How to access hardware using Gamesalad tool? - android-hardware

I'm learning on GameSalad tool and I'm wondering if I can access the hardware using this tool, for example:- can I turn on the flash light in the back of my mobile phone?

Gamesalad is a closed platform. You can do just what the developers implemented.
This platform is for games so I don't think there is any way to control hardware especially the Flashlight.
All actions that could be preformed are suppose to be under Library -> Behaviors, but those are related to the game engine itself (in-app purchase, share with twitter and game flow control).

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How to create Augmented Reality Web app using Unity & Vuforia?

I am developing an Augmented Reality app to be integrated into a website using Unity.I need to take output in WebGL. I am using Vuforia to create AR experience. Since Vuforia is not supported with WebGL, i am not able to build. Please suggest an alternate method or how to do Augmented reality in Unity for Web. Is there any alternative to Vuforia?
The good news is yes, you definitely can build an AR experience on the web!
The bad news is that none of the current libraries built for doing so offer a Unity plugin.. Meaning you'll either have to create a wrapper, do some complicated RPC call to talk to the JS library via Unity, or completely scrap Unity altogether and use only the library. To my knowledge, the best browser-based AR library is AR.js. I know this isn't the answer you were hoping for, but I hope you're able to achieve your goals. Good luck!
This is probably a bit late in the thread. But I'd like to add an option which might help. You can definitely build your AR app in web using WebGL as output. There is easy way to integrate it with a webiste too. SLAM based AR like Google ARCore is a great example to do it.
There are two options:
You can build such an app from scratch which will obviously take more time. Because apart from development, setting up hosting infrastructure is a challenge.
Otherwise, if you want to scale such AR web app development with low or no code and cloud ready hosting, you can use a SaaS platform called Marvin XR.
You can login and try it out for FREE: https://www.marvinxr.com:8443
Hope this helps the other folks who stumble upon this thread.

Multiplayer game using unity free version for Android

I am going to start my first game on unity which is a real time multiplayer game for android. I want to ask few things.
Do I need to buy pro version or any license for the whole process (from development to submission to play store, I know that splash screen can not be change). My game is almost like 8 pool ball with all multiplayer features (create user profile, play with friends, play with Facebook friends, challenge friends, leader board filters etc etc) like in 8 pool ball. I am planning of using Photon for multiplayer.
I also need the Web and Facebook version as well in future.
I also see few pages about this but I am still confuse.
Thanks in advance.
The Unity3D personal version does NOT support C# sockets on mobile, so no 3rd party realtime plugin, neither Photon nor any other, will work on Android (or on iOS) with the personal version of Unity3D, but they all require Unity3D pro.
There is only one exception to this: PUN+ works even with Unity3D Personal on Android and iOS, because it applies a fallback to use C++ sockets through a native plugin on platforms, on which C# sockets are not available in Unity3D Personal. However, this is only true for PUN+ (Photon Unity Networking Plus), not for PUN (Photon Unity Networking).
Unity in Version 5 has no engine-specific pro-Features anymore. So basically free = pro (besides some services and splash screens). So you can go with Unity 5 free and e.g. Photon.
Regardings costs: It could be that you need some sort of webservice for your game (managing profiles etc.) so the webserver could produce some costs. But for getting started there are many free services out there like https://www.heroku.com/
Furthermore you will need to pay the 25$ fee for Google Play to publish the game.

Creating a single SmartTV app for multiple platforms?

I want to develop a SmartTV application for the GoogleTV platform and i've been browsing trough the GoogleTV Guidelines (https://developers.google.com/tv/android/).
However, i don't want GoogleTV to be my only platform. I also want the same app to work on devices like Samsung SmartTV and/or LG SmartTV.
But do the guidelines from Google conflict with Samsung guidelines and does the code of my application need a lot of rework to work on other devices?
I'm editing my answer. I just checked the Samsung website and, I'm happy to say, they threw out all the junk.
They use to have a number of different, non-interchangeable, coding languages. And none of them really worked on the TV's of the other manufacturers either. This is most likely the reason why few applications were ever developed for those platforms.
Now they are supporting basic javascript. So, you have the opportunity to build yourself a TV web page and load it up as an application on Samsung and potentially run it from the Google-TV browser. However, I would verify whether your application requires specific HTML5 features (such as offline support) that may not be implemented in the Android-like browser version running on Google-TV. Having said that, you can always build an app that loads locally on Samsung and runs from a remote server on Google-TV?
... for some historical perspective on how we go to where we're at you can continue reading....
The implication of each manufacturer having their own unique OS creating developer fragmentation was probably predictable to them but they were likely working in a panic. After they became aware of the Apple TV when the first patents were make public in 2008 they understood the longer term impact if Apple provided hundred of thousand of applications worth of content and they had nothing to compete. So they got together and decided on a standard they would implement that would provide a non-fragmented solution allowing any app to run on the TV's of any supporting manufacturer. AKA: they got it right.
In 2009 a good number of them announced support for the Yahoo Connected TV standard. However, by 2010 the development framework, app store, etc that was promised had not materialized. This is likely when they all went in their own direction (although you can still buy Yahoo Connected TV sets from Samsung, Sony, LG, Vizio, and Panasonic today).
With the implementation of the Google-TV Market and the ability of developers to transition existing apps to Google-TV apps with only 20% or so of the effort of creating new (thus lowering the cost and supporting the business case for a TV version) that they have a solution that meets their original requirements.
Now, there's certainly going to be a little 'bitten once twice shy' coupled with revenue sharing discussions and perhaps the impact of Google being a hardware manufacturer (Motorola Mobility) but, at the end of the day, the inevitable is inevitable. They either take Google-TV or create their own, very close, must run existing applications, version of Android.
PS: I didn't look at the other manufacturers site.
For my understanding core components like the Player and Remote Control Management are platform specific.
You would need to use a configuration file and implements these components independently for each platform.
Alternatively you can use some cross platform SDK.
Searching on Google for "smart tv app development" I found out:
Joshfire Smart TV SDK
http://www.joshfire.com/products/
Works on Google TV and Samsung
But not on LG
Mautilus Smart TV SDK
http://www.mautilus.com/knowhow/smart-tv-application-development/
As written in their website it covers
LG Netcast 2012
Samsung 2012 / 2013 models.
I hope it can helps.
orangeejs is a new open source project aims to ease the pain of cross platform smart tv app development. The target platforms are latest model of samsung/lg/android/ios.
There is a framework developed by BBC and called TAL. It aims to help you with cross-platform development. All their Smart TV apps were developed using this library so take a look.
First of all if you consider to develop for many TV platforms see the:
https://developers.google.com/tv/web/lib/jquery/
It's jQuery library for Google TV, so you can develop application in HTML/JavaScript just like in Samsung and LG.
Of course there are the differences in key handling, video player, event handling so you will need to develop the framework which cover all this differences.
There are few open source frameworks out there but not mature enough to use it "out of the box".
for example: http://framework.joshfire.com/
You might want to take a look at cloudee-couch which is open-sourced by Boxee. This example/framework is built on top of Spine.js. Base classes take care of key handling, focus, and oauth authentication.
It's not a big deal to make an application for the smart tv platform that supports across the devices. Now the industry is filled with a lot of smart tv app development companies with their unique functionalities and features to offer the customized app as per the business models. FYI I'd suggest you choose the best smart tv app builder from the list. Hope it will be helpful for the video content creators & business owners to stream across the tv.
VPlayed
Zype
Uscreen
Explore the complete list here Ref: https://dev.to/dwarak17/5-smart-tv-app-development-companies-to-develop-tv-apps-in-2021-1584
While both Samsung and LG have proprietary Smart TV systems, they also both support Google TV. If you create an app for Google TV, you'll only have to write it once and it will run on Samsung's Google TV's, LG's Google TV's, Vizio's Google TV's, and Sony's Google TV's.

Can I get the Iphone/Android GPS location using the Corona SDK?

Can I get the Iphone/Android GPS location using the Corona SDK? I want to build an app and I am considering Corona, however I am unsure about whether it can access native features of the iphone and android.
I'm a bit confused as:
http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/faq/#who_is
: states :
Is there a way to call the native OS or link to an external library from Corona?
When you work with Corona, you can only access libraries written in Lua and limited to the features currently supported by the Corona SDK. You cannot link to libraries outside of Lua or access the iOS or Android APIs.
That said, we are constantly extending Corona's APIs to add new features and we welcome user input to guide future development. If you'd like to make suggestions on what we should add next, post it on our Features and Roadmap discussion forum.
Their website's home page is pretty clear: http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/
Native device features.
Use native iOS and Android features like multitouch, GPS, accelerometer, camera, Google Maps, WebKit, software keyboards, and more — it’s all available in Corona. Access social networks like Facebook and Openfeint and services like mobile analytics, with much more coming soon!

Sharing Code between Flash Apps and iPhone Apps

I am interested in writing games for the iPhone and the Web. Ideally, there would be one language that I could write my games in and it would work on both platforms. I know this is not the case, so what is the best way to leverage code between iPhone apps (Objective-C/C++) and Flash SWFs (ActionScript)?
This maybe of some help
It uses the NME library which will allows code to mostly be written to the Flash 9 API and create the C++ for XCode to compile and run on the iPhone and Touch. This creates a path to port Flash games to iPhone/Touch.
Unfortunately, Flash and Objective-C are very, very different - and it's unlikely that a Flash player will be available for the iPhone in the near future. The native input methods used in Flash games - the keyboard and mouse - don't lend themselves well to the iPhone. While Apple could make Flash run on the iPhone, most Flash games would be totally unplayable (or feel very unnatural. They'd have to overlay a keyboard probably?). With the success of the App Store and native iPhone games, I think it's very unlikely you'll see Flash support anytime soon.
You might want to consider using a game development tool like Unity instead of Flash in the future. Unity allows you to create both 2D and 3D games, and you can program them in various .NET scripting languages. Once you've created the game, you can cross-compile it for web (their own plugin, not Flash), iPhone, or the desktop.
I know that doesn't help much since you have an existing codebase, but it might be something to consider for the future!
My company is developing a toolchain that allows compiling ActionScript3 to native code for mobile devices.
It now supports Windows Mobile and Symbian, and iPhone supported will be released in a couple of weeks.
Check it out at: http://developer.openplug.com/
BR
Guilhem
Adobe Alchemy looks promising. It is not released yet, but from their website:
Alchemy is a research project that allows users to compile C and C++ code that is targeted to run on the open source ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2).
This would allow iPhone apps and Web apps to share non OS-dependent C/C++ code, which is a very exciting prospect.
One option would be building everything in unity. The engine facilitates building the same game project to any of the following platforms:
Webplayer
OS X
Windows
iPhone
Wii
Actually, the iPhone supports Flash technically (see Developer creates Flash for iPhone and Flash Installer Update #2). It is just Apple's crippleware restrictions that prevent installation.
Other than that, there's really not much you can do. Flash/ActionScript and Objective-C are radically different. You can have a central server store data, but that doesn't solve the duplicated logic.
If you're already willing to use ActionScript you could go all the way over to the dark side and switch to Javascript. That's the only common language supported by your clients (web and iPhone).
How comfortable you are with either development environment certainly plays a role here. If you are a die-hard Objective C and a super star Actionscript programmer then doing both shouldn't be much of a problem. It will be lots of work of course, but not a problem.
However, if you are neither or only skilled at Actionscript then I suggest you focus on Flash/Actionscript for the time being. Eventually Flash will be available on the iPhone anyway. When that happens you can already have a number of apps ready to be quickly ported to iPhone. Also keep in mind. There are more portable devices out there than just iPhone. Getting your apps running on other devices might be worth it in the mean time.
Just keep in mind when you're developing your apps now that at one point you also want to run these apps on the iPhone. So make 'm in such a way that they can be controlled with an iPhone as well.
Updating this old QA with new information. The recently released monkey development framework deploys to both iOS and Flash: http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/
It's so new that I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but it has a great pedigree: the creator made Blitz3D and BlitzMax before, and those were great game development tools.
That said, I would strongly recommend a combo like Corona for iOS and Flash for web, so that you're using optimal tools for each platform.