New here? What\u2019s 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\u00a0on top of the\u00a0Marmalade SDK.<\/p>\n
A forum poster asked a question recently that made me realise that XOML Templates can quite easily be overlooked as a means for creating re-usable actors and such, so I thought to help make Templates more visible that I would create a very quick tutorial showing how to use them.<\/p>\n
To begin with, lets take a look at what a template actually is and does. A template is a XOML tag that allows you to define generic XOML that is not instantiated immediately, yuo can think of a Template as a blue print for something that you will later instantiate into your game or app world. A template also takes any number of parameters that can be passed when you instantiate the template.<\/p>\n
When creating items inside a Template, template parameters are defined using a template parameter name that is enclosed inside double dollar signs ($$), for example $position$. When you later instantiate the items within the template the parameters within the template will be replaced by values that are passed to the template.<\/p>\n
Lets take a quick look at creating an actor \/ child actor with a template<\/p>\n
[sourcecode language=”xml”]
\n <Template Name="TankTemp">
\n <TankActor Name="$name$" Style="TankActorStyle" Position="$pos$\u2033 >
\n <TankActor Name="$name$_sel" Style="TankActorSelectedStyle" Position="0, 0\u2033 \/>
\n <\/TankActor>
\n <\/Template>
\n[\/sourcecode]<\/p>\n
Here we create a template called TankTemp that defined an actor with a name of $name$ and a position of $pos$. Note that because these two parameters are enclosed in $$ they are classed as template parameters.<\/p>\n
Now to instantiate this elements within this template in XOML we use the following:<\/p>\n
[sourcecode language=”xml”]
\n <FromTemplate Template="TankTemp" name="Tank" pos="310, -120" \/>
\n[\/sourcecode]<\/p>\n
The above code will instantiate the following code:<\/p>\n
[sourcecode language=”xml”]
\n <TankActor Name="Tank" Style="TankActorStyle" Position="310, -120\u2033 >
\n <TankActor Name="Tank_sel" Style="TankActorSelectedStyle" Position="0, 0\u2033 \/>
\n <\/TankActor>
\n[\/sourcecode]<\/p>\n
To instantiate a template from C++, we firstly need to find the template, build the parameters then instantiate the template passing in the parameters:<\/p>\n
[sourcecode language=”cpp”]
\n\/\/ Find the tank template
\nCIwGameTemplate* temp = (CIwGameTemplate*)scene->getResourceManager()->findResource("TankTemp", "template");
\nif (temp != NULL)
\n{
\n\t\/\/ Create a set of XML attributes that will replace the template parameters
\n\tCIwGameXmlNode* replacements = new CIwGameXmlNode();
\n\treplacements->Managed = false;
\n\tCIwGameXmlAttribute* attrib;<\/p>\n
\t\/\/ Set name template parameter
\n\tattrib = new CIwGameXmlAttribute();
\n\tattrib->Managed = false;
\n\tattrib->setName("name");
\n\tattrib->setValue("Tank");
\n\treplacements->AddAttribute(attrib);<\/p>\n
\t\/\/ Set position template parameter
\n\tattrib = new CIwGameXmlAttribute();
\n\tattrib->Managed = false;
\n\tattrib->setName("pos");
\n\tattrib->setValue("310, -120");
\n\treplacements->AddAttribute(attrib);<\/p>\n
\t\/\/ Instantiate the Tank template
\n\ttemp->Instantiate(scene, replacements);<\/p>\n
\t\/\/ Clean up replacement attributes
\n\tdelete replacements;
\n}
\n[\/sourcecode]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New here? What\u2019s 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\u00a0on top of the\u00a0Marmalade SDK. A forum poster asked a question recently that made me realise that XOML Templates can quite easily be overlooked as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,445,43,118,44,42,181,45],"tags":[746,159,453,452,451,46,739],"class_list":["post-2521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-android-app-development","category-appeasy","category-blackberry-playbook-app-development","category-c-programming","category-game-and-app-development","category-ios-app-development","category-iwgame-engine","category-samsung-bada-development","tag-appeasy","tag-iwgame","tag-markup","tag-parameters-2","tag-template","tag-tutorial","tag-xoml"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drmop.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drmop.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drmop.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drmop.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drmop.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2521"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.drmop.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2525,"href":"http:\/\/www.drmop.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521\/revisions\/2525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drmop.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drmop.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drmop.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}