3.0.0 beta (ZGE on Android)

Lupo · Post by **Lupo** » Mon Jul 30, 2012 3:57 pm

Hi all,

@ville, great job!

@jph, I have the same problem with usb, but I can generate debug apk perfectly, saved to dropbox, and installed in android in a sec.

I ported a couple of projects and working in a couple of ideas, love to work on ZGE again.

BTW, where do I have to put the icon(s) for the build process?

PD: Its quite complicated to sell by google play (from my country) its not listed, any chance pf creating some sort of ZGE distributiono channel for paid apps in Google play?

Post by **VilleK** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 8:24 am

Guys, did you try my suggestions about using another usb-port or googling for "<manufacturer> android usb driver"? I have had initial problems with some phones and Adb but they should all work after a little bit of googling.

Lupo: The icon should be in <projectfolder>\res\drawable-ldpi. You can provide icons in multiple resolutions if you put them in different folder, read about that here. About commercial apps I'm sure we on this forum can help publishing it for you if you can't do that from your country!

Small update again:
- Android: You can set screen orientation to portrait or landscape. However this currently only works when building apk-files, not when using Android: Run. (Jph: building apk should work regardless if Adb finds your device.)
- Sound.IsReference moved and renamed to PlaySound.ByReference instead. Besides that it works like in the previous build.
- Sound editor now can play a whole octave from keyboard, like suggested by yoffset here.

Rado1: I haven't had time to look at the sensor code yet so if you feel inspired (or inpatient

) you could start building it as a library.

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

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 2:20 pm

Ok,. I was able to properly install the USB driver and "Android: Run project" is now working. This is very nice!
Followed this OEM driver info here; http://developer.android.com/tools/extras/oem-usb.html
I had tried before but this time I got it right.

Now attempting to get the debug build working, and again am a bit confused,. see the results attached. I am unsure if I have Ant setup right,. I just put the folder in the android folder,. renamed it to just "ant" however the install page says to "set" ANT_HOME and JAVA_HOME environment variables however I can not figure where or how to do this,. I set the paths in ZGE=>settings=>Android to; C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk and C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\ant respectively. Any help here will be greatly appreciated. It seems to be looking for a java file that is not there.

I tried the new sound.ref in the editor and it looks to be a good thing,. how to stop it in the editor though? if you stop preview it keeps on keeping on,. BUZZ tracker has a "stop all sound" button perhaps the preview stop button should terminate the sound.

Thanks for adding Portrait Mode! a one finger shooter to come,.

y offs et · Post by **y offs et** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 3:29 pm

Probably little help:

1) I wrote about locating tools.jar earlier in this thread.
2) The sound.ref example prog did the same thing - wouldn't stop - and after a couple of times quitting ZGE, wouldn't start again. Hoping this update better.
3) I used the ant plugin in Eclipse.

Lupo · Post by **Lupo** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 6:41 pm

Hi Jph,

I solved the same error setting JAVA_HOME as environmental variable on Windows (My PC properties) and also adding the path to javac on the PATH variable. One pointing the JDK and other to /bin (inside the JDK).

Thanks for your reply Ville.

Regards,

Post by **VilleK** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 9:00 am

Jph: Lupo is right, make sure you can run "javac" from the command line. Both Android SDK and Ant needs to find Java. This requires modifying the global path and setting java_home. Perhaps reinstalling JDK will do this for you?

Ah yes, the sound keeps buzzing because the Sound.Length is set to 100 seconds. I'll make sure to stop all sounds when stop is clicked in designer, I should have added this earlier.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 3:07 pm

Wow,. now that was annoying~! android/java setup is only for the brave,. or those more schooled in this java/compiler setup stuff than I :S

Anyway, I have never had much luck setting up compilers in the past,. however in this case I really see the ZGE potential here, so I banged my head up against it for a few hours,. in the end after a hundred different path setting and such,. the last hurdle was that I only had the latest SDK installed by the Android SDK Manager,. I had to go back to 2.2 and get that one for the build to finish!

So I built my fist .apk and it runs on nexus 7! so I am happy for now,. only now I am tired (mind-numb) so I will brake and do some yard work and try to get back later to do some actual game development,. I have been trying many of the games in the play store, and I think I will be able to do some good stuff, with ZGE! Cheers, and thanks guys for all the tips!

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 3:14 pm

ok, it was working,. but I seem to have broke it.

Now when I hit "Build APK (debug)" it only generates some of the folders and files,. but not the bin folder where the APK would be?? Any idea why? I had deleted a couple of these generated folder structures that where just tests,. could that cause a problem? Are all these generated new each time? could deleting them cause a problem??

Here is what "Build APK (debug)" now generates, and it does not pop up the dialog that would normally take me to the new folder,. the shell just disappears and no err message is shown. "bin" is missing an some others,.

y offs et · Post by **y offs et** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 3:51 pm

Well, you're right - you're missing the gen and bin folders, which are the java and dalvik(?) compiled files. Backing out the file path one notch to the com.mydomain.mygame folder, that has to be deleted entirely, or at least have a unique name for each build, but I'm sure you know that.

Must be something in your paths.
Try to take some screen shots of the cmd window as it goes by.

PS.
Places like this are helpful.

http://www.droidforums.net/index.php

Post by **VilleK** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 6:13 pm

Jph: Looks like it has failed to build using Ant for some reason. Did it pass the command line window without errors? Try grabbing a screen shot like yoffset suggests.

y offs et · Post by **y offs et** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 6:41 pm

Using Eclipse, I point the path to the parent enormously long name folder shown and it succeeds looking at these.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Fri Aug 10, 2012 4:18 pm

I finally figured it out, I had set the path to ant to add /bin as someone had suggested on some board somewhere,. and thought that was working, turns out this change did not take affect till a reboot,. so it worked till I rebooted (due to some other changes) then after a reboot the changed pointer broke it again. Anyway, all is working now, still have to set up the signing, but the debug building is working as expected. Got a little game gong on, I will post a demo soon-ish,.

one idea that occurs to me is to have hooks to the "options" and the "back/quit" soft-buttons,. some games open a screen when back is pressed or show some "do you really want to quit?" dialog when pressing that one,. these could be useful for options menus and such. if only one is implemented I vote for the options button. cheers.

Post by **VilleK** » Sun Sep 02, 2012 10:27 am

Just a small update:

Library: Added SunVox external library by Rado1.
Android: Use smaller audio buffer to hopefully reduce audio latency.
Sound edit: The current sequence is saved in the project (in property PatternString).
Sound edit: New button "Copy to Music" that will copy the current pattern into a Music component.
Sound: All audio is stopped when clicking Stop preview button.
Music: Added new LoopPlayback property.
Music: Added new Tempo property.

The changes to sound edit came from ideas by yoffset in this thread. It is still not very useful because midi music playback is not synced good enough but I figured I'd keep it there in case anyone want to play around with it.

I changed the Android audio routines to use smaller buffers. I've seen on some resources that this should reduce latency. Let me know of any problems.

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

Post by **VilleK** » Fri Sep 14, 2012 7:14 am

Update:

- BitmapFromFile component now supports PNG format thanks to the excellent BeRoPNG unit.
- Expressions now support integer modulo operator (%).

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

Rado1 · Post by **Rado1** » Fri Sep 14, 2012 7:35 am

Hi Ville,

modulo and png compression are great. However, when cleared the bitmap in your example, 2 kind of exceptions started to appear:

"Access violation at address 005980EB in module 'ZGameEditor.exe;. Read of address 00000000."

and

"External exception C000001D"

After several such exceptions ZGE totally refused to react, CPU Usage 100%.