growlgamesstudio-blog

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holy crap a whole triangle in #iOSMetal for the #iOS8 game developement. Stay tuned for more updates. 

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Evolution of a 3D scene in SceneKit. 

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Monster run animation for https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/learning-ios-8-game-development … … for  making 3D game using #Scenekit #screenshotsaturday 

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Finished chapter 8 of https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/learning-ios-8-game-development … … for making 3D game using #Scenekit #screenshotsaturday 

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Scenekit Chapter Done

Finished chapter 8 of https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/learning-ios-8-game-development … … for making 3D game using #Scenekit #screenshotsaturday 

Enjoy!. I am still thinking of adding a small section on shaders. Lets see. The budged for the chapter is 30 pages. I already have feeling that I will be over shooting a bit. :D 

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So, finally i ported the book code to version 3.3. I must say that 3.3 works amazingly well. There are no stutters as the graphics has been updated from the ground up. I tested with 20 particles on the screen on the lumia 820 and it works flawlessly.

The book can be purchased here: https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/learning-cocos2d-x-game-development.

The updated source for version 3.3 can be downloaded from the github here: https://github.com/sidshekar/cc2dx33_wp8Game

I deleted the cocos2d folder in the project so create a new 3.3 project and replace the Classes and Resources folder and run the project. For Universal app you need Visual Studio Community or Pro with update 3 or above. To run on the device win sdk 8.1 is required.

I will also write a small blog on the changes I have to make it work, but honestly it is not much. You will see. In the mean time go through the code and enjoy.

:)

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Animation in Cocos2d-x Packt Blog

Here is the small excerpt from the my book Learning Cocos2d-x Game Development. In this blog the chapter covered in Animation is shown. I go through Spritesheet and Skeletal Based Animation using Texture Packer and Spine. 

If you like the article you can get the book here: https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/learning-cocos2d-x-game-development

This is the link to the article itself: https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/animations-cocos2d-x

Enjoy :)

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Spine Cocos2d-x animation test using state machine.

Something I was testing in the spare time.

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Got a bit of time to work on the update to the code of the my book "Learning Cocos2d-x Game Development ". It was originally written in 2.2.3. I think 3.x is finally getting around and showing some luv for windows phone. 

Worked on the main and options menu today. Will probably have the full ported in about a week. Will put the code on github (with consent from packt obviously) once its done.

It Will Include working with tools like:Spine, Texture Packer, Glyph Designer and Particle Designer. The book also provides cross platform solutions for tools which are platform specific.

So stay tuned. Here is a sneak peak. 

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Released Santa's Savour for Android FREE FREE FREE

After a whole year I finally released Santa's Saviour for Android. It supports Leaderboards, Facebook, Twitter and easy share. Enjoy this Christamas with Santa's Saviour.

Download from google play store https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.growlgamesstudio.santassaviour&hl=en

Also Available on iOS Store

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/santas-saviour/id765424587?mt=8

The Story:

Santa's Saviour is an action arcade game in which It is that time of the year again. Santa is getting nightmares that he wont be able to deliver the gifts to everyone. Help him by not missing any of the houses, deliver the gifts and avoid the black ornaments. Save Santa Save Christmas.

Features:

Ready for Nexus6 and Lollipop Over 10 different types of obstacles. More than 80 different pattern formations. Completely randomized patterns for endless fun. No power-ups or speed boosts. Just pure skills. Compete with friends on Leaderboard for Longest Distance. Share your highscore on facebook and twitter More updates coming soon with more shapes and patterns.

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Windows Developer Lifetime Membership

Well. This is some good new. You dont have to renew your windows store or windows phone store membership ever.

If you have payed once you will be a member forever and your apps will be on the app store for lifetime.

I just went into the dashboard/accounts and info and saw the following screenshot with Glee :).

  All the more reason to buy my book "Learning Cocos2d-x Game Development" as it shows you how to create a windows phone game from scratch and upload it on the windows phone store. 

You can check out the sample preview of the first chapter showing how to setup Cocos2d-x for the windows desktop environment and purchase it from the link below.

https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/learning-cocos2d-x-game-development.

And since Cocos2d-x is cross platform, I also show to build the same project on iOS, Android, Windows Desktop and Blackberry.  

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How to loading from Custom SCNScene Class?

I have been testing out SceneKit for a couple of days as it will be included in the book on iOS 8 Game Development.

Almost all the tutorials show how to modify the code that is already present in the ViewController class. Although that is fine but I wanted to see how we can create a separate SCNScene class and include all the code that is there in the viewDidLoad() function.

So far I have been quite successful in loading the scene from a class. Lets see how to do it.

I created a new Swift file called testScene.swift and included

import Foundation

import UIKit

import SceneKit

I inherited from the SCNScene class and added a custom init function that took in a view of type UIView. In it I pasted all the code from the viewDidLoad function as below.

    init(view: UIView) {

                 super.init()

                 scnView = view as SCNView

                 // create a new scene

        let scene = SCNScene(named: "art.scnassets/ship.dae")!

                 //let scene = SCNScene()

                 // retrieve the SCNView

        scnView.scene = scene

        scnView.allowsCameraControl = true

        scnView.showsStatistics = true

        scnView.backgroundColor = UIColor.redColor()

                          // create and add a camera to the scene

        let cameraNode = SCNNode()

        cameraNode.camera = SCNCamera()

        scene.rootNode.addChildNode(cameraNode)

                 // place the camera

        cameraNode.position = SCNVector3(x: 0, y: 0, z: 15)

                 // create and add a light to the scene

        let lightNode = SCNNode()

        lightNode.light = SCNLight()

        lightNode.light!.type = SCNLightTypeOmni

        lightNode.position = SCNVector3(x: 0, y: 10, z: 10)

        scene.rootNode.addChildNode(lightNode)

                 // create and add an ambient light to the scene

        let ambientLightNode = SCNNode()

        ambientLightNode.light = SCNLight()

        ambientLightNode.light!.type = SCNLightTypeAmbient

        ambientLightNode.light!.color = UIColor.darkGrayColor()

        scene.rootNode.addChildNode(ambientLightNode)

                 // retrieve the ship node

        let ship = scene.rootNode.childNodeWithName("ship", recursively: true)!

        ship.runAction(SCNAction.repeatActionForever(SCNAction.rotateByX(0, y: 2, z: 0, duration: 1)))

                 let sphereGeometry = SCNSphere(radius: 1.0)

        sphereGeometry.firstMaterial?.diffuse.contents = UIColor.orangeColor()

        let sphereNode = SCNNode(geometry: sphereGeometry)

        scene.rootNode.addChildNode(sphereNode)     

            }

You also need to include the required init function as below.

    required init(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {

        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")

    }

   After the class declaration create a new global variable for the view to be stored in.

let scnView: SCNView!

And that is all. Now go to the GameViewController class and add the following code.

testScene(view:self.view)

Build to see the result.

If you have any improvements or suggestions do let me know.

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Shader Effects in Cocos2d-x

Past couple of days I have been fiddling around with shaders in Cocos2d-x. Mainly with the fragment/ pixel shaders. Here are some of the effects I was able to reproduce.

Hmm..... I will put up a montage video of it on my U-tube channel so that you can see it in action. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-vepmkd5SA&list=UU29UWKW8t0horAiXh93mXzg

:)

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Shaders in Cocos2d-x 2.2.x

This is a redo of the shader example in the Cocos2d-x forum done for 3.0. I have converted the code from 3.0 to 2.x.x.

Grab the fsh and vsh files from the original post. LInk is provided below

http://discuss.cocos2d-x.org/t/how-to-use-opengl-shader-in-cocos2d-x3-0/12430

So, in you HelloWorlsScene.h add

void shadeGray(CCSprite*);

We will use this function to pass CCSprite into it and convert it to greyscale

Now in HelloWorldScene.cpp add the following funciton

void HelloWorld::shadeGray(CCSprite* sprite)

{

    if(sprite)

    {

// create new program

        CCGLProgram* p = new CCGLProgram();

//initialize with the vertex and pixel shader files        

p->initWithVertexShaderFilename("gray.vsh", "gray.fsh");

        //bind the NamePosition, Color and Texture Coordinates attributes

        p->addAttribute(kCCAttributeNamePosition, kCCVertexAttrib_Position);

        p->addAttribute(kCCAttributeNameColor, kCCVertexAttrib_Color);

        p->addAttribute(kCCAttributeNameTexCoord, kCCVertexAttrib_TexCoords);

         // link the pixel shader and vertex shader       

        p->link();

//AS it says updates uniforms

        p->updateUniforms();

        sprite->setShaderProgram(p);

    }

     }

And finally before return true; in the init function add the follwing

   shadeGray(pSprite);

Here you are just passing the sprite to the function.

Run and enjoy the greyscale shader 

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Learning Cocos2d-x Game Development Book

Finally the book details for the book I am writing on game development for cocos2d-x is available at PackT's website.

Check it out ...

http://www.packtpub.com/learning-cocos2dx-game-development/book

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Fix for background playing even after closing game [cocos2d-x] in WP8

In Cocos2d-x 2.2.4 there is a bug where on windows phone 8 even after closing the game the background music will start playing after 10~15 seconds. 

This how you go about fixing it.

Go to cocos2dRenderer.cpp find the Disconnect() method. write this line in the method

mApp->applicationDidEnterBackground();

and similarly call the following line in CreateGLResources(); function

//this is a correction according to the original it is didEnter but it is actually willEnter. But otherwise works fine mApp->applicationWillEnterForeground();

Hope this will solve your problem. Best of luck.

The original post can be found here.

 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24182447/windows-phone-8-port-on-cocos2d-x

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pizZap Mania Lite - Making of the Free ios Game

Hi all, this is my first full fledged post on the blog. Otherwise I just post videos from youtube and images from recent projects and stuff. Till now all the post were either from projects that I did while staying at the game development course I had taken. This for the first time is the post about a game I had actually made and uploaded on to the app store ( well it is not exactly the first... more on that later). But now I just would like to share my experience and the challenges I faced while making the game. So here goes.... So, I started working right after leaving my last co. where I was working as a game developer making flash games. But I had some experience in making games on the iOS using cocos2d. I had to learn objective - c to get the game working. But when I stated making this game I wanted to 2 things. 1. I should be comfortable with the language and 2. If I wanted I should be able to port this game to Android. So, I ended going with cocos2d-x. Since, I had experience with cocos2d I knew what I was getting myself into, and since I was good with c++ I could port objective -c codes if need be. The game is loosely based on the direct-X project I made where you had to deliver pizzas to houses in the numbered order in a specific time. Failing to do so would end the mission with a failure status. For art I used my favorite super hero of all time, Batman and for the obstacles I used the best Villain ever The Joker.  So the game was initially called Super Duper Pizza Delivery Boy. But it wasn't fun enough. In the sense that I couldn't add any fun mechanics in it which would make the game fun and unique. As halloween was approaching I thought, "Hey why not make a Halloween themed game" which led to thinking, "Why not make the character a Witch" and she could have this cool Zap mechanic where she zaps the obstacles. So, that is how the concept of zapping and Witch came into existence. I will continue next time on how I implemented the zap mechanic in cocos2d-x, how did I end up making the art and the sound by myself. In the process I will share some tips on how to make a completely independent game. The game can be downloaded from the iOS store: https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/pizzap-mania/id720086686?mt=8

here is the link to the Trailer: