Marmalade SDK 8.4 out now

The latest and greatest version of the Marmalade SDK is now available here
Highlights

  • C++11 support now available.
  • Apple Pencil pressure reading is now supported on iPad Pro in addition to existing 3D Touch support.
  • Slide Over and Split View multitasking now available to Marmalade apps on supported iPad models.
  • Compression of assets in APKs on Android is now supported.
  • Windows 10 ARM builds can now be directly deployed to any attached device without any special configuration.
  • s3eCamera can now return high quality still images on Android, rather than the viewfinder preview.
  • s3eWebView updated to use newer version of Chromium Embedded Framework on Windows Desktop.

A full list of changes is available here.

Marmalade SDK 8.2 is out now

The latest and greatest version of the Marmalade SDK is now available here.

Highlights

  • IncrediBuild support for ARM architecture
  • Improved video support for Windows Desktop
  • Updated version of ZeroBrane Studio for Quick
  • Multidex support for Android

A full list of changes is available here.

Developing games for mobile and desktop? Then why not go cross platform and try out the Marmalade SDK, its now free. Available in C++ and Lua flavours.

Marmalade Asset Store Offer

Calling all content developers, the newly opened Marmalade Asset Store have an opening offer. Register as a seller now and earn an 80% revenue until the end of 2015 (usual revenue share is 70%).

From 2D / 3D art assets such as backgrounds, textures, sprites, animations, meshes and high quality sound effects, to project files and templates, plus any great integrations you’ve developed and would like to sell or share: all are welcome in the Asset Store.

 

Marmalade 8 is out now – New Hub, Analytics, Android Native Debugging, Asset Store

You can download the Marmalade SDK for free from the Marmalade SDK website

Looks like Marmalade have been busy beavers working on their latest release of the Marmalade SDK. There are a lot of changes, but I’m just going to focus on the highlights:

New Marmalade Hub

The Marmalade Hub has had a complete revamp. Its got a new look and feel and now feels like a proper integrated Hub including features such as:

  • Open, create and build projects for all platforms. Creation of new projects also includes a very handy and easy to use integrations section ghat allows you to easily add integrations such as analytics, game services etc.. very easily and intuitively. The project templates are also very handy, especially for new developers.
  • Handy recent projects and examples lists
  • Multiple projects can now be opened simultaneously and access to home is always available without backing out of a project
  • Centralised and direct access to asset store, documentation, community answers, blog and tools (one of my favourite new additions)
  • Platform settings are now better categorised and more easily accessible
  • Project libraries list which shows a list of all libraries used by the project
  • Proper import of different deployment configurations
  • Update from MKB feature

All in all, the new Hub is a massive improvement.

Marmalade Analytics

Marmalade Analytics for C++ and Lua, is a great new addition for developers that really want to drill down into the behaviour of their game players to help increase user retention and hopefully increase monetisation. Marmalade Analytics is powered by industry leader GameAnalytics. Marmalade Analytics is incredibly easy to use out of the box as can be seen in this IwAnalytics example.

Android Native Debugging

I’ve been waiting for this feature for a bit, its been in beta for a while, but its now officially released. To debug an Android app in Visual Studio simply open it in the hub then click the “Open in IDE for debugging” button. Note that the first time you do this Visual Studio 2015 will prompt you to install Android support for C++, go ahead and install that (this may take a while so go for a coffee or take a nap :)).. Once your app has launched in visual studio click the green start triangle to start debugging.

Asset Store

Marmalade now have their very own asset store, which includes all kinds of assets from audio and bitmaps to extensions and full game engines. Submitting assets to the store is very simple, take a look here for details.

Marmalade 7.10 is out now – On device Android debugging using Visual Studio!

That’s right, you can now debug Android games on apps using Visual Studio on Android, which is awesome of course.

You can download the Marmalade SDK for free from the Marmalade SDK website

Ok, now that I’ve finally contained my excitement (no more trailing through adb output!), here’s the full list of changes:

Changed since 7.9

Marmalade Hub

  • MSDK-1516 Fixed an issue on Windows that prevented newer versions of iTunes from being detected by the Dependency Checker.

Marmalade Quick

  • MSDK-1582 Networking library for Marmalade Quick updated with IPv6 support.
  • MSDK-1620 Render Texture example improved to show more efficient usage of sprites.
  • MSDK-1476 Fixed an issue when deploying from the command line that could cause app binaries to fail to be located.

Middleware

  • IwGx (MSDK-1524) Fixed an issue with CIwTexture::LoadFromFile() where alpha was incorrectly converted for 32-bit images.
  • IwCRT (MSDK-1610) Implemented getaddrinfo() and freeaddrinfo() functions.
  • IwTwitter (MSDK-942) Fixed an unknown error during socket connection that prevented a session from being established.

Platform Abstraction

  • s3eSocket (MSDK-1603) Fixed an issue on iOS where no connection would be reported when connected via an indirect network connection type (ad-hoc networks or IPv6 tunnels). You can restore the previous behaviour if required by setting IOSUnreachableIndirect to 1 in your app’s ICF.

iOS

  • MSDK-1471 Fixed an issue that could cause touch callbacks to be lost when playing video.
  • MSDK-1281 Fixed an issue that prevented correct resizing of video when device orientation was changed.

Android

  • Beta support for Android Native Debug mode, allowing you to use the Visual Studio Debugger or GDB to debug your Marmalade apps on Android devices.

Google Native Client

  • MSDK-1584 Fixed an issue that could cause a black screen on startup.

Examples

  • IwHTTPExample (MSDK-1574) Example now fails gracefully rather than crashing when unable to connect to an IPv6 address on 64-bit Android devices.

The all new IndieDeveloper a social community for game developers

Do you love to make games?  Are you passionate about making games?  Do you want to find other developers just like yourself?  Well, I recently came across a new social community and resource for developers of all professional skill levels. You can join a community of independent game developers and find a collaborator, a team, a project, or just a new friend. Well what are you waiting for, see you over at IndieDeveloper, If you want to friend me, I’m user mrmop,.

 

Booty5 HTML5 Game Maker 1.9.1b Available – Text preview and collision flags

Booty5 the HTML5 Game Maker v1.9.1b is now available for free download.

Editor Changes:

  • Scale and angle are now affected in multiple actor selections
  • Editor export properties now supports smoothing property that will enable / disable anti-aliasing during rendering
  • Added support for rounding pixels to actors, if disabled then pixel coordinates will be rounded to integer values, can improve performance but at a cost of lower precision rendering
  • Removed some currently unused options from sprite and label
  • Font size and face separated in labels
  • Font weight added to label
  • Editor now shows text preview
  • Exported collision flags are now used by engine
  • Added vertices snap to shape editor
  • Added new Collision Flags example
  • Fix: Convex shapes were not exporting correctly
  • Fix: Some properties such as actor scale were not exporting correctly with an export precision of 0

Engine Changes:

  • Added new property to Actor called round_pixels, when set to true vertices will be rounded to integer which can speed up rendering significantly
  • Added support for collision flags to physics fixtures (category, mask and group index)

The Booty5 HTML5 game manual ebook has also been updated.

Marmalade v Unity Speed and Size Matters

Marmalade have recently carried out speed and deployment size tests between test apps written with both Marmalade SDK and Unity 3D and the results are somewhat surprising. The test app basically displays a little over 400 animating sprites. Here are the results:

  • Unity APK size is 658% larger than the Marmalade APK size
  • Unity app installed size is 1935% larger than the Marmalade app installed size
  • Marmalade APK app is 356% faster than Unity app

I was already aware of the size difference between Unity and Marmalade deployed apps but was surprised by the speed difference.

In the interests of fairness this is just a simple app that displays animating sprites, but it cannot be denied that a side by side raw comparison the Marmalade SDK beats Unity hands down.

Marmalade 7.5 arrives

The incredible cross platform native game development SDK the Marmalade SDK version 7.5 is now available for free download.

Major changes include:

  • 64-bit support for iOS (new apps submitted from 1st April 2015 are required to have 64-bit support), so it is essential that you get this update soon
  • Google Play Services support for iOS added
  • Improved support for Visual Studio 2013