Game Development

When loading an application on an iPhone or iPad, a launch image can be shown to provide feedback to the user that the application is loading. On the iPhone a Default.png was used, with the iPad we need to anticipate the device being started in any orientation. Filename Dimensions Default-Portrait.png * 768w x 1024h Default-PortraitUpsideDown.png 768w x 1024h Default-Landscape.png ** 1024w x 768h Default-LandscapeLeft.png 1024w x 768h Default-LandscapeRight.png 1024w x 768h Default.png Not recommended * If you have not specified a Default-PortraitUpsideDown.png file, this file will take precedence. ...

This had me scratching my head for awhile. At first I thought that glGetRenderbufferParameterivOES would properly detect Retina screen at 960×640 but it keeps returning 480×320. A little explanation on Retina screen first. Older devices have 320×480 screen resolution. With new iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G the screen has 640×960 but on the same physical area. This means that each pixel is 4 times as small. To properly simulate older games resolutions iOS will replace each of your 320×480 game pixel by 4, this way your game will look identical. ...

I decided to compile all iOS devices specs here so we can get a better glimpse on their hardware and what we can expect from them. This covers iPhones, iPod Touches and iPad. iPhone/iPhone 3G – 412 MHz / 128MB / 320×480 iPhone 3GS – 600 MHz / 256MB / 320×480 iPhone 4 -~800MHz / 512MB / 640×960 iPod Touch 1G – 412 MHz / 128MB / 320×480 iPod Touch 2G – 532 MHz / 128MB / 320×480 iPod Touch 3G – 600 MHz / 256MB / 320×480 iPod Touch 4G – 800 MHz / 256MB / 640×960 ...

Even tough it’s not mandatory to support all screen orientations it’s always nice to support at least 2 of them. Let’s imagine your game is landscaped, by some reason the user may want to use either with the home button on the left or on the right. Most games support this, if you flip the device, the game will too. I’ve been using OpenGL to support the device orientation, most people on forums want an automatic solution, but belive me, it’s best that you have control on this. ...

It’s been awhile since I last updated this, I’ve have my hands full with Vizati iPhone. Ever since I got an IPod Touch 2G it was easier for Rita to get a sense of the screen size (although we knew to be 320×480) it’s different when you are testing on the real thing, text looks smaller, other stuff looks way too big. Here’s a picture she took after a few adjustments. ...

I decided to run a little poll to track what platforms do you target as a game developer. I think this should be interesting. Please share this post link or the direct link to the poll (http://twtpoll.com/dar51l) so that we can have more accurate results. The poll closes in about 6 days and you can select various options of course.

I ran into this issue a couple hours ago working on the iPhone sdk: See the darker borders around the image? It’s a png image and that’s was supposed to be a gradient of alpha. So why am I getting this strange stuff around it? Well that’s because that alpha isn’t 0 or 1 or 0 or 255. The first thing I found out is that XCode grabs the png images and multiplies the RGB component with the alpha. So you can understand now why only 0 or 1 works right? Everything in between get’s changed. This is why Apple recommends using PNG over JPGS, although they consume more space they are altered for speed. ...

It’s been around two weeks since my last post. Basically because I’ve been busy porting my engine Basalt to iPhone/iPad. If you follow me on twitter you might have known this already since I ranted pretty much at start, moving platform and language is always painful if you are used to other conventions/shortcuts etc. So it all started with my wish to port Vizati to the iPhone, since the game is already running on PC, Xbox360 and Windows Phone 7 one can only wish for an easy and quick port since pretty much all base code is done. ...

See the little black country on the map? It’s Portugal. The green zone are countries around Portugal that have XBOX Live Indie Games. We are surrounded by countries that can place their games on Creator’s Club but we were left behind. I won’t say there aren’t many others but they can speak for themselves. I’m tired of watching developers from other countries being able to place their games there and we have to sit and watch. ...

I am going to start with a little rant about Visual Studio default Installer, you know, the one you can make for yout XNA games inside VS. Ugly and not very handy, sure it installs every dependency but doesn’t leave many options like….hum…I don’t know choosing the location where you want to install? Moving along…I discovered this little cool installer called InnoSetup, and best of all it’s free. InnoSetup has different ways of you building a proper installer but I am going to cover the script way, much more control. ...