3.0.0 beta (ZGE on Android)

turshija · Post by **turshija** » Sun May 20, 2012 9:54 pm

Rado1, that is awesome !

Reminds me of fruit slice/fruit ninja a little bit, you should add some kind of bonus if you pick up more than one object with delay less than XX milliseconds or something like that (also combo, pick up as much orange objects as you can without picking up red ones) ...

@ click tap:
I'm also getting problems with this ...
It took me 10 seconds only to make my phone detect my tap so I can start the game

I had to keep tapping my screen constantly for few seconds before it detects it ...
Dragging works great, but tapping not ...
My guess is that it checks if X and Y coordinates of onPress and onRelease are less than some offset in pixels, but it should be checked in DPI/PPI because of different screen sizes / phones ?

Rado1 · Post by **Rado1** » Sun May 20, 2012 10:12 pm

Thanks turshija for the idea how to improve Eater - object/time bonus would be great. For now, only time penalty applies. I also have some more improvements in mind, eg., bonus objects for full energy, adding more score points, destroying mines in some distance or all, etc. The current version is just an initial version created in 2 days (actually during 2.5 nights).

Post by **VilleK** » Mon May 21, 2012 9:17 am

Another update:

- Updated the Tap-detection, hopefully works better now
- The APK now has an internal zzdc.dat built in so if it does not find any zzdc.dat file on external device it will load the embedded one instead. I did this to try out the code that will be used in market apps. Currently the embedded file is Jph invader game.
- Added scripting functions for touch detection: touchGetCount, touchGetX/Y and touchGetID. See attached test project that simply output text for the touch input. My device can detect and follow four separate touch movement points. This is the raw movement data that gesture detection can be built upon (see Android docs), maybe we can build a little ZLibrary with functions that buffers input and detect different movements from these functions.

Rado1: Great little game! Impressive for so little development time and good example of touch controls. With all these cool projects we need that file browser functionality soon to make it easier try different zzdc.dat files.

ZGE does its own audio mixing which means that from the Android OS standpoint it is just playing a single sound all the time no matter how many ZGE sounds are used. So this is perhaps a problem with the Music component, it has never been very good. Let me know of any major problems (with music, bitmapexpressions or anything else) and post a file demonstrating the issue and I can try to fix it.

Anyway I'm thinking maybe we should make a little market demo app called "ZGE engine demo" or something with a little game embedded (one of those in this thread or something else). We could then ask everyone we know to test it on different devices so we'll get a wide range of testers. Based on the result on that we can fix any additional problems, and then ZGE Android hopefully will be ready for production use! And after that we will all get rich

. Do you agree this is a good idea for the next step?

http://www.zgameeditor.org/files/ZGEAndroid-debug.apk

Rado1 · Post by **Rado1** » Mon May 21, 2012 12:47 pm

VilleK wrote:Added scripting functions for touch detection: touchGetCount, touchGetX/Y and touchGetID.

Ville, could you also give us a new version of ZGE with these functions included?

A stupid question: how to debug applications with multiple touch detection on Windows? With multiple mouses (there are some drivers allowing this; CPNMouse, etc.)?

Post by **Kjell** » Mon May 21, 2012 3:01 pm

Hi Rado,

Rado1 wrote:How to debug applications with multiple touch detection on Windows?

The expensive solution would obviously be to buy a multi-touch monitor / laptop. A more affordable alternative could be something like the Wacom Bamboo Capture ( one of the models compatible with their API ). Or you could just build something yourself

There are also applications like RemoteDroid which allow you to use your Android phone as input device for your PC, but I don't think any of those allow you to work with the raw data. RemoteDroid is open source though, so perhaps it could be added.

K

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Mon May 21, 2012 10:45 pm

Wow, multi-touch with up/down states is very cool! I get 10 points on this tablet,. although I doubt more than two is really needed maybe four for a two player game.., well this will provide lots to experiment with for sure. I am thinking of ways to capture movements, and use these to control things,. a two touch object rotation is my first goal.

Rado1 - I like your game,. it is simple and clean,. (I always seem to muddy my stuff up with too much noise) and it works great! you can tap the points or drag and get different control types,. .

I have been tweaking my little Saucer Invasion game,. I reworked the camera to give a more 3d view of the action and it looks good so far,. need more work on music/sounds, and some other additions (finish the intro, etc.), but the great news is it is fun to dev. for android using ZGE!
The sound also seems to work the same on this tablet as it does on the PC so I suppose just providing a demo will let people try ZGE apps to know that they work on various hardware.

I agree we should build a library of useful code for collecting and using input data,. as well as building a simple demo to show off the engine. I will try some stuff that will show some of the capabilities, without making it tablet specific as my little game seems to be becoming.

Also as Rado1 said looks like we need the new editor build to use the multi-touch?

Rado1 · Post by **Rado1** » Tue May 22, 2012 1:11 am

Jph - a new 3D view for Saucer Invasion is really cool. I like the overall graphical design. However, I have problems with performance . Probably a lot of particles, maybe also sounds, make it slow on my mobile. Another thing is that most of texts are very small to see on 480 x 800 screen (3.5 inches, ~267 ppi). I see just small dots... but this is not a big problem, the game is intuitive enough.

Ville - I still have problems with tap detection. Sometimes it works better, sometimes with the same problems as in the previous version of ZGE Android application. It also seems that usage of sounds decreases performance. They should not overlap in time. Does it make any performance difference if sounds are put to the same or different channels?

Anyway, I updated Eater according to suggestion of turshija. In v0.2 there are 3 types of stars to eat and bonuses for eating fast. If you catch more than 5 stars, each in interval less than 0.5 sec. from the previous one, and no bomb is activated, you get a bonus = 10 * stars eaten. The bonus is doubled if all stars are of the same color. The trick is to move your finger faster than pacman is able to handle, he will follow the finger little bit later.

In future, I plan to improve the overall design (e.g. to eat food instead of stars, make better title and game over screens) and add also some more types of objects (bonuses and obstacles). I'm not sure about putting more sexy graphics there, because it is time consuming and decreases playability... I will see... it's still in an early stage of development.

Final note: after several nights of development I really like ZGE on Android!!! (I was hoping in support for PSP or Vita, but Android is also fine.)

Post by **VilleK** » Tue May 22, 2012 8:20 am

ZGE with touch functions included: http://www.zgameeditor.org/files/ZGameEditor_beta.zip

Post by **VilleK** » Tue May 22, 2012 2:12 pm

I should mention that the touch-functions are currently not implemented on Windows so they just return zero. But at least with this version you can compile and save zzdc.dat files with the touch-functions present.

Rado1: It should not matter much if different channels are used or not. But if there is performance problems with sound we should offer a simple way to turn off audio. Nice update to your game. Perhaps you can add a little bit of randomness to each pick-up sound for variation because you hear a lot of those

. The trail effect of the main character is very neat. I will continue to see if there is more I can do for fixing tap-detection.

Jph: Nice update too! The viewpoint change makes it look more interesting. Sometimes Fps goes below 20 here though (possibly it is the particle effects) and I agree with Rado1 that the text should be bigger

Kjell: Do you own a Android device so you are able to tests these new features too?

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Tue May 22, 2012 2:14 pm

Thanks for the update Ville!

It is working great here,. I added a bit to the TouchTests file. When you have two fingers down, you get a direction and distance that is mapped to a cubes to show one use of this function.

The taping on the '{' key is still a tad wonky,. however it does register even if you have multiple fingers already held down, nice. I do see the touchGetID flash on the tap attempts that do not register as a 'tap',. so I think it may be better to use that and watch for taps in our games,. I will see what else I can implement control wise,. more input is welcome as we will all need a good set of control data script,. .

Rabo1- yeah,. I will state "designed for tablets" or some such,. as it needs a large view currently,. .

turshija · Post by **turshija** » Tue May 22, 2012 3:58 pm

jph, your game looks and feels better and better every day

Just few suggestions:

-less particles, even Galaxy Note with dual core CPU struggles sometimes and get FPS drop, maybe add a details low,medium,high option? (-1 if you are targeting only devices with strong hardware)

-don't cut off phone support and make tablet only version, at least put an option for GUI size: small (tablets) and large (phones), rest of the game looks playable on every screen size (-1 if you are targeting only tablets)

This way if you target ONLY high end tablets, you can only count on like 5% of the entire Android users = less people can play your game = less people will buy/download it

-Also make your ship movement "smoother" (like Rado1 made movement in his game), because this way you can just teleport around by clicking on the screen

Btw, interesting thing: http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/via- ... -20120522/
50$ android PC that will probably start shipping in early July

A little bit more expensive than Raspberry PI, but much better hardware + comes with native Android

Looks like good (and cheap) device for testing our ZGE games for Android

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Tue May 22, 2012 11:38 pm

I am loosing points,. drat!

Well, it is just a quick test game, I will make others. I see no reason for all games to run everywhere, anyway. minimum specs is something we have had since the beginning of computers, that will always be an issue I suppose. I also find that android claims of user base to be a tad silly, as a cell phone with a 177x140 screen is not the same target as a tablet with 1280x900. but more millions of users sounds better i guess. anyway, the game will also run on PCs ;)_

I do get your point though, so yes, i will make some less cpu hungry stuff as well. In actuality, i doubt it is the particles slowing it, more likely my excessive use of noise2/3 functions to move stuff. I will optimize what I can as i find silly code,. I design things often quickly with little thought to speed optimization,. I will work on this for sure, this new android path will force it. mostly my reason for saying this will be a 'tablet' game is that sound is important to me and having it play the sounds proper timing is looking to only work on newer hardware/software combo.

the ship movement- yes I thought of smoothing the movement, however i sorta like the speed of this and space jumping is allowed,. but the camera tilt makes it rather difficult to do accurately/usefully. the accuracy of the movement it 1:1 so player can not blame sluggish movement,. this is obviously that same game idea I have been toying with for years now,. I keep making the same game over and over, just working the same ideas ,and looking for the optimum balance of random/pattern, and gameplay objectives,. in this accurate shooting is less important than what we call 'shape' in billiards, making moves that leave you some next move,. . missing a falling pod will likely spawn a nastier saucer,. eventually.

I am having some fun with the new control functions, so more interesting stuff to come. I just want to bash this one out for a test in the market, will be a free app. Also thanks for the comments, I do appreciate all feedback,. as much as I do tend to argue with it.

(I have these same arguments with myself btw!) Oh that VIA APC looks rather dashing! makes a bit more sense than the Rpi connectivity wise,. I will try to get one next time i find myself with some cash,. . .

couple questions I have not tested; does local file saving/loading work? how about net calls? for pulling up a web page, or submitting/getting high-scores, user levels, etc.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Wed May 23, 2012 5:36 pm

Ok, you where right,. new version has been somewhat optimize,. less parts,. removed the sample (sound) and many nose2 functions, that did not really add much. I am getting much smother play. I also tried the smoothed out control of the player ship,.. and after a bit of tweaking the acceleration, and speed, I do likes it

Is the text readable now?

Post by **VilleK** » Thu May 24, 2012 2:27 pm

Nice update Jph, I like the intro effect. Still a bit slow during busy gameplay but smoother than before.

Files save/load is not implemented. Needs some thought so that it reads from external storage during debug and from the apk in release. Web access is also not yet implemented but should not be too hard.

With your permission I'll prepare so that we will release both Jphs and Rado1 games as two separate apps. I'll probably won't have enough time until a week or two so you still have time to add features and we can always continue make updates to the apps when they are on the market.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Thu May 24, 2012 5:28 pm

That sounds great! I will keep working on the Saucer Invasion game till you need the data,. I found that I was using multiple calls to draw the Saucers and the Missiles so I now generated the meshes on start,. that don't need real-time animation or color shifts. replacing a four or five transforms, four or five renders and couple of color calls per ship. This may help speed a tinny bit.

Just let me know when you need the file. I also noticed that the mouse simulator jumps for accidental multi-finger touches,. so I will use the touchGetX() to avoid that,. .