I'm trying my hand at making a platform game and have been thinking about what I would use to design levels.
I was thinking of using a tile palette that would contain the graphic tiles and their properties. And a similar palette that would contain sprites.
This way I could drag and drop tiles/sprites onto a grid and specify property values. This could all be saved to some kind of file that would be read by the game.
Without getting too into the details, is this a sound overall strategy? Is there anything major that I'm forgetting? Or perhaps there's a better method?
This is a rather open-ended question, but I don't think there is anything wrong with your approach. You might have to try a few things to find out what works for you.
When I make platform games I find it useful to be able to edit levels while I'm playing them, by adding in code to the game which allows me to select a graphic tile from a palette and paint it onto the screen. The behaviour is usually linked to the graphic for my games but you could paint behaviour as well. You then need code for your game to save levels as well as load them. Obviously, you would probably want to remove the editor before releasing the game.
I don't know how much experience you have with game dev, but if you're thinking about making a tile-based platform game then your best bet is leveraging existing libraries/tools to avoid "re-inventing the wheel". I highly suggest looking into open source libraries/tools because you can modify them to your liking. I've had some good experience with libgdx and AndEngine in which case both have TMX support which is a file format that can be used in conjunction with Tiled map editor. I personally like libgdx because it has javadoc and very actively developed, and also that it's a framework rather than engine which gives you more flexibility (although more coding in some aspects).
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What would be the best way to do a 2D Avatar Creator without using an game engine (ie. Unity)?
The avatar images will be a basic body and placing different images for the different body parts - head, body, legs, arms, etc. Layer the different images on top of the base image.
Can this be achieved in a regular Android app without using any sort of a game engine? Are there any libraries like this already done?
For a 2D Avatar Creator, using a game engine for a job like that seems overkill (a library might be too much as well).
Coding it from scratch is much simpler than having to deal with a bunch of unnecessary tools that at the end of the day just take space. Also, it is much more efficient, as you only code the bits you need.
Because you want to make this app for android, I'd recommed doing so using the official Android SDK. It includes Eclipse (a very nice IDE as well as the most popular) so no need to worry on what else to download.
This SDK requires you to use Java (If you haven't learned this language yet then do so. It's probably the best and only language you'll need to know).
So, for a personal project, I'm trying to make an app that helps newcomers get used to the school quickly. And for one section of it, I'm trying to build a 3D Structure, in a shape of my school campus, with lables incidating where the rooms are, so when the using searches for specific rooms, they can easily find it. So, It would be like from one activity, when I click a button, it opens a new activity with a search bar on the top, and the rest of the screen a 3d image people can navigate through. What's a way I can accomplish this?
I know that the structure part can be accomplished with Unity, which I haven't learned but have an idea of what it is, but I don't know how to build the rest of the app with Unity.. So..
You probably want to start with designing the model (structure) in some-kind of modeling program, Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, Blender, etc... (Personally I recommend using Blender since it's free and open source). Then you would want to export it to some 3D model format, I recommend using .obj since it is very human-readable and easy to parse on your own, but you can use some other format and parse it using a library.
Now comes the more difficult part and it's to render the loaded model onto the screen. This can be accomplished with OpenGL ES or a more highlevel library which can abstract it for you. If you're not familiar with OpenGL ES or OpenGL in general, I wouldn't recommend using it since it may take some time to learn. There are few libraries out there which can render 3D models pretty easily. Now you should probably create some-kind of a controllable camera as well so you can use it to navigate through the model.
This maybe looks like a lot of work but if you already familiar with computer 3D graphics it can ease it up for you.
Well, you can make a 3d model of your school using Blender (which is a free tool, but will almost certainly be a lot of work). Export the model as a mesh which you can insert into your app as an asset or resource. Read the resource and present it using (probably) opengl. This is a SUPER high level view, in actual fact there's quite a lot of work in each stage. Some third party libraries can make it a little easier, but it will still be a big job. I personally like libgdx for abstracting the pain of opengl, but that's just my personal opinion.
It's a big job, but would be super cool .. good luck!
I recommend starting off with building the structure in a program like Blender, Maja or 3ds Max. You can export your projects from those programs to pretty much any game engine and it makes more sense to build things in one of those programs.
Once you're done with that you can choose which engine you want to use to add the search function, if unity or Unreal or whatever but either way you're going to need to make yourself familiar with java or c to add the search function.
I recommend to use blueprints of building if available, it will save you a loads of nerves. Use it as a material texture and place it on a plane polygon to get a good lining helper.
If you do use Unity for development then try Maya for polygonal modeling. At least they are looking similar to each other whereas 3DSMax is always a mind f*cking experience.
This may be a duplicate question, but none of the questions I found were exactly what I had in mind.
A friend and I want to create an App that lets the user play around with 3D objects on the screen. My friend is creating the objects and the animations in Blender or Maya. Therefore, the possible animations will be preset (not being programmatically animated). I have no experience in 3D programming and I naively suggested that he render the animations in Blender and send me all the frames. I would then play the appropriate animation by quickly running through all the frames. Each animation would leave the object in its original position so that it would be ready for the next animation.
Now that I've been thinking about it, that's a lot of images that I have to store in order to make this work. For every object, I would need to have all its frames for all of its animations, which maybe overkill.
Is there another way to play animations in an Android app? I considered just saving the animations as videos and playing them, but that would look horrible for our purpose.
I'd suggest min3D
Take a look at the animated troll example they have.
There are a lot of 3D libraries for Android. I would recommend AndEngine. Alternatively, you can just use the native OpenGL compatibility. Instead, ask him to send you the actual 3D files. Then you can use a library to render them.
EDIT: I just found this link. It'll probably help you. In my opinion, you should go through it and learn the whole package instead of just glancing a bit for this one little project; it'll help in the future.
Yes, there is a way you can manupulate the models you created in Blender. here is an example which uses Open GL in android to animate a 3D model created in Blender Check This Video Out. However it animates the object programatically, frame animation is indeed not worth if you wanna create animations that are long as you will run out of memory quick.
I would like to develop or use an existing platform that will allow me to view custom vector data and use it as a map on mobile phones such as Android/IPhone (Maybe even WP7).
I'm hoping that there's already a good infrastructure for what I need so I would not need to develop a whole infrastructure by myself.
In Conclusion -
Is there any existing platform that may answer my needs?
If not, how would you guys suggest I should begin? How should I save my vector data? How could I read it? Should I view it with a graphics engine like OpenGL? Is there any chance this solution could be cross-platform?
I know that it's possible since it was already done with apps like Waze. And it works the same on iOS and Android.
Thanks!
After much research I found a solution that fits most of my needs.
At the moment I decided to go on Android only so I'm using AndEngine (In the future I guess it would be pure OpenGL).
AndEngine can read .svg files and turn them into PNGs at runtime, and also has a built in support for ZoomCamera which allows me to pan and zoom the map very easily.
I'm converting the SVG to PNG because apparently mobile devices do not have a very good anti-aliasing support, and rendering curved paths can also be a problem.
I am an android development beginner with some experience in other object oriented languages like java, python, c#. So I have created various games before in Java, using buffers and graphics to draw lines and stuff. How do I do that stuff in android? I looked at some online guides, and they all seem to create a class to extend a View object, and the class will overrule the onDraw method, where they can cause the Canvas or something to draw a line.
But what if you want to draw a line based on user input? That method wouldn't work then would it?
For example, what is the simplest code for which I could draw a circle where the user touches the screen?
Also, i was wondering what books people would reccomend for beginners, especially one that includes stuff on graphics? I user the developer site for android, but I feel a book would also help a lot to understand android? Any suggestoins?
Thank you for your time, I greatly appreciate it!
There you go, this book is definitely what you need to read: http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Android-Media-Developing-Smartphones/dp/1430232676
what is the simplest code for which I could draw a circle where the user touches the screen?
Either use SurfaceView to draw or create a custom View handling onDraw() and onTouch()
Here is a suggestion ... load the API Demos app into Eclipse and explore the Graphics demo source code. There are a large number of graphics demos.
To load the API Demos app, in Eclipse click File > New > Other > Android Sample Project.
Then select your build target such as Android 4.2.
Then from the list of sample apps select the API Demos app.
And finally click Finish.
There are over 300 demos in the app, so it can be difficult to navigate. You want to look in the Graphics section.
"Android 2D Graphics with Canvas API" by Yevgen Karpenko is pretty good for beginners.
It explains basic concepts like coordinate systems and transformations, shows how to work with text and use different graphics primitives (lines, paths, circles, etc.). It also shows how to use multiple threads in graphics apps.
Below is the link for eBook version on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Android-Graphics-Canvas-API-ebook/dp/B00DKIAVK8/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374420538&sr=1-8&keywords=android+2d