**** IwGame does not compile with Marmalade 6.0. To fix please comment out the following line at the top of IwGameImage.cpp for now. We will release an early update this week to fix it ****
//#include “pngstruct.h”
Ok, its not often I look in my email box and find good news, but today I saw an email from Marmalade announcing Marmalade 6.0. I took a quick look over the changes list and the new features and it looks pretty awesome. I’m a little disappointed that there’s no native web deployment, but there’s plenty of other cool features to be playing with including:
- Web Marmalade – You can now develop apps with HTML5 / CSS3 and Javascript. Marmalade have used the same standard as Phone Gap to make it compatible (smart move IMO). This is pretty awesome in itself, but to be honest I’m waiting for the full native bridge exposure and documentation. You wont be making any real time smooth arcade style games with 6.0 but its great for apps and none arcade style game development. Either way I’m going to be getting my hands dirty with Javascript (the most lawless language on Earth :))
- iPad retina support
- New native UI enhancements including Toolbar, Table, Picket / Listbox , Tab / Tap Group, Activity indicator and Navigation bar
- New Mac anehancements such as support accelerometer and location in the simulator
- And a mass of bug fixes, including the notorious Facebook extension which has been upgraded to the latest on Facebook SDK for iOS. Also native support for JPEG images
To see the full list of changes check out Marmalades web site at https://www.madewithmarmalade.com/marmalade/whats-new
Looks like they are doing what MoSync did since the beginning… mixing native with web to provide a hybrid environment… time to compare both approaches and see if Marmalade got it right.
I took a quick look over the Javascript API and its got all the basics in there, but nothing really game related for the moment. I think this iteration is aimed more at apps and none intensive web games.
I don’t understand it. Will it be faster in any way that normal javascript packed with PhoneGap? I checked Adobe’s example for PhoneGap and it was too slow for even apps on SGS2. Is it translated somehow to OpenGL, like directCanvas or CocoonJS? But I am recently interested in javascript also, so will try it in near future:)
BTW Mat, I see some great news on IwGame. Modifiers and Extensions looks like excellent solutions.
Not sure speed-wise, I don’t think its going to be anywhere near the speed required for gaming to be honest. I’m looking at Web Marmalade as mainly for app development at the moment.
Modifiers are great, its the system that we want to use for adding game specific functionality into the SDK. The idea is that the developer has a whole bunch of modifiers that they can attach to their actors and scenes to give them useful custom functionality (kind of a build a game out of blocks scenario)
The new Box2D joints system is great too, I’m having so much fun with it at the moment 🙂