Maemo-SDK+

And thats why it rocks. Without SDK+, this image would be impossible without faking.

some good news around the street corner…

I will only post this picture those pictures right now and you will figure it out. Later I will explain more and lay down my plans for the next months…

To Banshee, Newbie_X11 and Thanatos: Yeah..im giving in! Its about fucking time! Let the texture mapping begin.

To everyone else: both experiments are still VERY early and currently unusable. The texture mapping is mostly a very insecure code (handling video memory directly) and very inneficient. Im tweaking as much as I can. Im still trying to figure out how to do floor and ceiling textures fast.

The multiplayer code already be obtained @ SVN,but is very unfriendly and not very useful. Right now, all it does it sync both players on the map, but doesnt handle game logic at all.

I sincerely dont know how long will it take to finish this, as now Im working (as a intern) at Nano Games (hoohay! gone pro!) and we’re developing some really cool games (after all, I would only join a company if I really like their games).

There is a third experiment that I might post here around the weekend…who knows?

Angstron 2 released!

Among changes are bug fixes and major revamp and the levels and graphics. Please check it out @ http://batterypoweredgames.blogspot.com/2009/07/angstron-2-droid-hunter-release.html

BTW, I entered the GPC 08 indie game competition with Angstron 2 on mobile games category. Let the best win.

Angstron 2 – finishing touches

UPDATE: wanna try this? so follow this link - http://batterypoweredgames.blogspot.com/2009/05/angstron-2-droid-hunter-beta-test-2.html

Finishing the last debugging, improving speed (for the first time, Im quite satisfied with most of the game speed. but level 3 is still my concern) and – to my shock – solving some plataform specific issues:

- Sound in maemo. I dont know whats wrong, but the sounds is not working with the 770. I will look over the old angstron1 code @ garage to see whats wrong…

- Memory footprint in EZX. The A1200i handle the first two levels graciously, but the game dies when loading the third, after a lot of time loading.

- Also on EZX: The chapter screens need some serious re-work .Ok, they need some re-work on all plataforms, but on EZX  its far worse.

- And finally, on EZX, I dont seem to get the icons working on the menu again. I had it working in the past. I dont know whats wrong now.

For desktop PC and EeePC  everything is fairly done.

And now, some teasers!

My plans is to have the game finished and released for the Rio Game Show 2009

Nokia Ovi store – Maemo left out

** update: with N900 coming fast now, It is most likely that Maemo5 will be supported in Ovi Store very soon…

 

Nokia Mosh was a great distribution channel for me. It had a great Maemo support and was a great hub for making my games available. Now I just logged in to Ovi to fill my registration. Its not that the 770 is old…Its Maemo that is not persona-non-grata in Ovi. There’s no sign of N800 and N810 in the device matrix.  This is quite annoying, since even mom’s crappy phone is in there…

Maybe the finns are about something here…

The Tags: I filled it under “defective-by-design” and “phallacy”, but I hope they have something better up their sleeves for us. Lets pray that I filled the tags wrong.

Angstron 2: Droid Hunter finished-almost

UPDATE: ITS FINISHED!!! http://corporatedrones.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/angstron-2-released/

Hello folks.

I guess I’ve finished all the ingame  assets for Angstron 2: droid hunter. Sure the render is not ready for prime time (but it does perform decently in most cases), but this is a matter of time.  In any case, I’ve got a OpenGL version of it fully working and a OpenGL ES version is on the way.

My previous decision of scrapping level 2 was aborted (hence you will see the horde of morcegos in all its glory), but almost all the levels need some better POV-BSP-prunning during rendering before shipping. There are several points with some minor visible artifacts , some culling errors here and there and a few slowdown spots. While for a freeware game where there’s no compromise, I cant simply allow this to be released.

The game play remained unchanged from the previous beta releases, with some adjustiments still to be made.

The 2D artwork is seriously faulty and in need to be re-drawn. This is going to be a looong paper-and-pencil-than-flatbed-scanner-then-inkscape process. Dont hold your breath.

The game was somewhat delayed due to my lack of luck with UNIX this last weekend (http://corporatedrones.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/solaris-ubuntu-xandros-eeepc-problemas-meu-dia-de-azar-com-unix/)

The release will reach both Maemo 2.2 and the upcoming Maemo 5 (“fremantle”, powered by hardware acelerated OpenGL ES!), EZX , EeePC (this time, with a better packaging system, from the official SDK!)  and desktop linux.

Maemo 5

I, for one, welcome our new OpenGL ES-powered Internet Tablet overlords!

Im about to install the new experimental SDK (just right beside Gregale) and start playing with this OpenGL ES thing. I hope to make a special BZK fork to play nice with it and render some cool and fast graphics.  Future looks promissing.

BZK for EZX – finally!

UPDATE: wanna try this? so follow this link – http://batterypoweredgames.blogspot.com/2009/05/angstron-2-droid-hunter-beta-test-2.html

After the last (portuguese only, sorry) post on how to configure a SDL toolchain for EZX phones (at least A1200 motoming) and some hard effort and tweaking, I could finally build and try some BZK games on my phone. The results are quite surprising:

- Angstron : Slow. Slower than the first build for N770! tested with -O3, but with full depth processing and lightning

- Riddler: Suprisingly, faster than Angstron! Actually , playable! Still need some love on screen resolution, as the text doesnt fit all in the screen. Gourgeous!

- Angstron 2: droid hunter – tested only level 2 ( the best thing I have in terms of finishing, with some few textures in place, one moving enemy and some good lightning). Not the fastest thing on earth, but playable. Will need some more usability thinking…

From now on, Im just aiming for two more plataforms: OpenMoko and Google’s NativeClient. First is fairly obvious, as it seems the most neutral plataform (while I dont like its UI at all. I guess I will always be a Maemo fanboy) , while I’ve never tried compiling anything for it and only ran it once, booting on my A1200 via USB and loading the system from the MicroSD.

On the other hand NativeClient will probably be available for Android (I hope so!) and thus, its a good veichle for this “java-only” phone.  Even if it dont make into Android, NativeClient is a very cool plataform to support.

And now, some screenshots!

Space partitioning revisited

And this time, I got it working fully!
And it is whooping fast. A level that would require 4135 sectors to be correctly rendered now only takes 272 sectors and renders much faster.

sample picture:

What this means for the project?
This means I can achieve BZK’s full modeling potential and create great maps. Creating maps from voxel is still available, of course, but this kind of resource is only a good option (in fact, the best option) for fast prototyping.

Im also VERY thrilled to announce that Angstron2 is going to happen on Maemo! This BSP compiling improvement allowed the engine to properly render complex levels in a aceptable speed on the 770. Stay tuned!

riddler video footage

this video shows Riddler running on a Maemo device, N770:

you will have to wait a while before I do the final adjustments before I release a Maemo version of the game.

wanna try? http://rapidshare.com/files/156567784/testmaemo_riddler.zip.html

(put the “storage” directory on /media/mmc1)