Whitesky Games

Thanks to a friend, I can continue my dev activities!!!

Whitesky Games — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:07:37 +0000

Just like the title says. Thansk to help from a friend, I can continue my dev activites.

It is good to know that there are nice people on this planet.

fantomEngine V1.41 released

Whitesky Games — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 11:17:18 +0000

Hello fellow game developers,

I have uploaded the newest version of fantomEngine for Monkey to google code. Grab it here.

Cheers
Michael

Forum closed (for now)

Whitesky Games — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 10:56:57 +0000

Hi folks,

as my finances are used up, I made the decision to close the forum for now till I have a real use for it. Also will I switch to one that is available for free then.

Cheers
Michael

Gideros Studio: UIKit plugin

Whitesky Games — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:48:16 +0000

Over the last days my book publisher was nice to me and didn’t send me any chapter to work on for the final draft. So I had some time to look into the new plugin system of Gideros Studio. Of course, I had to dive into Objective-C and play with native UI elements in IOS. Of course, I still hate any kind of C dialect. But it is surpringly easy to add new functionality to Gideros. I am putting together a plugin to use native IOS UI elements. Basically everything that was available till IOS 4.2/4.3.

Views
Buttons
WebView
TextField with keyboard
TextView with keyboard
Labels
Imageview
Navigationbar
Mapview
etc etc.

What I love, and I mean LOVE…. about Gideros is that you can add anything that it is missing through plugins. I was always missing this functionality from a different tool I used before and the way GiderosMobile has opened up Gideros Studio is awesome. Thanks to these guys for listening to their user base!

Here are some images from my first tryouts:

http://bit.ly/vz0M8S

http://t.co/2Rjm6Zwv

Cheers
Michael

Preversion of fantomEngine 1.41 available

Whitesky Games — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:35:35 +0000

Hi folks,

I posted a preversion of fantomEngine 1.41 for Monkey in the forum. If nothing big comes up over next days, I will load this up to google code.

Cheers
Michael

R.I.P “Mexican beer” SDK, welcome to my toolbox … Gideros Studio

Whitesky Games — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:18:12 +0000

Hi folks,

some folks know that I was kinda on a war path against this company that develops the “mexican beer” SDK and its CEO. I am pretty sure that I made that impression on the outside. People who know me for a long time know that I have problem with dishonest people. Espercially when it effects me in person. All my anger has a lot to do on how I was fooled from this guy. In the beginning of this year we were in some talks for a while about his company adopting IndeED as its official IDE. Just yesterday I read all his emails again. What he had promised, how he told me to be patient and yada yada. I even hold off development of IndeED because I thought (and he hinted it) that changes were needed. I admit that I didn’t took the saying “Fools me once… fool me twice…” at heart. For a while I was upset but now this is gone. These days I am just puzzeled about the fact how many devs a falling for this marketing BS. But why should I care?

After reading Jayant Varma (OzApps) blog entry “CarrierIQ – The …. version”, I was pretty sure that my days using the C*r*na are numbered/over. I noticed the same things and this discovery alone is one major reason, that C*r*na knocks itself out as a tool to create apps with for clients. Nevermind the single user that will use your app or game. Or would YOU want to use an app that always phones home? Or your development environment. ME NOT!!!

The final nail into the C*r*na coffin is now that they have dropped support for IOS ARMv6 devices. They did this with Android before and so I had to get a new Android test device. For ISO that leaves me now without a test device. For sure I won’t buy a new device until Apple will stop accepting apps for ARMv6 devices. Adding to that, I am 100% positive that there are millions of ARMv6 devices out there. Crippled market I say.

So what is the alternative? After a very good conversation that I had with Jayant Varma of OzApps a few days ago, I looked at a new tool to create mobile games for Android and IOS. This tool is Gideros Studio from giderosmobile. Gideros Studio provides a similar approach to game development like C*r*na does. It’s a graphic engine that uses LUA as it’s scripting language. So the rapid development approach is there too.
The cool things is that they use a similar method like the App Game Kit does. You install a player app on your device. Once started, the IDE transmits your app to the device and you can test it right there. No compiling on a dubious server, no collecting stats about what you are doing, it is all local. And super fast! Gideros API set is very close to ActionScript 3 I heard. It looks similar and should cater the FLASH boys a lot. Sure, a few things are not there. But C*r*na has implemented these only partially anyway and in the next weeks GiderosMobile will release the ability to use/create plugins for Gideros Studio. Then I can add them myself. And to a level I need it. Pssst, Gideros has simple game center support I saw. Not officially but it is there.

Here are the advantages of Gideros

Good IDE with code folding, auto complete, resource management
Player apps which let you test apps on the devices instantly through WLAN
Local compiling, no need for phoning home to a server
You can alter/extent the exported native projects to your needs (AD providers YOU want)
You can compile the native projects for the device platforms YOU want to support
It’s free to use when you can except a splash screen
LUA is not crippeled, EVERYTHING is there
Physics are implemented up to the newest version of Box2D
Tilemap support which doesn’t draw tiles that are outside the visible area (FAST!!!)
Sprite blend modes
Very flexible primitive shapes
Bitmap font support
OOP class approach in LUA
Comes with a texture packer…, a bitmap font creator tool, and players for android and IOS
Supports ARMv6 and ARMv7 CPUs
Direct support from the developers
Soon plugin support, GameCenter, IAP, UI, etc etc.

I am positive that I made the right decision. Gideros Studio is great and it gives you a lot of freedom in how you want to develop your apps. Because YOU know what is best for YOU!!!

Cheers
Michael

A last word to all the C.I. fan boys out there. I have respect for you. If your favorite man serves you fine, then so it be. Everyone has their own opinion and will make different experiences. Mine were negative! Point blank! Please except this. If you didn’t like what I wrote here, fine! You are free not to visit again here, it is just that easy. And you can calm down now. I won’t visit the C*r*na forum anymore, won’t post valid critics anymore, won’t mention that tool anymore, won’t support it anymore. It is all that easy. BYE!

Just 8 other users so far

Whitesky Games — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:28:03 +0000

Wow, just 8 other people use IndeED so far.

Is it worth it to develop it further?

IndeED usage poll

Whitesky Games — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:14:33 +0000

Here is a little poll that you should participate in:

Take Our Poll

Progress update 2011/12/09

Whitesky Games — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:09:03 +0000

Hi folks,

finally after six months and a very tide schedule, I have submitted the first draft of last chapter for my upcomming book Monkey Game Development Beginners Guide. I have to work now on the rewrites. That means that I will get back the chapters from the reviewers and have to make corrections or change things depending on the comments of the reviewers and the people who posted erros in my forum. The good thing is that this process doesn’t seem so demanding like I when I had to write a full chapter.

IndeED wise I will restart its development next week. Till Sunday I am way to busy in private life plus I need to submit the rewrite of chapter #1 next Monday. I will still continue to work on IndeED even that it looks now that I will not continue to work with the Corona®SDK. Unless some kind of client job needs this SDK.

Personally I will concentrate on Monkey and check out Gideros Studio. Gideros is the perfect replacement for Corona®SDK and I will give it a good test ride in a project, my wife and I want to create together in the next three months.

Cheers
Michael

Book: Monkey Game Development Beginner’s Guide

Whitesky Games — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 11:21:37 +0000

Hi folks,

the raw version of the Book “Monkey Game Development Beginner’s Guide” is available as a RAW version at PacktPub. It shows the development of 8 games with Monkey. 6 of them are using my framework fantomEngine.

Please check it out here.

If you have any questions about the book and its code, you can use my support forum.