How to export Windows Store apps

11

Stats

9,701 visits, 12,859 views

Tools

License

This tutorial is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Please refer to the license text if you wish to reuse, share or remix the content contained within this tutorial.

Published on 12 Oct, 2017. Last updated 23 Mar, 2021

You can publish your Construct games as Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, which can then be published to the Windows Store for Windows 10+. UWP apps are run using the Microsoft Edge browser engine. If your game works well in the Edge browser, it should also work well as a UWP app.

You can also use the Windows Store plugin in Construct to integrate with some extra Windows features.

UWP apps can also be run on Xbox One! For more information on that, see Using Xbox Live in UWP apps. This tutorial, however, will focus on exporting a desktop app for Windows 10.

Get Visual Studio

You'll need a Windows 10 system with Visual Studio 2017 installed. Visual Studio Community is a free download which you can find at this Visual Studio downloads page.

When installing, take note of the Windows 10 SDK version. You need to enter the same version when exporting from Construct.

Exporting from Construct

First, ensure your project has the right Name, Description and Author properties set, since these will be used in the exported app.

Export your project and choose the Windows Store (UWP) option. The first time you do this you have to enter the Windows 10 SDK version that you have installed - this should have appeared in Visual Studio's installer. (Construct remembers what you enter so you only need to set this up once.)

After the export finishes, extract the resulting zip file to a folder. The folder will contain a .sln (solution) file. Double-click on it to open it in Visual Studio. If you've not used Visual Studio before, it's a sophisticated tool for application development. However, you only need to use a small number of commands to configure and test your app.

Testing from Visual Studio

You should see a tree down the right called the Solution Explorer which lists your project. Double-click the package.appxmanifest file (highlighted below) to edit the app information, such as its orientation, required permissions, splash screen and icons.

Solution Explorer in Visual Studio

To run the app, click the green 'run' icon in the toolbar:

Running an app from Visual Studio

Submitting the app

To submit the app, you need to create an app on the Microsoft Developer Dashboard. Note you may need to pay a fee to open a new Microsoft Developer account.

From here on, you're using Microsoft's services, so it's best to refer to Microsoft's support. Happy publishing!

  • 9 Comments

  • Order by
Want to leave a comment? Login or Register an account!
  • Does this not work with Visual 2019? I open the project that generated C3 and it tells me that it is not compatible.

  • I get solution not supported. I am using VS for Mac so looks like the build number is 8.X.X and so on and C3 wont allow anything less than 10... I'm lost

  • You did not write more. What should we do after running Local Machine. It does not automatically create any files.

  • I have it working just fine, make sure you're using 2017 and have the correct SDK installed. Also make sure your build number is x.x.x.x -- it requires FOUR. I had 3, 1.2.3 and was causing issues. Working fairly straight forward in 2020.

  • I get 'solution not supported' as well. I've tried 3 different SDK versions.

  • Load more comments (1 replies)