The Experience of Developing a Mobile Game Navigation Application for the Windows 10 Mobile Operating System

Abstract

The development of mobile applications is one of the fastest improving and most important directions of the IT industry. Windows 10 Mobile is a relatively new operating system (OS), so the development of mobile applications for Windows is very prospective. The authors of the article aim to develop a mobile game application using the mobile phone navigational capabilities for getting the information about the location of state institutions, educational institutions, shops, cafes, restaurants and entertainment establishments in the city of Melitopol, as well as about the location of audiences of Melitopol Bohdan Khmelnytsky State Pedagogical University. A number of tasks are solved to develop a mobile game navigation application. Firstly, in order to study the experience of developing such programs, the analysis of existing navigation programs for the Windows 10 Mobile operating system, namely gMaps, Navitel, CityGuide, Latte Locator, is performed. Mobile application requirements for Windows 10 Mobile are analyzed. It is determined that the basic requirement for Windows 10 Mobile application is compliance of its interface to the standards of Universal Windows Platform (UWP). In addition, advanced requirements for the developing of the Windows 10 Mobile multimedia game application are formulated, such as license cleanliness, freeware, performance, intuitive interface, ergonomics, interactivity, and compliance with the universal Windows platform. Secondly, the selection of content for the publication in the program (city maps, university schemes, information about institutions and enterprises of the city, information about pedagogical university audiences) is carried out. Thirdly, the tools for developing a mobile application are chosen, in particular, Visual Studio 2017 and SDK for Windows 10. The development of a multimedia game application for the Windows 10 Mobile operating system was carried out on the Xamarin platform. As a result, the mobile game navigation application is designed. It consists of two parts: "The City Map" and "The Map of the University". The first contains the information about the location of city institutions and enterprises. The second includes the information about the audiences of Melitopol Bohdan Khmelnytsky State Pedagogical University. The article presents the stages and results of developing a mobile gaming navigation application.