complete guide to publishing in Microsoft Store
Hi, Habr! I often have similar situations: I do something difficult and at some point an error comes out. I begin to look for a problem in, respectively, confused things, often doing what is not necessary. And so the problems are growing. And in the end it turns out that the problem was something simple, for example, the program needed to be run as an administrator. Am I the only one? In any case, below we share a super-complete guide to publishing an application in the Microsoft Store using the example of a game. Drop under the cat to save your time!
I give the word to the author.
')
Once I got the idea to create a mini-game. No claims on "AAA and that the graphics as in real life." I, inspired by minimalism and low poly, as well as the difficulty of passing like old games, wanted to create a small game. The result was a game in which you need to quickly make decisions, and the whole environment is working against the player - speed, camera placement and terrain. As you probably already understood, in addition to the development itself, we had to face other difficulties, for example, to choose a site to host the game. I will try to describe how I came to the choice of Microsoft Store.
Since I chose the PC as my target platform, and decided to make the first game completely free (and decided not to make any profit from it), I needed a platform with the best ratio of the following parameters for placement: price + convenience + audience + accessibility . If you don’t go into details, I checked a dozen sites with this characteristic (both well-known and not so), and also reviewed several indie publishers (who distributed such mini-games as mine, rather than larger indie projects) , after which he came to the conclusion that Microsoft Store is most suitable for me.
Registration price is 626 rubles (for individual developers. Companies need to pay 3000 rubles. By the way, as far as I know, MS still has free ways to get developer rights - for example, students can get a developer account for free) and a large audience (Microsoft Store is “ out of the box ”, starting with Windows 8 and, judging by various data, the service is not deprived of popularity, so stereotypes can be forgotten) are very attractive. Especially for a newbie. As for convenience, it is subjective, but everything suits me.
Let's get to the point - this article will be interesting to those who want to release their game in the Microsoft Store or just to see "how it's done." In this article I will try in detail, step by step, to highlight the guide to publishing, as well as to focus on points with which you need to be very careful, since errors occur most often here.
1. Decide on the name of the project and reserve it (if you have not reserved it before).
To reserve a product name, go to the development center dashboard. You should automatically go to the "Overview" page. If for some reason this did not happen, then you should use the side menu.
On the "Overview" page, you must click on the "Create a new application" button.
After that, you will be prompted to enter the name of the application, as well as check its availability and make a reservation.
If successful, you will see a green check mark:
But if the name is not available (for example, reserved by someone), then when checking or trying to reserve you will see the following:
If the reservation is successful, you will be taken to the application overview page:
2. Fill in the assembly and game information. To do this, go to File -> Build Settings.
In the window that opens, you need to add scenes for the assembly (to do this, use Add Open Scenes or simply drag them from Assets to the Scenes In Build window), then change the platform to Windows Store (select Windows Store in the Platform list, then click Switch Platform), view the build parameters - SDK, Target device, UWP Build Type, etc., then, either leave it as it is, or change them if necessary. When you're done with this, click the Player Settings button.
Next will open the Player Settings , in which you need to fill out information about the company and the game.
When you're done with Player Settings, go back to the build window (File -> Build Settings) and feel free to click Build , choose a folder for the build and wait for the build to complete.
Once you have built a project in Unity, you should see something like this in the build folder:
Now you need to open the file with the .sln extension (also known as Microsoft Visual Studio Solution) in Visual Studio.
After the file is opened, you should pay attention to “Solution Configuration” and “Solution Explorer”.
In the configuration, you must set the Master :
And in the browser you should reproduce the following procedure: PCM on (in my case) New Unity Project (Universal Windows) -> Store -> Create application packages :
Either: Project -> Store -> Create application packages :
Then the following window should appear:
It is necessary to leave everything as it is (i.e. click on “Yes”) and move on by clicking “Next”.
After that, you will be prompted to select or reserve the name of the application. If it is already reserved for you, select it and click “Next”:
If not, just enter the name in the appropriate window and click "Reserve":
After that, the list will be automatically updated, and you will see the name of your application there.
Next you will be offered a choice of settings. The main thing is to make sure once again that each configuration is Master, and everything else can be left as is and click "Create". Assembly may take some time, so do not worry.
Next you need to make a choice. Either run the certification kit and find out if your game will pass through the Microsoft Store. Or try to send it immediately to the Microsoft Store. But the choice here is relative, because if your game cannot be certified, then it will not be allowed to be published. The difference is only in time. You can either spend a few minutes on certification, or up to three days (this is how long the product publishing process takes with all the checks).
If you nevertheless decided to launch the certification kit, after a couple of seconds you will see the following window:
It should just click "Next", after which the certification process will begin. As soon as the check is completed, you will see a summary. If everything goes well, then there will be a beautiful green inscription "Passed": uh
If you see “Not passed”, then do not worry - it happens. Just click "Click here to view the results" and find the points with which difficulties arose, then either solve the problems on your own, or use the help in the thematic communities.
For example, in this case, the check failed because I chose Release instead of the Master, which prevented the API from being tested.
When the certification set completes the verification, go to the APPXUPLOAD file.
This file must be sent to the store. To do this, we need to go to the Development Center on the "Overview" page and click "Start sending":
After this, the sending page will open and you will need to click " Start sending " again.
Formed "Send 1". To be sent to the store, it is necessary to make the first 5 points “Completed”.
In order not to stretch the article at all, I will describe some points briefly:
" Pricing and Availability " is basically a choice of markets (countries in which the game is available), prices, publication dates and the creation of a trial version (example: a free trial version with a validity period).
" Properties " - the category and subcategory of the game, system requirements, parameters and so on.
" Age categories " - a small test form of the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) to determine the age category of the game. Also, if the game you want to publish in the Microsoft Store has already been published on another site and received the International Age Rating Coalition, then you can use the import estimates. The test itself is a few questions, which comes down to choosing "Yes" or "No".
After passing the test, you will be presented with the assessment (ESRB, PEGI, PCBP and others).
" Packages " - in this section, it's time to recall the prepared APPXUPLOAD file and download it.
At the end of the download, available platforms will be presented on the same page. Since I decided to release the project only on a Windows 10 PC, I removed the extra checkboxes:
" Shop Descriptions " - this will have to tinker a bit. I will quote additional Information in this section:
“Provide text and images that customers will see in the Store description in each supported language. You can enter this information separately or export a CSV file with all the description data, edit it, and import it to enter all new information at one time . ”
In my first publication, I decided to make a description via a CSV file. In this article I will describe the way easier, but slightly boring. If someone also wants to do through a CSV file, then read this article.
Click on " Add / Remove Languages ".
After that click on " Manage additional languages ."
And choose the languages ​​of interest to describe.
After that, click " Save " and return to the "Send 1" page. In the “Store Descriptions” section, in my case, two languages ​​are visible — English, which the system automatically determined as early as at the package loading stage, and also Russian, which I chose myself. At the end of the description, the mark “Not completed” will change to “Completed”:
To add a description, click on the selected language and fill in all the information on the page (in case of Russian in Russian, English in English, etc.)
In the end, you should get something like this:
" Certification Note " - information for testers to help testers use and understand the shipment. For example, the name and password for a test account, actions to access hidden or blocked functions, and so on. This item is optional and not mandatory.
Now it remains only to click on " Send to the Store ", after which the hours for publication will begin.
At the end of the " Certification Process " status in the application overview
change to a nice " Store ", which will mean that your posting is finally over!
In the future, if you want to change something in your game, you will just have to click " Refresh " opposite to sending in the app review.
In conclusion, I would like to wish all the developers to make good games and not be afraid to try experimenting and discover new horizons!
Lev Bulanov is a student at Tchaikovsky Industrial College and Udmurt State University, Microsoft Student Partner, C # developer, CF2.5 developer, Unity developer, computer operator (5th grade). The main area of ​​interest is the development of mini-games, utilities and MR-projects.
I give the word to the author.
')
Introduction
Once I got the idea to create a mini-game. No claims on "AAA and that the graphics as in real life." I, inspired by minimalism and low poly, as well as the difficulty of passing like old games, wanted to create a small game. The result was a game in which you need to quickly make decisions, and the whole environment is working against the player - speed, camera placement and terrain. As you probably already understood, in addition to the development itself, we had to face other difficulties, for example, to choose a site to host the game. I will try to describe how I came to the choice of Microsoft Store.
Since I chose the PC as my target platform, and decided to make the first game completely free (and decided not to make any profit from it), I needed a platform with the best ratio of the following parameters for placement: price + convenience + audience + accessibility . If you don’t go into details, I checked a dozen sites with this characteristic (both well-known and not so), and also reviewed several indie publishers (who distributed such mini-games as mine, rather than larger indie projects) , after which he came to the conclusion that Microsoft Store is most suitable for me.
Registration price is 626 rubles (for individual developers. Companies need to pay 3000 rubles. By the way, as far as I know, MS still has free ways to get developer rights - for example, students can get a developer account for free) and a large audience (Microsoft Store is “ out of the box ”, starting with Windows 8 and, judging by various data, the service is not deprived of popularity, so stereotypes can be forgotten) are very attractive. Especially for a newbie. As for convenience, it is subjective, but everything suits me.
Let's get to the point - this article will be interesting to those who want to release their game in the Microsoft Store or just to see "how it's done." In this article I will try in detail, step by step, to highlight the guide to publishing, as well as to focus on points with which you need to be very careful, since errors occur most often here.
Tools, materials and more:
- Unity Personal 5.6.1f1
- Visual Studio Community 2015
- UWP SDK Universal 10 (10.0.10240.0)
- Ready project made in Unity
- Account with developer rights in the "Development Center for Windows"
- Reserved product name in the development center (This can be done during the publication. I will describe. But if you did in advance, you can earn yourself 10 points. In the future, these points will not be needed)
- I recommend also when working with the included developer mode in Windows 10, which will allow the use of additional functions (Options -> Update and Security -> For Developers)
Beginning of work
Stage 0. The main points before the publication process.
1. Decide on the name of the project and reserve it (if you have not reserved it before).
To reserve a product name, go to the development center dashboard. You should automatically go to the "Overview" page. If for some reason this did not happen, then you should use the side menu.
On the "Overview" page, you must click on the "Create a new application" button.
After that, you will be prompted to enter the name of the application, as well as check its availability and make a reservation.
If successful, you will see a green check mark:
But if the name is not available (for example, reserved by someone), then when checking or trying to reserve you will see the following:
If the reservation is successful, you will be taken to the application overview page:
2. Fill in the assembly and game information. To do this, go to File -> Build Settings.
In the window that opens, you need to add scenes for the assembly (to do this, use Add Open Scenes or simply drag them from Assets to the Scenes In Build window), then change the platform to Windows Store (select Windows Store in the Platform list, then click Switch Platform), view the build parameters - SDK, Target device, UWP Build Type, etc., then, either leave it as it is, or change them if necessary. When you're done with this, click the Player Settings button.
Next will open the Player Settings , in which you need to fill out information about the company and the game.
Note
At the time of this writing, there were restrictions on the weight of icons at 204,800 bytes. So if your icons exceed this size, then while creating application packages in Visual Studio, expect something like this:
When you're done with Player Settings, go back to the build window (File -> Build Settings) and feel free to click Build , choose a folder for the build and wait for the build to complete.
Stage 1. Building and certification in Visual Studio
Once you have built a project in Unity, you should see something like this in the build folder:
Now you need to open the file with the .sln extension (also known as Microsoft Visual Studio Solution) in Visual Studio.
After the file is opened, you should pay attention to “Solution Configuration” and “Solution Explorer”.
In the configuration, you must set the Master :
And in the browser you should reproduce the following procedure: PCM on (in my case) New Unity Project (Universal Windows) -> Store -> Create application packages :
Either: Project -> Store -> Create application packages :
Then the following window should appear:
It is necessary to leave everything as it is (i.e. click on “Yes”) and move on by clicking “Next”.
After that, you will be prompted to select or reserve the name of the application. If it is already reserved for you, select it and click “Next”:
If not, just enter the name in the appropriate window and click "Reserve":
After that, the list will be automatically updated, and you will see the name of your application there.
Next you will be offered a choice of settings. The main thing is to make sure once again that each configuration is Master, and everything else can be left as is and click "Create". Assembly may take some time, so do not worry.
Next you need to make a choice. Either run the certification kit and find out if your game will pass through the Microsoft Store. Or try to send it immediately to the Microsoft Store. But the choice here is relative, because if your game cannot be certified, then it will not be allowed to be published. The difference is only in time. You can either spend a few minutes on certification, or up to three days (this is how long the product publishing process takes with all the checks).
If you nevertheless decided to launch the certification kit, after a couple of seconds you will see the following window:
It should just click "Next", after which the certification process will begin. As soon as the check is completed, you will see a summary. If everything goes well, then there will be a beautiful green inscription "Passed": uh
If you see “Not passed”, then do not worry - it happens. Just click "Click here to view the results" and find the points with which difficulties arose, then either solve the problems on your own, or use the help in the thematic communities.
For example, in this case, the check failed because I chose Release instead of the Master, which prevented the API from being tested.
Stage 2. Shop
When the certification set completes the verification, go to the APPXUPLOAD file.
This file must be sent to the store. To do this, we need to go to the Development Center on the "Overview" page and click "Start sending":
After this, the sending page will open and you will need to click " Start sending " again.
Formed "Send 1". To be sent to the store, it is necessary to make the first 5 points “Completed”.
In order not to stretch the article at all, I will describe some points briefly:
" Pricing and Availability " is basically a choice of markets (countries in which the game is available), prices, publication dates and the creation of a trial version (example: a free trial version with a validity period).
" Properties " - the category and subcategory of the game, system requirements, parameters and so on.
" Age categories " - a small test form of the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) to determine the age category of the game. Also, if the game you want to publish in the Microsoft Store has already been published on another site and received the International Age Rating Coalition, then you can use the import estimates. The test itself is a few questions, which comes down to choosing "Yes" or "No".
After passing the test, you will be presented with the assessment (ESRB, PEGI, PCBP and others).
" Packages " - in this section, it's time to recall the prepared APPXUPLOAD file and download it.
At the end of the download, available platforms will be presented on the same page. Since I decided to release the project only on a Windows 10 PC, I removed the extra checkboxes:
" Shop Descriptions " - this will have to tinker a bit. I will quote additional Information in this section:
“Provide text and images that customers will see in the Store description in each supported language. You can enter this information separately or export a CSV file with all the description data, edit it, and import it to enter all new information at one time . ”
In my first publication, I decided to make a description via a CSV file. In this article I will describe the way easier, but slightly boring. If someone also wants to do through a CSV file, then read this article.
Click on " Add / Remove Languages ".
After that click on " Manage additional languages ."
And choose the languages ​​of interest to describe.
After that, click " Save " and return to the "Send 1" page. In the “Store Descriptions” section, in my case, two languages ​​are visible — English, which the system automatically determined as early as at the package loading stage, and also Russian, which I chose myself. At the end of the description, the mark “Not completed” will change to “Completed”:
To add a description, click on the selected language and fill in all the information on the page (in case of Russian in Russian, English in English, etc.)
In the end, you should get something like this:
" Certification Note " - information for testers to help testers use and understand the shipment. For example, the name and password for a test account, actions to access hidden or blocked functions, and so on. This item is optional and not mandatory.
Now it remains only to click on " Send to the Store ", after which the hours for publication will begin.
At the end of the " Certification Process " status in the application overview
change to a nice " Store ", which will mean that your posting is finally over!
In the future, if you want to change something in your game, you will just have to click " Refresh " opposite to sending in the app review.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to wish all the developers to make good games and not be afraid to try experimenting and discover new horizons!
about the author
Lev Bulanov is a student at Tchaikovsky Industrial College and Udmurt State University, Microsoft Student Partner, C # developer, CF2.5 developer, Unity developer, computer operator (5th grade). The main area of ​​interest is the development of mini-games, utilities and MR-projects.Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/346992/
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