Reliabit

Well, time for a website refresh -- the flat look.

Small operation here and I've been going with the Sandvox tools. Seems to be working….

I've tested  Rollerz on the iPod 5 today. There were some more issues but the game is now working with the 4 inch display.  These fixes will address issues with iPhone 5 too because it has the same screen dimensions.

Locally, the iPod 5 has been in the store for two days. The store was sold out of black and white color models. I opted for blue. :) 

All the other games appear to be compatible.

I really like the lightning connector on the device. When developing you upload to the device all the time. It feels almost instantaneous. The ear buds are much better too. Another surprising aspect is how light the device is.

So many devices to test these days…iPad 1,iPad 2, iPad 3, iPod 2, iPod 3, iPod 4, and iPod5. And throw in a phone or two. The situation is starting to get the pc video card feel. Still its better than dealing with ati and nvidia video card differences and permutations.

Its been a busy day preparing for iOS 6 which comes out on September 19th. Frankly, I thought things were going to go more smoothly.

Now that I have the gold master for Xcode and the gold master for iOS 6, I've done some regression testing.

It appears there are two serious issues with Emerald Run and Rollerz. The fist has to do with shader validation. The validation method changed! So, there was a validation failure. This issue has been corrected. But it would result in the game not drawing. That is black screen. Apple recommends removing shader validation in released code.

The second issue that has been addressed is view rotations. There is a different methodology doing this on iOS 6. Emerald Run had problems with screen rotation on iOS 6. This has been corrected. Rollerz uses storyboards which appear to have dodged this issues.

Another issue is Xcode 4.5 supports a minimum of iOS 4.3. So, Emerald Run users will now have to have at least iOS 4.3 to run the latest and greatest Emerald Run. Moreover, the new Xcode does not even build for the old armv6 anymore. Though, there is now a new build architecture option of armv7s specifically for iPhone 5.

I've initially finished a game called Rollerz. I submitted the app to the store.

The game is real simple. Rolling stones orbit the center stone. You need to collect all the blue gems on the board. When the collection is complete, then the center stone turns green. You need to goto the center and touch the green stone to advance. Each level the stones roll faster. There are some bonus levels with robot fights etc. Occasionally, a UFO will land in the center of the board and throw you off -- it can be hard to run away because of the moving stones.

Lots of new technical features in this game compared to my previous games. The main focus is character animation. The player and the robot models are animated with bones and weight maps. Also, there are different takes. If you double tap the main player character will kneel. When I replaced the input model format with dae, I get all the character animation data too. Before, I was reading in obj files which are only static but very compatible. The modeling programs I use do not export multiple takes with dae. So, I have to paste the extra takes into the dae file by hand when needed.

Been focused on creating my next game and have not had much time to blog post. Things are moving along. I have not gotten to that point yet were one can see the end of the tunnel. But it does feel like I'm in half way done land.

There is going to be an Emerald Run update, though. I'd consider it a minor maintenance update. I want to put in some changes to prepare ( as much as I can at this point ) for the anticipated iPad 3. Added a few minor graphics tweaks. Also, it will be built using the new Xcode 4.3 tools.

iPad 2 players its your lucky day ! I have enabled OpenGL ES 2 graphics on iPad 2. The OpenGL ES 2 switch is enabled after the update. You will now see wind effects on the trees, shadows, enhanced water and bump mapping. If you do not like the new look, you can always disable it and go back to the old graphics. The screen layout on all iPads has been updated too.

Speaking of wind effects, one thing I've always wanted to enhance is the pine tree leaves. The leaves now sway in the wind -- vertex shaders can be a wonderful thing. If you travel to the tops of hills, there are wind gust sounds. The trees also make pine needle sounds. It gives the environment an ambient feel.

The OpenAL sound model was adjusted and there is more of a roll off effect with distance sounds.

There are more particle effects when Spiders are destroyed. Purple sparks are emitted.

When the truck is moving on steep hills, it will kick loose debris and make additional sounds. Moreover, if you are lower on steep hills, the camera will elevate itself and the ground is not clipped.