3.0.0 beta (ZGE on Android)

[Rado1]

Ville, I would be very glad if you released Eater as a separate application. I'm continuously improving it and testing new features. For instance, the latest version uses common two-finger zoom in/out. Windows version uses mouse wheel to zoom in/out. If you are in a higher level with too many objects, you can earn more space by zooming out. Another improvement is simulating tapping by touchGetCount(), which is more reliable than the original tap detection with KeyPerss. There are also some visual improvements and small moving of camera. Any comments and ideas for further improvements are welcome.

Because I want to release applications for Android but also for Windows and still having one project file, I use Condition statements checking the value of a global constant (named e.g. IS_TARGET_ANDROID), where OnTrue section manages Android code and OnFalse section Windows code. Before building either an .exe or zzdc.dat file I set the constant to the appropriate value. My question is: does the "Remove unused code" option removes unused section of condition in this case, so .exe contains just Windows-specific and zzdc.dat just Android-specific code?

[jph_wacheski]

curious how you implemented tap from touchGetCount()? I have not tried yet,. not had time. did a bit more on the game,. will post new soon.

IS_TARGET_ANDROID is something I thought about,. and will start using, as I am doing mouse and touch controls too. a method to remove that unused code would be cool,. doubt the code removal works that way now, though.., easy enough to comment it out when building currently anyhow. the flag is good for testing.

[Rado1]

Jph, simulation of tap from touchGetCount() is relatively simple, see the attached example.

BTW I would really appreciate some support for target-dependent conditional building. The simplest way would be the way I mentioned - conditions based solely on constants, but I can imagine it can be more difficult to implement.

[Rado1]

Is the Music component still working in the latest ZGE? I imported several different MIDI files working with WinAmp, but neither "Play music" button nor MusicControl component produced any sound.

[VilleK]

Rado1: Nice update, the zoom swipe works pretty well and it alters the gameplay in an interesting way.

Conditional defines is a good idea. I'm thinking maybe there will be a built-in constant called ANDROID which is 1 when building for Android and 0 otherwise. At the moment the Condition component does not remove components even if the expression is constant but I'll maybe be able to add that later.

I just tested the Music component and it still works with my simple test files. If you can't get it working please refer to the midi-file so I can test it.

[Rado1]

Ville, you are right, Music component works fine, but in one of my testing projects I had corrupted component. My suspicion is that several clearings and importing different MIDIs into one Music component is not too healthy. See the attachment.

[VilleK]

New ZGE build:
- Constant "ANDROID" is defined. It is set to 1 when building for Android and zero otherwise. If you use this constant in scripting such as "if(ANDROID) ..." the compiler will be smart enough to optimize and only keep the relevant part (automatically replace with the else-statement or remove the if completely).
- "Save binary" moved to "Project - Build Android binary" menu.

I'm now moving this whole thread to the "Releases" section.

http://www.zgameeditor.org/files/ZGameEditor_beta.zip

[Rado1]

Ville,

constant "ANDROID" makes development much easier. I tested it and works as expected. Thanks!

[Rado1]

I observed that Material's wireframe shading is not working on my Orange San Francisco II. If used, models appear in flat shading. Is it a general deficiency of OpenGL ES or just some compilation problem of ZGE?

[jph_wacheski]

I have no wire frame on my device either (I get flat too), I assume it is an ES limitation,. .

[VilleK]

It is indeed an ES limitation: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1480 ... open-gl-es

[jph_wacheski]

Yup, the ANDROID flag is great,. makes dual builds easy. Thanks for that one!

Attached is the latest ver. Ville just let me know before you do the final build as I may have made further improvements,. I have been trying to optimize all my code, however I also added a new element, so probably a bit of a wash for performance improvements,. well it does run much more smoothly here now, so somewhat better. I removed the second background layer as blending bitmap data seems to slow things.

I have found one issue,. if you press the HOME button the game exits correctly, however when you 'resume' the game the background bitmap is gone or very dark,. it is similar to the issue we had at first but the rest of the graphic are fine?? everything works fine if you use the 'back' button to exit the game. it seems the 'home' button can be used to 'pause' and check an email or something, to then resume the game later,. so it would be better if we can figure out why it does this.

Oh yeah,. I changed the controls to simple button press style,. <0 or >0 for left-right movement,. I like playing it much better this way, although I know it does not take advantage of all the touch stuff,. I will for the next project.

[Rado1]

Jph, Saucer Invasion works better also on weaker devices now. I observed the issue with your background bitmap too. That's strange, how did you implement it? Is it a computed bitmap put as texture on sprite? I did the same in Eater, but the problem does not appear.

BTW I also updated Eater to v0.4 with some visual improvements.

[jph_wacheski]

Ok, here is the last version,. many more optimization, and improvements. Still 'features' the bizarre disappearing background. this one makes zero sense to me,. it is just a bitmap on a sprite. I have tried a hundred different settings, and all just go dark when coming back from being paused,. I have no more patience for it, I just want to work on improving the game, not fixing strange behavior. I give up. I have also been fighting some odd bugs in the editor,. models for some reason just scale to 0,0,0, randomly for no apparent reason, and the mixer lost all its settings randomly as well,. perhaps my system is fcked? I am going to take a break, as the frustration is just too much right now. Life is just one fcking thing after the other,. . Drat!

Anyway, I am happy with my harsh-noise ambient-dub soundscape, and the mellow/casual hard-core game-play I was able to achieve here,. perhaps I will have better luck at some later time., .

Rado1 - Eater is looking very nice! liking the new 3d title, and all the little details,. should be good for many folks to play this one,. .

[jph_wacheski]

Ok. a new day, some fresh coffee,. and I figured out what not to do to avoid this issue. Attached is a further improved version (both zzdt, and an .exe for compare).

Seems to be some issue with the Material component, keeping the color on the Material as 1,1,1,1, and using a RenderSetColor in the render of the object seems to have fixed it,. I also experienced some corruption of my font's bitmap data on returning from the android 'desktop'.., to fix that, I removed a blur and an expression I had on the imported bitmap font,. just used the handy 'save to file' on the bitmap, removed the extra components,. and re-imported the already processed font. It should have been this way anyhow,. to save processing when launching the app, however it is strange nonetheless. Does it refresh the bitmaps when coming back from a pause??

Well this 'simple little test game' has taken a week and a half (part time work) to get to here, but I have learned some android stuff,. as well as a few general zge tricks to boot. Like all my productions I could just keep improving on this, iteration after iteration,. but I think it done for now, ver. 1 or 040 by my reckoning.