Marmalade 6.0 is out NOW!

Posted on by drmop

**** 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

IwGame Engine Tutorial – Basic introduction

Posted on by drmop

What is the IwGame Engine?

Welcome to the home of IwGame, the free open source cross platform mobile 2D game engine for smart phones, tablets and emerging technologies developed by Pocketeers Limited. IwGame is designed and written on top of the Marmalade SDK the ultimate  cross platform SDK for smart phones tablets and emerging technologies. In order to use the IwGame game engine you will need to download and install the Marmalade SDK.
IwGame supports the following platforms:

  • iPhone, iPod and iPad
  • Android phones and tablets (1.5+ including Ice Cream Sandwich)
  • Samsung Bada 1.0 / 2.0
  • Blackberry BBX (Playbook)
  • Symbian
  • WebOS
  • Windows Mobile
  • Mobile Linux
  • LG-TV
  • Windows Desktop
  • Mac OSX

IwGame is free to use at your own discretion and the code base is open source . You do not need to submit bug fixes or improvements, but we would be very happy if you did.

You can find out more and download the IwGame Engine from the IwGame Engine home

The IwGame engine has been in development since November 2011 and has had 14 releases to date

The original IwGame concept set out to achieve the following:

  • Create a game layer on top of the Marmalade SDK allowing developers to get game code up and running incredibly quickly without having to learn the ins and outs of the Marmalade SDK
  • Create a solid feature rich gaming SDK that does not rely on the underlying platform
  • Enable developers and designers to create content without writing any code

In around 6 months time we achieved all three of the above aims and more:

  • IwGame now supports a wealth of features that enable developers to create 2D games quickly and efficiently
  • IwGame boasts a vast array of features, including all the basic game development features such as scenes, sprites, actors, animation, audio, input, mark-up language. IwGame also supports advanced features such as HTTP communications, unified Ads API, Facebook API and unified in-app purchasing.
  • We wanted to put the IwGame engine into the hands of designers as well as programmers. We also wanted a way to separate game and UI layout design from code. We accomplished both of these aims by introducing the XOML mark-up language into the IwGame engine, allowing programmers and designers to not only design the layout and general interaction of games and apps but also define animations, resources, variables, conditions, events and actions. We also made the whole system extensible allowing developers to extend the language to fit whatever needs they may have.

Platform Independence

The IwGame engine strives to provide platform independence, so the developer has to deal less with the differences that separate platform from platform and spend more time dealing with creating a game. Because IwGame is built atop of the Marmalade SDK, this platform independence is mostly catered for, although there are a number of areas where the Marmalade SDK falls short:

  • Screen size independence – IwGame uses a virtual canvas system, allowing each scene to specify a working resolution that the developer can rely on not changing from device to device. The scene will scale all its content to fit the target display resolution with no extra effort on the developers part
  • Frame rate independence – Regardless of the target platform speed, all transient variables within a game are scaled by time to ensure that animations and movement etc do not suffere slow down or speed up on different platforms
  • In-app purchasing – IwGame allows the developer to set-up and utilise in-app purchasing in a platform independent manner
  • Unified Ads – IwGame provides a mediated unified Ad API that allows the developer to serve ads to their apps regardless of platform and from a number of different ad providers

Scene / Actor Concept

The most important concept behind the IwGame engine is the Scene / Actor system. IwGame uses scenes to hold collections of Actors. A game can be made up of a single scene or more usually a collection of scenes. For example, your main game can be built up of the following scenes:

  • Game world background scene
  • Game world foreground scene
  • In-game HUD scene
  • In-game menu scene
  • End of level dialog

Actors represent the game objects that live and work in your gaming world. An actor has logical, visual and physical components associated with them. The logical component is the game logic that gives the actor its purpose in the game world, the visual component is how the actor will appear on screen, usually some kind of sprite and finally the physical component tells the system how the actor will behave under physics (this component is optional). Actors can be defined hierarchically, allowing the developer to create complex objects that consist of multiple actors that are all connected with each actor having its own independent logic and visual but sharing the parents visual transform. Actors also support functionality components that can be stacked allowing the creation of vastly complex game objects from many smaller independent modules.

Scenes can be hidden, moved and animated, all actors contained within a scene will obey the scenes visibility, colour and transforms.

Creating a game is a case of creating scenes that represent the different components of a game then creating and adding actors that define the games behaviour.

Resource Management

IwGame supports resource management on a local per scene and a global basis. The resource management system will take care of cleaning up resources at the correct time. For example, all resources that are local to a scene will be destroyed when the scene has been destroyed. Global resources will remain present throughout the duration of the game, unless removed manually. The resource manager handles many different types of resources including images, animations, timelines, shapes, materials, fonts etc..

Animation

IwGame supports a very powerful key frame based animation system supports the following features:

  • Time based frame and interpolated named animations
  • Delayed and looped animations
  • Support for boolean, float, vectors (2d, 3d and 4d), rect (for image frames), string and custom frame data types
  • Resource manager that tracks and manages sets of animations (scene local and global)
  • Animation data re-use using animation instances
  • Animation time lines to support multiple simultaneous animations that can target object specific properties such as the colour of a scene or the position of an actor
  • Time line manager that tracks and manages sets of animation time lines
  • Callback notifications for animation instance started, stopped and looped events
  • Animations and animation time lines can be defined and attached to actors and scenes using XOML
  • Support for OnStart, OnEnd and OnRepeat events in code and in XOML
  • Linear, quadratic, quartic and cubic in and out easing

Scenes and actors can contain an animation timeline that will be applied to the scene or actors properties. For example, you may set up a timeline that contains animations that target position, scale, rotation and colour then attach that to a group of actors. The group of actors will all take on the animation properties of the timeline.

XOML Mark-up Language

By far the best feature of the IwGame engine is its built-in XML mark-up language (can be thought of as HTML for game development). XOML enables designers and developers to both create interactive content. XOML is a little more than a simple mark-up language as it allows the definition of variables, conditions, actions and events. Its entirely possible to create a complete interactive presentation, app or game using XOML. XOML also contains features to help create styled content using styles and templates.

Lets take a look at a typical piece of XOML:

<!-- Create a scene to contain our logo actors -->
<Scene Name="IntroScene" Style="GenericSceneStyle" Camera="IntroCam" Timeline="camera_zoom" Current="true" OnGainedFocus="GainedFocus" Batch="false">

    <Actions Name="GainedFocus">
        <Action Method="SetBGColour" Param1="64, 128, 200, 255" />
    </Actions>

    <!-- End of logo actions -->
    <Actions Name="NextScene">
        <Action Method="LoadXOML" Param1="Menu.xml" />
        <Action Method="KillScene" Param1="IntroScene" />
    </Actions>

    <!-- Create a camera-->
    <Camera Name="IntroCam" Position="0, 0" Angle="0" Scale="1.0" />

    <!-- Create delayed fade out animation -->
    <Animation Name="fade_out" Type="vec4" Duration="5" >
        <Frame Value="255, 255, 255, 255" Time="3" />
        <Frame Value="64, 128, 200, 0"  Time="5"/>
    </Animation>

    <!-- Create a zoom animation for the camera -->
    <Animation Name="camera_zoom" Type="float" Duration="5" >
        <Frame Value="2"  Time="0.0" Easing="quadout" />
        <Frame Value="0.75" Time="2.0" />
    </Animation>
    <Timeline Name="camera_zoom" AutoPlay="true">
        <Animation Anim="camera_zoom" Target="Scale" Repeat="1" StartAtTime="0" OnEnd="NextScene" />
        <Animation Anim="fade_out" Target="Colour" Repeat="1" StartAtTime="0" />
    </Timeline>

    <!-- Define logo image -->
    <Image Name="logo" Location="logo.png" Preload="true" />

    <!-- Create animations for the logo pieces -->
    <Animation Name="x_axis" Type="vec2" Duration="4" >
        <Frame Value="500, 0"  Time="0.0" Easing="quadout" />
        <Frame Value="0, 0" Time="2.0" />
    </Animation>
    <Animation Name="x_axis2" Type="vec2" Duration="4" >
        <Frame Value="600, 0"  Time="0.0" Easing="quadout" />
        <Frame Value="0, 0" Time="2.25" />
    </Animation>
    <Animation Name="scale_axis" Type="float" Duration="4" >
        <Frame Value="1"  Time="0.0" Easing="quadout" />
        <Frame Value="1.25" Time="2.0" />
    </Animation>
    <Animation Name="spin_axis" Type="float" Duration="4" >
        <Frame Value="180"  Time="0.0" Easing="quadin" />
        <Frame Value="90"  Time="1.0" Easing="quadout" />
        <Frame Value="0" Time="2.0" />
    </Animation>
    <Timeline Name="orbit1" AutoPlay="true">
        <Animation Anim="x_axis" Target="Position" Repeat="1" />
        <Animation Anim="scale_axis" Target="ScaleY" Repeat="1" />
    </Timeline>
    <Timeline Name="orbit2" AutoPlay="true">
        <Animation Anim="x_axis" Target="Position" Repeat="1" />
        <Animation Anim="scale_axis" Target="ScaleY" Repeat="1" />
        <Animation Anim="spin_axis" Target="Angle" Repeat="1" />
    </Timeline>
    <Timeline Name="orbit3" AutoPlay="true">
        <Animation Anim="x_axis2" Target="Position" Repeat="1" />
        <Animation Anim="scale_axis" Target="ScaleY" Repeat="1" />
    </Timeline>

    <!-- Define the logo actors -->
    <InertActor Name="logo" Position="0, 0" Size="1024, 300" Angle="0" SrcRect="0, 0, 1024, 300" Image="logo" Timeline="orbit1" />
    <InertActor Name="logo" Position="0, 0" Size="1024, 300" Angle="0" SrcRect="0, 0, 1024, 300" Image="logo" Timeline="orbit2" Colour="255, 255, 255, 128" />
    <InertActor Name="logo" Position="0, 0" Size="1024, 300" Angle="0" SrcRect="0, 0, 1024, 300" Image="logo" Timeline="orbit3" Colour="255, 255, 255, 64" />

    <ActorText Name="Text1" Position="0, -260" Rect="-400, -50, 800, 100" Angle="0" Font="trebuchet_12" AngularVelocity="0" Text="Developed By Pocketeers Limited" Colour="255, 255, 255, 255" Scale="1.5" />
    <ActorText Name="Text2" Position="0, 250" Rect="-200, -50, 400, 100" Angle="0" Font="trebuchet_12" AngularVelocity="0" Text="www.drmop.com" Colour="255, 255, 255, 255" Italic="true" Scale="1.5" />

</Scene>

This XOML defines the complete animation sequence that can be seen in the Puzzle Friends / cOnnecticOns game. Three logos spin onto the screen and 2 lines of text zoom into place.

XOML also now supports data binding, which allows developers to bind variables to properties of actors or scenes. Any changes to bound variables will be reflected in object that they are bound to.

Lastly, XOML is extensible allowing the developer to extend the language to support their own needs.

Input and Audio

IwGame provides access to the various input devices on the device including:

  • Single and multi-touch input
  • Button and key states (including support for Android back and menu)
  • On screen keyboard input
  • Accelerometer
  • Compass

Actors handle events that deal directly with touch events, including OnTapped, OnBeginTouch and EndTouch. These events can be handled directly in code or actions can be attached in XOML.

Scenes also handle menu and back button presses using the OnBackKey and OnMenuKey events

IwGame provides an API that provides access to the devices audio playback systems

  • Compressed WAV software sound effect playback
  • MP3 playback via the devices media engine
  • Support for multiple simultaneous sound effects
  • Control over volume and pitch

Music and sound effects can be played directly in XOML via actions, allowing the developer to tie music and sound effect playback to specific events declaratively.

Physics

The Box2D physics engine is integrated into the IwGame engine allowing physics to be attached to any actor. IwGame supports shapes, joints (distance, revolute, prismatic, pulley and wheel) and physics materials that can be defined and attached to actors, putting them under control of the Box2D physics system. Actors will also receive collision events from the Box2D collision system, allowing the actor to respond to collisions.

Gravity and world scale can be set on a per scene basis.

Facebook API

IwGame currently supports basic Facebook interaction providing log-in and allowing the developer to post information to the users wall stream.

Unified In-App Purchasing

IwGame provides unified in-app purchasing for both iOS and Android. A single easy to set-up API can be used to track products and purchase them regardless of platform.

Unified Ads API

IwGame provides a platform independent ad collection, display and processing system called IwGameAds. The whole system is automated and once set-up will collect ads from a variety of ad providers using ad mediation and display them using a slick animation system. The system also handles ad clicks directing the user to the target URL.

The following ad providers are currently supported:

  • Inner-active
  • AdFonic
  • Vserv – Also provides support for InMobi, BuzzCity, JumpTap, ZestAdz / Komli Mobile and Inner-active
  • Mojiva
  • Millennial Media – Also provides support for AdMob, Amobee, JumpTap and Mojiva

So why use IwGame Engine?

IwGame was designed by game developers for game developers. IwGame is built on many years of game development experience, using tried and tested game development techniques. IwGame provides a mass of out-of-the-box features that would take many months to develop and test from scratch. Above all else, using XOML enables the developer to create games insanely quickly (our recent game cOnnecticOns took just 3 days to create from scratch). Lastly, using separation of coding and game layout / design, XOML encourages easy and smart game development, where designers can take care of the design / layouts and programmers can take of the gaming logic.

IwGame Engine v0.33 Released – Unified Android and iOS in-app purchasing

Posted on by drmop

New here? What’s IwGame? IwGame is an open source free to use cross platform game engine for iPhone, iPad, Android, Bada, Playbook, Symbian, Windows Mobile, LG-TV, Windows and Mac, built on top of the Marmalade SDK. You can find out more and download the SDK from our IwGame Engine page.

I can tell you one thing, testing in-app purchasing from scratch is NOT an easy task, in fact its a pain in the a** to be quite honest. However, like anything that’s cool its worth doing. Its been a while coming but we finally put together a unified API for in-app purchasing on the Android and iOS platforms. To see the end product in action check out Puzzle Friends on Android (the new name for the free version of cOnnecticOns (I must have been off my head when I invented the name cOnnecticOns :)). The iOS version is currently with the great Apple reviewers in the sky.

Ok, here is the list of changes for 0.33:

  • In-app purchasing added for Android and iOS (IwGameMarket)
  • Scenes can now be augmented after they have been created (like partial classes)
  • Scenes can now be layered visually
  • New SetAllTimelines action added to XOML that will set the timeline of all scenes
  • SetVariable action now allows you to specify the scene in which the variable lives
  • Resources can now be tagged with a tag name
  • New RemoveResource and RemoveResources actions that allow removal of resources from global resource manager
  • New CallActions action added that enables execution of other actions lists
  • Actor now has ScaleX and ScaleY bindings
  • Relative actor depth is now 0 for linked actors
  • UDID removed from IwGameAds for iOS
  • Scenes now have a ClipStatic property that will force the clipping area of a scene to stay in place on screen instead of moving with the scenes camera
  • BUG FIX: Scene NotifyResuming now called properly
  • BUG FIX: CIwGameAnimInstance::setAnimation() no longer crashes if NULL is passed
  • BUG FIX: IwGameAdsView sprites are now updated correctly

The most interesting addition this update is the well hidden IN-APP PURCHASING for iOS and Android. With the aid of copy and paste lets take a look at the changes in more detail:

IwGameMarket – Unified In App Purchasing API for iOS And Android

Its an incredibly tough job to get noticed in the app stores these days with approaching half a million apps available in the larger stores (insane competition), its an even tougher job persuading Joe public to part with their money for your app. Many developers are turning to developing freemium titles as a means to increase visibility (app users are much more likely to download a free app) and earn money by offering the app in a limited form then allowing users to purchase additional content and game features. As of IwGame v0.33, basic in-app purchasing is now available for iOS and Android using a wrapper around Marmalade’s EDK in-app purchase extensions called IIwGameMarket.

IIwGameMarket is a not a concrete class however so you cannot just create one and use it. Instead it provides a basic interface for creating the platform specific market class as well as access to common functionality. At the moment the following marker classes are available:

CIwGameMarketiOS – Uses iOS in-app purchasing
CIwGameMarketAndroid – Uses Android market billing
CIwGameMarketTest – This version is a test class that you can use to simulate purchases / errors etc in the simulator.

IwGameMarket is designed to allow you to initialise and set-up and use in-app purchasing in a platform agnostic fashion, allowing you to query / purchase content very easily.

IwGameMarket works using a product list system, where you create and add CIwGameMarketProduct products to the IwGameMarket. Each CIwGameMarketProduct represents a single consumable / none consumable product that can be purchased.

Setting up the IwGameMarket is very simple, you simply call IIwGameMarket::Create() which initialises the correct market for the platform that your game or app is running on then set-up a few handlers, depending upon which messages you want to handle. Below shows a quick example:

IiwGameMarket::Create("Your android public key");
IIwGameMarket::getMarket()->setReceiptAvailableHandler(PurchaseComplete, NULL);
IIwGameMarket::getMarket()->setErrorHandler(PurchaseError, NULL);
IIwGameMarket::getMarket()->setRefundHandler(Refunded, NULL);	// Android only

Note that if you are releasing for iOS only then you do not need to supply your Android Market public key, simply pass no parameters to Create().

In this example, we have told IwGameMarket that we want to be notified when a purchase receipt is available, when an error occurs or when a transaction refund has happened.

When done with the market don’t forget to clean it up using:

IIwGameMarket::Destroy();

Now that the market is set-up we need to add products, below shows a quick example:

// Which OS are we running
int os = s3eDeviceGetInt(S3E_DEVICE_OS);

// Create product 1
CIwGameMarketProduct* product = new CIwGameMarketProduct();
product->Consumable = true;
product->ID = 1;
product->Name = "10 Coins";
if (os == S3E_OS_ID_IPHONE)
	product->ExternalID = "com.companyname.gamename.coinsx10";
else
	product->ExternalID = "coinsx10";
product->Purchased = false;
IIwGameMarket::getMarket()->addProduct(product);

// Create product 2
product = new CIwGameMarketProduct();
product->Consumable = true;
product->ID = 2;
product->Name = "50 Coins";
if (os == S3E_OS_ID_IPHONE)
	product->ExternalID = "com.companyname.gamename.coinsx50";
else
	product->ExternalID = "coinsx50";
product->Purchased = false;
IIwGameMarket::getMarket()->addProduct(product);

In this example, we create 2 products, our first represents 10 in-game coins, whilst the second represents 50 in-game coins. The ExternalID property is the product ID as defined in the in-app purchase section of your app in iTunes Connect for iOS or the product id of the in-app purchase in the in-app purchase section of your Android Market product control panel for Android. ID can be anything you like but will need to be unique.

Now that the system and product set-up are out the way, lets take a look at how to purchase a product. Firstly you need to call PurchaseProduct() passing in the ID defined in the CIwGameMarketProduct that you added earlier:

if (IiwGameMarket::getMarket()->PurchaseProduct(product_id))
{
}

You then need to add code to the callbacks that we added in our set-up:

int32 MarketScene::PurchaseComplete(void* caller, void* data)
{
	int type = IIwGameMarket::getMarket()->getLastPurchaseID();
	if (type == 1)	// 10 coins
	{
		GAME->AddCoins(10);
	}
	else
	if (type == 2)	// 50 coins
	{
		GAME->AddCoins(50);
	}

	return 1;
}

int32 MarketScene::PurchaseError(void* caller, void* data)
{
	// Display an error to the user

	return 1;
}

int32 MarketScene::Refunded(void* caller, void* data)
{
	// Only available on th Andriod platform
	CIwGameString id = IW_GAME_MARKET_ANDROID->getRefundedID();

	// Player was refunded so take back the items(s)

	return 1;
}

Augmenting Scenes

Another cool new feature in v0.33 is the ability to augment a previously created scene and add extra stuff to it after the fact. You can for example have a basic common scene that provides the basic background of the scene. This gets loaded by many other scenes and serves as its basic background. After its been loaded you can declare the scene a 2nd time and add additional elements which will then be integrated into the original scene.

Layered Scenes

Scenes can now be depth sorted (visually only). This is incredibly useful as previously scenes would always be drawn in the order in which they were added to the game class. There is no limit to the layer number of a scene.

Tagged Resources

Resources can now be given a tag name, allowing you to identify groups of resources. New actions have also been added that allow the removal of specific resources or groups of tagged resources from the global resource manager. We added this new features because we found that sometimes it is very useful to have resources in the global resource manager so they can be shared across scenes, but later needed a way to remove those resources when done with them.

Calling Actions Lists

Its now possible to call an actions list from an action. This is great if you want to define lots of different action sets then pick and choose which ones you want to use.

And that’s it for this update, please enjoy.

IwGame Engine v0.32 Released – Data Bindings and Conditional Variables

Posted on by drmop

New here? What’s IwGame? IwGame is an open source free to use cross platform game engine for iPhone, iPad, Android, Bada, Playbook, Symbian, Windows Mobile, LG-TV, Windows and Mac, built on top of the Marmalade SDK. You can find out more and download the SDK from our IwGame Engine page.

A lot of bugs (mostly minor) have been reported since the forum went live so we decided to release 0.32 now and push in-app purchasing to another future release (hopefully 0.33).

We finally got cOnnecticOns approved for BlackBerry PlayBook, its now on sale on BlackBerry App World. Version 2.0 also went live today for iOS on iTunes and for Android on the Android Market / Amazon. Not happy with Samsung however, the game has been knocked back on Bada 1 and 2 numerous times for minor issues that should be footnotes!

Ok, on with the changes, here is the list of changes for 0.32:

  • New XOML RemoveAllScenes action added – This will remove all scenes excluding the scene that is provided
  • Data bindings now added to XOML – You can now create a bindings list which pair properties up to variables. Changes made to those variables will bautomaticaly be applied to the object that they are bound to.
  • Actors and Scenes now support data bindings
  • Conditions variables now added to XOML – A condition variable allows you to string together some basic logic based on the value of other variables, these can then be attached to Actions to create conditional actions
  • Actions and Action groups now support conditional variables
  • IIwGameXomlResource now have parents
  • CIwGameString now supports encoding / decoding to / from hex
  • CIwGameSprite now has a RebuildTransformNow() method
  • CIwGameSprite now has an update method where the trabnsform will be rebuilt. This ensures that all transforms have been buuilt before rendering
  • CIwGameScene now has a PreDestroy() method which gets called when a request to destroy a scene is received
  • CIwGameActorImage now has a SetSrcRect() method
  • Added sound and music volume control to CIwGameAudio
  • CIwGameSound now accepts a paramater that allows you to specify volume, frequency and panning when playing a sound effect
  • BUG FIX: PNG lib fix for Visual Studio 2008
  • BUG FIX: Mac compile issues
  • BUG FIX: CIwGameSprite setScale() fixed
  • BUG FIX: Precision issues graphical glitches at lower resolutions
  • BUG FIX: Actor collilsion size now read corrctly from XOML
  • BUG FIX: CIwGameActorText text aligment now applie correctly
  • BUG FIX: When an actor or scene has a timeline attached, the first frame was not benig set before displaying the object
  • BUG FIX: CIwGameTextSprite hit test fixed
  • BUG FIX: CIwGameAds – VServ local now set correctly
  • BUG FIX: CIwGameScene – Initial camera transform is now built correctly
  • BUG FIX: CIwGameString::URLEncode now calculates correct buffer size
  • BUG FIX: CIwGameString::URLDecode now checks for the correct character
  • BUG FIX: Infinite loop removed from CIwGameXmlNode::GetAttribute()

The most exciting changes for us at least are the XOML data bindings and conditional variables / actions. They enable the creation of some very complex and ultra re-usable stuff. We are planning on starting a library of useful generic classes and XOML layout files that can be used as plug-ins to help create games and apps even quicker. Our first experiment with this is to create a set of XOML files and scene classes that handle ScoreLoop integration. If this is successful then we will release this as a plug-in library that you can simply drop into your own games and style with your own styles. Will blog about this in the near future.

XOML Data Binding

Data binding is the ability to map properties of objects to XOML variables. Changes to those variables will be immediately reflected in all properties of all objects that are bound. Lets take a look at a quick example:

We declare a global variable that holds a profile name:

    <Variable Name="ProfileName" Type="string" Value="None" />

Next we create a bindings set that contains a single property called “Text” that is bound to the “ProfileName” variable that we just defined:

    <Bindings Name="SC_ProfileBindings">
        <Binding Property="Text" Variable="ProfileName" />
    </Bindings>

We now attach our bindings list “SC_ProfileBindings” to a text actor:

    <ActorText Name="NameLabel" ......... Bindings="SC_ProfileBindings" />

Now if we change the ProfileName variable in XOML or in code, our NameLabel actor’s Text property will be automatically updated.

We opted to use independent binding lists (as opposed to in-line bindings as used in XAML / MXML) because they are re-usable, the same bindings list can be used across many objects. They are also much more readable as bindings are not intermingled with normal property values.

Note that if you also have a timeline animation that updates the same property then the timeline is given priority and the timeline will write over the binding value.

Binding lists can be attached to scenes and actors. The following properties can be bound:

CiwGameScene:

  • Position
  • Angle
  • Scale
  • Colour
  • Clipping
  • Timeline
  • Binding
  • Camera
  • Type
  • Active
  • Visible
  • AllowSuspend
  • AllowResume

CIwGameActor:

  • Position
  • Depth
  • Origin
  • Angle
  • Scale
  • Colour
  • Velocity
  • Angular Velocity
  • Timeline
  • Binding
  • Type
  • Active
  • Visible
  • Collidable
  • HitTest

CIwGameActorImage (in addition to those present in CIwGameActor):

  • Size
  • SrcRect
  • Image

CiwGameActorText (in addition to those present in CIwGameActor):

  • Text
  • Rect

Binding sets that are defined outside a scene will be assigned to the global resource manager, whilst bindings defined inside a scene will be assigned to the scenes resource manager.

Data bindings offer a way to create complex scenes and user interfaces without having to manually update the properties of the individual elements

Conditional Variables and Actions

XOML supports a new variable type called a condition variable. A condition variable is a variable that contains an expression that is defined by a list of variables, operators and values. Lets take a look at a quick example:

    <!--Create a bog standard int variable that contains the current level /-->
    <Variable Name="current_level" Type="int" Value="1" />

    <!--Create a condition variable that tests the current level is between 1 and 9 /-->
    <Variable Name="low_level_extras" Type="condition" Value="current_level GTE 1 AND current_level LT 10" />

We create an integer variable called current_level and assign it the value of 1. Next we create a new variable called “low_level_extras” that is of type “condition”. The most interesting part of our condition variables is the value, which is:

     current_level GTE 1 AND current_level LT 10

Unlike normal variables which contain constant values of some kind, condition variables contain dynamic expressions that are evaluated at run-time. The end result of a condition variable is always either true or false. The above expression in terms of C code would read like this:

     bool low_level_extras = (current_level >= 1 && current_level < 10);

Condition variables aren’t much use on their own and are usually used in conjunction with actions to provide conditional action functionality whereby an action or actions group will only be executed if a certain set of conditions are met. Lets take a look at a quick example:

    <Actions Name="NextScene">
       <Action Method="LoadXOML" Param1="MainScene.xml" />
       <Action Method="LoadXOML" Param1="LowLevelExtras.xml" Condition="low_level_extras" />
       <Action Method="KillScene" />
    </Actions>

The above actions group is called when we click a button to start a game. The actions group starts by loading the MainScene XOML file which creates the main game scene. Next the condition variable “low_level_extras” is checked to see if It is true, if current_level is between 1 and 9 then the variable will return true and the additional XOML file “LowLevelExtras” will be loaded. If however the current_level variable is less than 1 or greater than 9  then the additional XOML file will not be loaded.

This is just a very simple example showing how conditional actions can be used to re-use and extend XOML code.

And that’s it for this update. Thank you to all those who have downloaded cOnnecticOns on one platform or another and massive thanks to those who left us a review, you are awesome.

XOML Conditions – New IwGame Feature Coming Soon

Posted on by drmop

Thought I would put a quick update outlining what’s happening with the IwGame Engine. In-app purchasing has been started, so hopefully that will make it into 0.32. We are looking at a way of combining iOS and Android in-app purchasing into the same system (CIwGameMarket). Will provide more details when the system is up and running.

One cool change that’s just been finished is XOML Conditions. XOML conditions are variables that evaluate to either true or false and their value is an expression of other variables. Lets take a quick look at an example:

<!--Create a bog standard int variable that contains the current level --/>
<Variable Name="current_level" Type="int" Value="1" />
<!--Create a condition variable that tests that the current level is between 1 and 9 --/>
<Variable Name="low_level_extras" Type="condition" Value="current_level GTE 1 AND current_level LT 10" />

The above condition variables value is basically an if statement which translates to:

if (current_level >= 1 && current_level < 10)

But what use is that to anyone you may ask?

Lets consider that we have an actions group such as that show below:

<!-- Next scene action -->
<Actions Name="NextScene">
    <Action Method="LoadXOML" Param1="MainScene.xml" />
    <Action Method="LoadXOML" Param1="LowLevelExtras.xml" Condition="low_level_extras" />
    <Action Method="KillScene" />
</Actions>

The above actions set would usually just load the MainScene scene and run it then load the LowLevelExtras scene and run that. However using the condition variable LowLevelScene will only be loaded and ran if the condition variable low_level_extras equates to true, allowing us to only load the extra stuff if the level is between 1  and 9. The condition variable is evaluated at run-time so you can change variables and affect the result, allowing a very dynamic system to be put together.

It may seem like a small change but it adds the ability to add mark-up side logic, which IMO is huge. My mind is whirring away with ideas for its use at the moment!

Conditions can be attached to individual actions as well as actions groups

XOML Bindings

XOML bindings are currently being implemented (nearly finished). This allows you to bind properties of objects such as actors and scenes to XOML variables using a bindings  list. When you change the value of the XOML variable it also changes the value of the property that it is bound to. This system will be particularly useful for hooking up UI’s and HUD’s to in-game data.

 

 

 

 

cOnnecticOns for iOS now FREE!

Posted on by drmop

Hey everyone, we decided to make cOnnecticOns FREE for a few days to increase its visibility and hence visibility of the IwGame Engine. If you haven’t already downloaded it then please take a look at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/connecticons/id505645452?mt=8

Please consider leaving us a nice review, it only takes 2 mins!

cOnnecticOns Now Available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

Posted on by drmop

Great news. cOnnecticOns is now available on the Apple iTunes app store. Woohoo, passed fist time!

It’s available for almost a kings ransom ($0.99 in earth money). For those of you that are as bad off as me, here are a few promot codes so you can grab a FREE copy:

3KYAR49RTMMM
LLHREAPKT6W3
FKA3R6L6PJPF
J6AN4AWK3T9F
ETTWL46PYE4W

Please consider leaving a nice review. It’s always nice to see a good review 🙂

 

 

IwGame Engine v0.31 Released – Facebook and Full cOnnecticOns Source Available

Posted on by drmop

New here? What’s IwGame? IwGame is an open source free to use cross platform game engine for iPhone, iPad, Android, Bada, Playbook, Symbian, Windows Mobile, LG-TV, Windows and Mac, built on top of the Marmalade SDK. You can find out more and download the SDK from our IwGame Engine page.

Its been a tough week, my Apple Mac blew a gasket and refused to boot. Didn’t know this until I had spent 4 hours trying to make the Mac boot from Snow Leopard, but you cannot boot a Mac Mini from any version of the OS other than the original version that came with the Mac! Arrrgggghhhhh, insanity! In the end I turned my office and house upside down to find the original Mac disk.

Finally got cOnnecticOns cleaned up and submitted to the app stores. I also added 10 more levels and a game editor that allows players to create up to 20 of their own levels on-device and play them. I plan to allow sharing of these custom levels in a future version. We also added Facebook posting to IwGame and therefore has now been added to cOnnecticOns. You can find our more info about the game at http://appliter.com/apps/connecticons/connecticons.aspx

Ok, onto the update. IwGame v0.31 is kind of a special release because it contains the FULL source and assets of the game that you will see on Android Market and very soon Blackberry App World, Apple iTunes and SamsungApps for Bada.

Here’s the full list of changes for 0.31:

IwGame 0.31 Changes:

  • cOnnecticOns full commercial game with source and assets provided as an example of engine usage
  • CIwGameFacebook added – Currently provides login and wall posting access
  • New AddVariable action added which allows you to add a positive or negative value to a XOML variable with limits
  • New EnterValue action added that brings up the devices keyboard allowing the user to enter a value into a XOML variable
  • New UpdateText action added will update a text actor with the value of a variable
  • New Exit action added that allows the user to exit the game
  • 3rd paramater added to XOML actions
  • DoSleep added to CIwGameBox2dWorld to enable / disable object sleeping, also added to scene XOM
  • IIwGameXomlResource now has an actual type, allowing type checking for exact object types
  • OnKeyBack and OnKeyMenu events added to scene and XOML. These fire when back and menu keys are pressed
  • BUG FIX: CIwGameSprite position and origin now 32 bit vectors, which helps prevent positions overflowing
  • BUG FIX: When a scene is destroyed and it has touch focus it was causing a crash
  • BUG FIX: If a scene becomes inactive or invisible it now loses touch focus
  • BUG FIX: Velocity / angular velocity now applied when actors have no physics attached
  • BUG FIX: JPEG image data is now correctly converted from BGR to RGB
  • BUG FIX: CIwGameString, find index now properly reset

As well as the release of the full source for cOnnecticOns, we also snook a few extra col bits and bobs in there.

New CIwGameFacebook Class

The main purpose of this class is to allow the user to log into facebook and interact with it. Right know, only logging in and wall posting functionality is provided using the following method:

bool PostWall(const char* message, const char* link_uri, const char* image_uri, const char* name, const char* description);
  • message – Message to display to the users wall visitors
  • link_uri – URL that the user will visit when clicking on the wall post link
  • image_uri – URL of an image that you would like to be displayed along with the post
  • name – The title of the post
  • description – Description of the post (displayed in weaker font beneath title)

A Facebook wall post will look something like this:

Post to Facebook example
POst to Facebook Example

New XOML Actions

It is now possible to add a value onto an existing XOML variable using the new AddVariable action. You can also update a text actor with the value of a variable in XOML. Here’s an example showing how the editor in cOnnecticOns uses both actions together to create an up / down UI element that the player can use to change the number of cOnnecticOns available in the level:

        <!-- Create change connecticons buttons -->
        <InertActor Name="ConnectButton2" Position="0, -200" Size="81, 84" SrcRect="555, 482, 81, 84" Image="sprites1">
            <ActorText Name="ConnectButton" Depth="0" Font="trebuchet_12" Rect="-100, -50, 200, 100" Colour="0, 0, 0, 255" Text="2" />
            <InertActor Name="DownButton" Position="-60, 0" Angle="-90" Size="48, 51" SrcRect="868, 299, 48, 51" Image="sprites1" Depth="0" OnBeginTouch="DownBeginTouch" OnEndTouch="DownEndTouch" OnTapped="DownTapped">
                <Actions Name="DownBeginTouch">
                    <Action Method="SetTimeline" Param1="buttonin4_anim" />
                    <Action Method="PlaySound" Param1="ui_tap" />
                </Actions>
                <Actions Name="DownEndTouch">
                    <Action Method="SetTimeline" Param1="buttonout4_anim" />
                </Actions>
                <Actions Name="DownTapped">
                    <Action Method="AddVar" Param1="EditorConnecticons" Param2="-1" Param3="0" />
                    <Action Method="UpdateText" Param1="ConnectButton" Param2="EditorConnecticons" />
                </Actions>
            </InertActor>
            <InertActor Name="UpButton" Position="60, 0" Angle="90" Size="48, 51" SrcRect="868, 299, 48, 51" Image="sprites1" Depth="0" OnBeginTouch="UpBeginTouch" OnEndTouch="UpEndTouch" OnTapped="UpTapped">
                <Actions Name="UpBeginTouch">
                    <Action Method="SetTimeline" Param1="buttonin5_anim" />
                    <Action Method="PlaySound" Param1="ui_tap" />
                </Actions>
                <Actions Name="UpEndTouch">
                    <Action Method="SetTimeline" Param1="buttonout5_anim" />
                </Actions>
                <Actions Name="UpTapped">
                    <Action Method="AddVar" Param1="EditorConnecticons" Param2="1" Param3="10" />
                    <Action Method="UpdateText" Param1="ConnectButton" Param2="EditorConnecticons" />
                </Actions>
            </InertActor>
        </InertActor>

The mark-up marked in red show the new AddVar and UpdateText XOML actions.

Basically when the user taps the DownButton actor the OnTapped event fires which calls the DownBeginTouch actions list. This actions list contains two actions:

AddVar – This adds -1 onto the EditorConnecticons variable and limits it to 0, so it does not go below 0.
UpdateText – The next action copies the value of the EditorConnecticons variable into the ConnectButton text actor, which updates the number of connecticons on screen.

Support for Android Back and Menu Buttons in XOML

It is now possible to attach actions in XOML to the menu and back button events in a scene by handling the OnKeyBack and OnKeyMenu events. Note that only the current scene will handle button events.

Text Input via XOML

Using the new EnterValue XOML tag you can bring up the device keyboard and allow the user to input some text into a XOML variable.

cOnnecticOns

As previously mentioned the full source to cOnnecticOns has been provided to enable developers to see a real working commercial game utilising IwGame. The first thing you will notice when looking at the code base is just how little code is actually there. This is because much of the mundane functionality such as creating layouts, handling events, creating animations, scenes etc.. are all handled by XOML. Please note that the supplied XOML is not optimised in way shape or form, in fact I have done many things long hand so as not to make the scripts convoluted and difficult to understand. When creating your own XOML you should probably focus more on re-use with templates, styles and global actions / animations etc..

Here is a brief overview of the provided XOML scripts:

  • Actors – This file contains physics materials, shapes and game object templates
  • Common – Contains common styles, animations and actions that are used across many scenes
  • ConfirmDialog – This is the dialog box scene for the rest scores action, it is displayed to the user when they attempt to reset their records
  • EditLevelSelect – Level selection screen that allows the user to select a custom level to edit
  • Editor – The level editor scenes
  • GameComplete – Shown to the player when they complete all zones and all rounds
  • Help – The basic help dialog that is accessible from the main menu
  • HUD – The in-game HUD that displays the scores and game buttons
  • Intro – The IwGame intro that is displayed at game boot
  • LevelCleared – The end of level score dialog that is displayed when the user completed or fails a round
  • LevelSelect – Level selection screen that allows the user to select a level to play
  • LevelSelect2 – Level selection screen that allows the user to play a custom level to play
  • Menu – The main front-end menu scenes
  • PauseMenu – The in-game pause men scene
  • ZoneLocked – Dialog scene that is displayed when the player finishes round 10 but has not unlocked all levels in the zone
  • ZoneSelect – Zone selection scene
  • Scenes 1 to 30 – Game level scenes
  • Scenes 101-120 – Custom blank level scenes

Note that some files contain more than one scene. For example, each game level file contains the pause menu, the main game level scene as well as the in-game HUD. The pause menu and HUD exist as separate XOML files so they can be re-used across all levels.

The code base contains implementations of the following custom scenes:

  • EditScene – Level editor scene, contains level editor logic
  • GameScene – A game level scene, contains game logic
  • LevelSelectScene – Custom scene for level select that handles updating of the scores in the level screen
  • ZoneSelectScene – Custom scene for zone select that handles updating of the lock / unlocked status of each zone

The following custom actors are also used:

  • ConnectActor – An actor that connect two bugs together with minimal logic
  • CounterActor – This is the main bug actor (originally called counters), handles all bug logic / collision etc
  • FloaterActor – Handles floating / fading text
  • GravityPlacerActor – Special actor that can be modified to change gravity within the editor
  • InertActor – Basically an actor that doesn’t much other than display itself
  • PlacerActor – A basic placeable object, used to position actors in the editor
  • SelectorActor – A basic selector actor used by the editor object selection screen to select which object to place

The rest of the code is pretty bog standard stuff. Game is the implementation of CIwGame and contains initialisation and shut down. Probably the most interesting part is where the custom XOML classes and events are added using the following code:

	// Add custom classes to XOML system
	IW_GAME_XOML->addClass(new InertActorCreator());
	IW_GAME_XOML->addClass(new GameSceneCreator());
	IW_GAME_XOML->addClass(new LevelSelectSceneCreator());
	IW_GAME_XOML->addClass(new ZoneSelectSceneCreator());
	IW_GAME_XOML->addClass(new CounterActorCreator());
	IW_GAME_XOML->addClass(new PlacerActorCreator());
	IW_GAME_XOML->addClass(new GravityPlacerActorCreator());
	IW_GAME_XOML->addClass(new SelectorActorCreator());
	IW_GAME_XOML->addClass(new EditSceneCreator());

	// Add custom game actions to XOML system
	for (int t = 0; t < CIwGameXomlAction_Global::Action_Max; t++)
 		IW_GAME_XOML->addAction(new GameXomlAction_Global((GameXomlAction_Global::ActionType)t));

These custom actions and events allow us to tie our game logic much closer to our XOML code.

Well that’s it for this update. We were aiming to get conditional XOML actions in for 0.31, but unfortunately it didn’t make it, but should do for 0.32.

cOnnecticOns is now available on the Android Market!

Posted on by drmop

Hey everyone, some good news. We finally got the first version of the first IwGame Engine game  cOnnecticOns up on the Android Market at https://market.android.com/details?id=com.pocketeers.connecticons. Playbook, Bada and iOS builds will be available within the next few weeks.

And the even better news is that we are on schedule for releasing the full source this weekend! We’ve had a bit of a delay because we decided to upgrade the game a bit. We added an extra zone with 10 additional levels, as well as a game editor to allow players to create and play up to 20 of their own levels. Oh, and players can also post their scores to Facebook using the new CIwGameFacebook class (coming in the next IwGame engine update 0.31 this weekend)

cOnnecticOns for Android, iPhone, Bada and Blackberry
cOnnecticOns for Android, iPhone, Bada and Blackberry

The next update of the game will feature sharing levels between users using a web service, for which we will release the full source code, including the server side scripts.

The update after that will feature in-app purchase content using new classes that e are developing for the IwGame engine.

If you download the game then please consider leaving a nice review