We’ve been a little quiet of late so I thought that I would put a quick blog post together to let you all know that the Pocketeers wheels are still turning. We were aiming to have the IwGame Engine update and a complete game using the engine ready for last week, but unfortunately a few Pocketeers related tasks as well as losing time to being ill with the flu has knocked the schedule out a little.
I’m working on a quick cute game that uses 100% IwGame code and XOML. I’m also doing this as a one man band exercise to show how quickly, easily a game can be put together using the engine (as well as the fact that we have no additional spare resources at the moment); I’ve even done much of the art work myself lol.
The next release of the IwGame engine will be next week sometime, even if the sample game is not 100% complete (I will continue to finish off the game in my spare time so that it can be used as a complete reference). The next release has a mass of additional features along with a number of bug fixes.
We believe that v0.3 will be the stable version of IwGame that we have been waiting for (I would even go as far as calling it a release candidate)
Just want to say a quick thanks to Da Voodoochief over at Sorcery Games for his recent blog on IwGameAds integration and wish him much luck with CTR and fill rates.
Those TextActor you mentioned earlier will be able to be builded using ttf or other it will be designed for other workflow like FontBuilder?
I also have a question to ActorImage. When I do Init method I can specify an image and width and height. Is it possible to specify x and y coordinates like with BirmapSprite (to cut off rectangle from bigger spriteatlas)? I probably could make Actor and set its visuality to proper BitmapSprite but I guess there is a way to do that with ActorImage.
Hi Mat,
Hope you are well, hope you don’t have the flu again, this week was my turn 😉
Hope you are deep into iwgame engine development, and hopeful of a great release, no need to rush, take your time fixing and coding a great v0.3
All the best! Have a great Weekend!
Sorry I’ve been so quiet lately, decided to pause work on the game and start a new simpler one that I can create in just a few days. I’m happy to say that its almost done. Just designing and adding in levels at the moment. Want to have at least 20 levels in before release (Its also off to the app stores).
@Roman: Text actors are based on CIwGxFont and normal Marmalade font work flow. The only difference is that we use a custom render method to gain better control over the font rendering. I’ve just quickly added bool CIwGameActorImage::Init(CIwGameImage* image, CIwRect& src_rect)
@Dan: Almost ready for the release, tomorrow or Monday I should think.
It looks like IwGame is great, and I plan on using it, But your tutorials are key.
I am an experienced C++ programmer, Almost exclusively embedded, but the occasional QT GUI. I am new to mobile devices and SDKs like Marmalade.
Your tutorials are a big help on getting things started, Do you plan on continuing them?
Thanks for all your time & effort, Your making a big difference based on the blog responses here. Marmalade should put you on their payroll.
The first IwGame engine game is finished (its called cOnnecticOns), well the first 20 levels are. I will be adding new levels over the next week or so. The game took around 36 man hours to create, including artwork and level design!
Got lots of tidying up to do today as well as documentation updates, so the 0.3 update will be out later on today / tomorrow.
Great news, can’t wait to see it:)
@Jim: Glad to hear that you find the tutorials useful and yes I will resume my Marmalade and IwGame tutorials later this week. Been busy over the last few weeks making getting IwGame 0.3 ready (its a big release)
@Roman: I will post a mini blog later on today with some shots and video of the game as a bit of a sneak preview. I’m just in the process of updating documentation then I will do the 0.3 release. Will release the game code later this week once I’ve finished tidying it up and commenting it properly (I developed it in less than 36 hours (less than half that time spent on actual coding) so it got a bit messy towards the end).
I don’t understand why animation is divided into CIwGameAnim and CIwGameAnimInstance? I see that Timeline has method findAnimation, which as parameter accepts the name of animation and returns pointer to CIwGameAnimInstance. But CIwGameAnimInstance doesn’t have setName method (CIwGameAnim has) and I don’t know how can I get access to it.
Just finished merging and testing all 0.3 changes into the public build ready for release tomorrow morning, also finished updating the documentation (Mammoth task I can tell you). There are nearly 50 changes coming tomorrow.
Here’s a quick sneak preview of cOnnecticOns – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVa8TWYQEsQ – You will need to excuse the frame rate of the video however, this PC wont get a much better frame rate (think its time to upgrade :))
I made the previous post before finding your Iwgame docs. Best docs I have seen in a long while, If you don’t care what IwGame is doing behind the scenes, You don’t need the tutorials. But I am looking forward to them 🙂
Side question, What apps do you use for your artwork?
Thanks,
Jim
@Roman: Timelines contain instances of animations instead of the actual animation. This is to allow the system to use a single animation definition to create lots of running animations.
@Jim: Ah, glad you found the docs. In cOnnecticOns I used InkScape to produce all the vector art work and GIMP for tidying / cutting / arranging.