Tutorials

Tutorial: Using luabind to integrate Lua with C/C++ (pt.1)

Last modified on 2011-08-22 18:02:04 GMT. 6 comments. Top.

For this iDevBlogADay post I will show you how I’m using luabind with iOS and what did I have to do in order to build it properly.

In the last article for iDevBlogADay, some libraries and options to integrate Lua to a Game/Game Engine where mentioned and even discussed a bit. Of the listed options, I ended up using luabind. Several people has asked me how does it work, and I pretend to cover the bases here. >Read more

Game Event handling – part 2

Last modified on 2011-08-22 18:02:22 GMT. 4 comments. Top.

Hello again fellow readers, this is the second part of the Game Event Handling series. In the last article we discussed what where Game Events, why are they important, and we ended up tossing-up a very simple yet not very effective (maybe effective enough for small games…) event handling system. On this second part, I would like to present a different and more flexible design.

The model that I presented previously, could work for small games but had issues if we where thinking about medium-large scale games. The design could also be improved to allow more flexibility and facilitate rapid prototyping, which is one of my main concerns.

It’s important to evaluate your own needs since extending and modifying the previous design, will add flexibility but it will come with the cost of more complexity in your game/engine code. >Read more

Game Event handling – part 1

Last modified on 2011-08-22 18:02:32 GMT. 5 comments. Top.

For this first post for iDevBlogAday (Finally !) I would like to talk about Event Handling in Games. Game Event handling is a commonly discussed issue, and there are several ways to tackle it. In the following series of articles I will talk about it, and will also show what I’ve learned from my own research on the subject.
It’s important to state that I’m not an expert and I’m always open to suggestions, so feel free to post your thoughts so we can all learn and share our ideas. >Read more

Tutorial: Using Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) in the iPhone

Last modified on 2010-07-27 05:51:38 GMT. 15 comments. Top.

This will be a rather short but useful tutorial where we will check out how to implement MSAA Anti-Aliasing on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. I will also showing a difference between using no anti-aliasing and using 4x anti-aliasing in the upcoming game that we are working on in Gando Games. ( Hex Reaction ).

So first, what impact does anti-alias have in a game?

Non anti-aliased screenshot of the game.

Using 4x Anti-Alias in-game

(You can click the images to expand them)

The screenshot to the left shows no anti-aliasing at all. Notice how the edges of the Hexagons look quite  jagged in contrast to the picture at the right where you can see that the hexagon edges are far smoother. I didin’t want that kind of “jagged” look for Hex Reaction, so I decided to aim for newer devices and use 4x Anti-Alias. I mention newer devices because anti-aliasing is nice but  it does use quite a bit of processing power, so iPhone 3GS up are able to handle it with no real problems, but it’s hard to get full performance using 4x anti-aliasing on an iPhone 3G.
>Read more

About pushing pixels for 2d game sprites

Last modified on 2010-05-27 21:39:35 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

To talk about Medium Sized Sprite (from now on MSS) animation and design  is not an easy task for me at all, because I don’t consider myself an expert in the subject. On the contrary, I’m still experimenting a lot to try to improve my results. But it is because of this reason that the following article could be useful for the people who is just starting out in Pixel Art, or even for veteran artists who could share their experience. I won’t pretend to write an all-around Game Pixel Art Style guide, but instead I will to try to present and discuss some issues that could result (and in my particular case, have been) very useful when designing pixel based sprites for games.
>Read more

Choosing a 2D Physics Game Engine

Last modified on 2010-05-20 17:25:07 GMT. 7 comments. Top.

Today I want to talk about a common issue among many indie/non indie developers. Deciding what third party library/engine to go with, in my particular case it was a 2D Physics engine, but the scope of the article will cover good tips that can help you to actually make your decision wether your are picking a JSON Parsing library, a Texture Loader, etc. ( You get the point )

Taking the correct decision is very important, an incorrectly chosen engine/library, can end up slowing you down quite a bit, thus frustrating you and your team. So you must do your best effort in order to make the correct choice. >Read more