eSpecialized Blog

Apple, and Microsoft have very long winded license agreements.  Apple’s has recently become more restrictive from what I understand, if you developed your iPhone app in torque 2d, or another game/app engine entirely and not in the XCode Objective C environment, then you may not meet the needs of the new license agreements for your app.  And you could end up denied.

I understand the want of this style.  Xcode gives the end developer full power over their app (including power consumption), which also includes how fast it draws, where as 3rd party engines do not.  3rd party engines would be less efficient than using native code, draw more battery power, and makes the devices look bad to the end user,  if you looked at my article on Battery life,  I have links there that show people whining and complaining they don’t get the battery life they think they should with games.

Long story short, you got to read those license agreements.  I read about Apples change in this months ‘iCreate’ magazine.  Now if the engine integrates into Xcode nativalely, I think those types are permitted,  ie Unity game engine is designed to stream line the drawn 3d scene,  it doesn’t interfere with Xcode (to my knowledge)..  I haven’t played with Unity so don’t quote me..

I’ve been working solidly for several months now.  Time to take a full day off.

Yesterday mom and dad came over with their iPad’s, iPod touches.  I was able to give them a preliminary build for the ipad and ipod.  Very kewl.. Mom got very excited about SudokuGeek and how great it looks on the iPad!

After they left, even though I shouldn’t have, I got the iPad version working just like the iPod version does.  I have yet to do the skybox, and menu system.. At the moment, Sudoku is completely playable on the iPod touch,iPhone,iPad systens.. This also includes MAC OSX and the PC OpenGL versions.

I have yet to finish upgrades to the XNA XBOX360 version. I plan to do that tomorrow and re-test and re-release it for play testing and then eventual submission.  The PC Version will follow tomorrow too with several worthy updates, it should be available for download by 5pm EST.

All in all, looks like my time making SudokuGeek is nearly complete for these platforms.

I’ve found the most difficult issue is with switching keyboard styles.  The iMac has the smaller style keyboard, which messes me up when switching back to the PC.

Cya everybody!

I got a Skybox test done in OpenGL on the Mac and PC.  I have yet to do it on the iPhone, I decided to move on to Fonts and drawing some text so I can get some menu stuff done before I finish my Sudokubase code (which makes games that are playable).

Basically in thinking it through before I stumbled across this tutorial, I was wondering if I would make a DirectX loader, that loaded separate materials and make the render code for it.  Because after all, a skybox is 6 different faces with diff textures.  But in looking, I found an easier Immediate mode draw routine.

http://sidvind.com/wiki/Skybox_tutorial

Basically this fits the bill, I wrapped it up in a DisplayList to ensure it runs faster.

MacOpenGL App:

I found out I had to load the identity matrix for the Mouse location to give proper Coordinates.

glGetDoublev(GL_PROJECTION_MATRIX,proj); // get matrix
glLoadIdentity();
glGetDoublev(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX,model);
glGetIntegerv(GL_VIEWPORT,view);

gluUnProject(x,view[3]-y,0,model,proj,view,&nearx,&neary,&nearz); // get coords
gluUnProject(x,view[3]-y,1,model,proj,view,&farx,&fary,&farz);

//finally there was also, which of these is the Start Coordinates?

start.x = nearx;
start.y = neary;
start.z = nearz;

//And its working.

So now I can test it out on the iPhone version.

I worked a good 8+ hours on figuring out this issue.. Seems stupid I know, but odd at the same time. I found a hint burried in another guys blog.

I have compressed textures, and when I use Immediate mode commands to draw anything, the textures all render properly.  BUT when I use glDrawElements, or glDrawArray,  the texture is a stretched row1 of the graphic I used.. Almost like a bug.

Anyway, part of the testing was to take the Win32 version and re-implement on the Mac. I had the same result, which meant it was my code, not a bug in OpenGL.

Part of my problem may also be I am using DirectX Ready Models in OpenGL. So the texture coordinates are different..

http://objectmix.com/graphics/136570-glcompressedteximage2d-glbindtexture.html
that guy talks about setting texture settings right after glBindTexture command.. And Ahhh, it works now!

glTexParameterf( GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_REPEAT );
glTexParameterf( GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_REPEAT );

Once I have that after binding the next texture, it shows the cubes on screen just like before.

and here is the fixed version

Essentially, on the iPhone it saves the texture state in OpenGL 1.1.  On other platforms, be prepared to re-assert them after every glBindTexture command.