Reliabit

Been busy enabling my toolkit to work with OpenGL ES 2. The goal is, if the program detects OpenGL ES 2, then viola you have shaders. I figure many a developer are going down this path. Its a good bridge to iPad and back to the Mac -- especially iPad because the hardware from the get go is going to be ES 2 enabled.

I've been down this road with OpenGL 2.x but going from ES 1 to ES 2 is a much more rocky proposition. Yet, its more rewarding, if you can pull it off. It feels like going from OpenGL 1.x to OpenGL 3.x.

The two difficult parts seem to be replacing the matrix stack operations ( glPushMatrix etc. ) and then integrating vbo with the shaders. uniforms are pretty obvious. Though, attributes need to be set before the program link.

The matrix stuff is straight forward unless you run into a math issue. Math is unforgiving. But its a good review. In the long run, it would appear spinning your own matrix stack operations might lead to some nice optimizations. One thing to look out for is all the man pages are column major when they show matricies. So, you have to do a transpose, if you pass your 4x4 matrix to OpenGL. eg. glLoadMatrixf ( matrix[0] ) ...

The curve with the vbo stuff is glNormalPointer, glVertexPointer and glTexCoordPointer go away and are replaced with glVertexAttribPointer. That is different from OpenGL 2.x.  Also, I was not packing my structure right under gcc which created all sorts of fun with attribute buffer offsets. gcc does not recognize pragma pack apparently.

I like to standardize on uniform names. In the long run, I'll build up a library of shaders. So, picking consistent names is an action item early on. Another interesting thing is that shaders can be made binary. A rule of  thumb on shaders is to limit setting uniforms as much as possible. So, I plan not to generalize my shaders. That is hardcode the colors and as much stuff into shaders as possible -- or just set the uniform once right after the compile. This can be a big issue on the Mac because you want to avoid the cpu talking to card as much as possible.

Not sure OpenGL Shader Builder in the development tools works consistently with essl ( the OpenGL ES equivalent to OpenGL glsl ). Though, I hear Apple is doing a major upgrade to OpenGL 3.x. I bet this will make things work better with OpenGL ES 2 -- Mac desktop simulator and tools. Maybe the next  OpenGL Shader Builder will work. Shader tools on the Mac have always been lacking. No Render Monkey etc. Maybe with iPhone so prominent its time for people to get serious about shader related tools on the Mac.

Looks like you cannot have floating point fbos according to books I've been reading on ES 2. But you can have render to depth which is going to be important for shadowmaps. Since there is no floating point fbo, then ping pongs are going to be limited and you'll get aliasing.

Another difference appears that in ES 2 you have to use shaders. Where as, in Opengl 2.x you could switch between the old fixed pipeline stuff and the shader stuff. So, fixed pipeline really is gone in ES 2.

Much more to do .... all disclaimers apply. Fortunately, there are many similarities between OpenGL ES 2 and plain old OpenGL 2.x.

Not quite enough for any screenshots yet. But good progress so far. Think the most difficult goals in this process have been achieved.

Today, I submitted the next Sea Assault update. Its rather close to the last update but I want to make sure the version tested with iPad simulator is released. 

I spruced up explosions more and added more sparks to the game. When the helicopter and turrets fire they emit some smoke too. Fixed some other depth kinks with particles that were present in the last version.

To help with ground targets, I added a small red targeting line. This makes it easier to hit ground targets or at least to know where the shots are going to hit when you fire at the ground.

There is a transition animated effect going into and out of game view which is a nice use of Cocoa Touch -- similar to the recent Ant Planet change.

I notice that clicking on links to the iTunes store will also bring up a web page. This is nice because now everyone on the web can see what is available on the store. It use to work only with the iTunes program.

I've been working this weekend on getting all three games working on the iPad simulator. I can't give much detail about the specifics because there is beta software developer restrictions. But I will say that the games will work on the iPad. Sea Assault and Ant Planet will have one update to correct some technical issues -- I've already done the fixes. These updates will ensure the iphone/ipod games work on the iPad. They will not add any specific iPad functionality. As Apple demonstrated in public, you will be able to launch the iPhone/iPod based game and there will be a 2x button to enlarge the game's view.

Before the previously described iPad oriented updates, there is a Sea Assault update that fixes some minor issues with the last release and uses point sprites rather than quads for particles.

So, there are three updates in the next 60 days coming down the pipe. I recall from when iPone OS 3.0 came out, there was quite a jam to get updates out. I want to get ahead of the curve this time. I also remember from the 3.0 release, that the store put a check box up to verify that you have tested it on 3.0 -- I wonder if that will happen with iPad too.

Fortunately, I have another disk partition to install the beta software on. I see people getting tripped up like last time when they overwrite their tools with beta software and find out they cannot publish to the store!

I've been a busy bee this weekend.

It makes no sense for a helicopter to shoot a jet with a cannon. First, jets are faster than helicopters. Lining up the cannon was near impossible. You can still try with the cannon but there is another way now.

Enter a new feature. I'll call it a laser tracker. If you have missiles on, then the laser tracker will target the closest jet for a guided missile. The jet has to be visible and close to track. If there is no laser tracker then the missile has the default unguided behavior. So, the player has to stay up with the jet target which is the challenge.  It also makes jets interfere, if you are targeting ground objects -- jets have a reason to be in the game besides flying in circles.

And this jet gets hit by a missile. Nice.

I added orange dots to the radar to show jet positions. Also, a purple square will show up in radar for enemy missiles too. Jets really fill out the space between the islands.

The jets now fire a cannon directly forward sometimes when they show up in the visible view. So, don't get directly in front of a jet. The jet might shoot you first before it runs into you!

The trade off with the jets is chasing them can waste gas and each missile costs 5 points. But its generally a profitable operation.

I resubmitted with these changes too. That should be it for this update! On a roll. Btw, all updates are free to current customers.

I added improvements and bug fixes to Sea Assault.

First, there is a new dialog view for when the player lands on the base. Now the player can choose more specifically fuel and missile amounts. It does not auto-calculate the amount anymore. I think that might have confused people and I want to make it more clear. 

note: updated text format for supply store. 1/9/10

I added recon jets to the game. The jets fly in circles around the world and can get in the way. They are difficult to shoot. This adds some activity when flying between the islands. You can bump into them too and it could be a problem, if your dodging stuff around the islands.

There are some other minor improvements. But the supply dialog, vertical movement and the jets are the big items  for this update.

Minor update to Ant Planet today. The update tweaks game controls, improves background obstacle placements and fixes some other minor issues. Typically, updates take roughly two weeks for the store to process.

Update: it looks like it took 4 days for the update to process this time! Now that Apple does not show updates on the phone's new release lists there is less congestion in the store to update apps.