I'm making an iPhone game that has several maps with graphics attached. The graphics may allow the player to pass through them or block them. Is there an application for OS X that will allow me to pass some of this work off to a designer without having to reinvent the wheel and develop a map creator.
I'm not 100% sure what you are asking, but if I get the gist I think this may help you out:
http://www.gamesalad.com/ <- Game editor/creator.
It doesn't offer much in the way of flexibility, but may be of some use to you.
Enjoi!
Related
I am working on a little mobile game in Unity in 2D. I want the player to be a light source and everything else to be dark, so I gave "everything else" the sprites/diffuse material. This works extremely well in the editor/Game view in Unity, but when I build to my Android phone it looks weird. See the pictures. Any ideas?
Currently I am using the realtime rendering mode for the light, I know it is not efficient, but that's a problem for later. I looked into baked lighting, but I spawn the rooms random and dynamically so I am not sure how to proceed there.
I can find very little information about lighting in 2D mobile games in Unity, not sure how to proceed, it is all very confusing.
How can I make the lighting look the same on the phone as in the editor/game view in Unity?
Sry for writing an answer instead of a comment, but I'm new to SO and don't have the rep to write comments, yet.
I had similar issues on my Android build and we would need way more information in order to help you.
(1) Are you building for Android, iOS or both?
(2) Check your graphics emulation. Make sure you use OpenGL3.
(3) Check your graphics tier upon build. Try to use the highest tier with high settings. Lower tier settings might result in bad light.
(4) Not necessarily corresponding to your issue but you might wanna try building with a 32-bit display buffer and see what happens.
(5) Are you using post processing effects? There is very limited support on mobile devices.
(6) Check the priority of each light source you are using.
(7) Maybe it's a shader issue? Have you tried using mobile shaders?
Hope this helps, again, sry for answer while not being 100% sure.
Cheers.
What are all the hardware (camera) and software requirements for big screen augmented reality? Is there any workaround to use Vuforia and smartphone to display on a large LED screen?
Basically, it will work if the target is big enough and the mobile device camera is good enough. But it will be very difficult for you to get exact answers I think - you need to test it or simulate it.
Regarding if people hide the target - again, you need to figure out yourself what the scenario is and how bad can it be. If it's very crowded and people are hiding the target constantly, using only target-based solution is not enough. If you're only talking about hiding here and there, you can use Vuforia's Extended Tracking for that.
Does anyone know of another good game SDK/Engine for the ipad or iphone other than CORONA?
Have a look at Cocos2d
Well since you didn't mention you need it to be free, I'd cast unity into consideration.
It's as powerful as it is expensive ;)
The above answers are great possibilities. I highly recommend unity as it just came out with its newest release that offers a gajillion wonderful features like batch rendering, beast lighting, etc. Its also ridiculously easy to program (im surprised there isn't a 'make this game for me' button in it). The price is worth it. By clicking a button, you can publish your game to pc, Mac, web, iPhone, iPad, xbox, wii, ps3, or android, depending on whether you purchased the license for each. It' bloody magic. Keep in mind that you need to buy the unity pro license before you buy the iOS license. One does not work without the other. It'll be a total of around 3 grand USD, but again totally worth it. Community is rad and helpful too.
If you're going the free route and have some coding chops, I'd run with openFrameworks. It's a c++ wrapper of the iphone sdk and has a very low learning curve. OpenFrameworks was created for artists who wanted to make interactive installations and art games but couldn't get really deep into objective c. Check out zach gage's work (stfj). He made bit pilot, unify, synthpond, and sonic wire sculptor all in open frameworks. He's also releasing his best yet very soon for the iPad. My own company is using oF (openFrameworks) for it's new game releasing this coming Saturday. Try it out. I guarantee you'll find something you love about it.
Good question. For very specific gaming needs, PhoneGap is worth a look. But considering it's JavaScript/ HTML/ CSS, it will not be as fast as the (IMO terrific) Corona. But if your game is in any way more page-related than sprite-animation related, give it a look. I created most of the games at VersusPad.com using PhoneGap, but now switched to Corona.
Are there any libraries / frameworks that facilitate 2D game programming in Lua on the iPhone?
It looks like http://anscamobile.com/ and http://sio2interactive.com/GAMES.html are the only reasonable options at this point. Someone should create a simple Lua binding for OpenGL, AL and iPhone Events for the iPhone!
#richcollins: Actually, as of late last year you CAN test on the physical device using Corona (anscamobile.com).
If you want to check this out, download the free trial at developer.anscamobile.com, and it'll let you make developer builds for your phone.
The full version will also make App Store builds -- feel free to email support (at) anscamobile.com if you have further questions.
I'm trying out SIO2 as it apparently supports lua.
http://sio2interactive.com/GAMES.html
While it is for 3D and may be overkill for 2d it looks pretty powerful. Just make your models in 2d and fix your camera position.
--jdkoftinoff
There has been a fair amount of discussion of Lua on the iPhone on the Lua list. It appears that Apple is touchy about allowing user-supplied scripts, but has approved apps that used Lua internally as an implementation language.
I know I've seen reference to several approaches to wrapping iPhone goodies mentioned, but since I'm not personally an iPhone developer (or even user) I haven't paid attention to the details.
I'd much rather code an app using pure C api such as OpenGL, rather that Cocoa Touch. So I'm wondering: is it feasible? Will I be able to maintain the same user experience that you get with Interface Builder?
None of the UI components have OpenGL equivalents. Is it possible? Yes. Is it sensible? No - you would be much better off learning how to use IB and the UIView classes. Coding the UI in OpenGL would be like painting your house with an artist's brush, using hand-made paint instead of Dulux.
Unless you are working on a game, users will expect your user interface widgets to work the same way they do in other applications. You can never emulate that properly, especially if apple decides to fix certain issues in future firmware upgrades, etc...
You will also need Cocoa for integrating with the system in general to store data, prefs and so forth. Is there any specific reason for your reluctance to use Cocoa? If it's because you feel an aversion to learning objective-c, then you really ought to give it a proper chance. It's a great language for building ui apps. If you are trying to port an existing app, then I would suggest building a wrapper that will interact properly with the iphone and call your c code from there.
This is not a fruitful answer (for that, see AirSource's) and rather a comment on your answer about not using Objective-C, but I learned Objective-C a few months after C# and I find I work well in both. Give it a chance and it will surprise you. There's a learning curve and they are different, but the interface tools in particular are so far ahead that you'll probably find it worth your while. It will definitely be better for you and for your app's users than hand-rolling it in OpenGL.
Depends on your app. Mine's an "immersive" game, so I'm using openGL
instead of CocoaTouch,
with a sprinkling of Core Graphics/UIKit calls to generate nice textures.
If I had to display any kind of standard, non-trivial widget, I'd use CocoaTouch.