I'm attempting to use libGDX to port an Android game which uses opengl es 2.0. Under libGDX the glDrawElements() routine seems to be broken on the PC, but works on Android. On the PC version the second parameter (number of vertices) gets ignored. When I comment the line using mFaceIndicesData.length and use 3 verts (1 face triangle), it still draws all faces on PC version, but only one face on Android version, as shown in images of each.
Yes I know libGDX is supposed to be used with libGDX calls, so please don't comment on that. I have an entire game engine and it is pretty complex. I prefer having control over the engine instead of figuring out some other engine, and I'm pretty sure it can do some things not supported under libGDX. Anyway I don't want to start all over from scratch. I'm just looking for a good way to port from Android to PC/IOS and libGDX seems like it might be a good choice.
import com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.GL20;
...
#Override
public void create() {
GLES20 = Gdx.gl20;
...
// Works on PC and Android
GLES20.glDrawElements(GL20.GL_TRIANGLES, mFaceIndicesData.length, GL20.GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, mIndices);
// Only works on Android. Not PC.
//GLES20.glDrawElements(GL20.GL_TRIANGLES, 3, GL20.GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, mIndices);
I posted the problem on the libgdx issues site. It has been confirmed as a bug and they are in the process of fixing it.
https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/issues/6618
Related
A friend of mine has developed an excellent game using the starling framework. He is now wondering if he could port the game to FirefoxOS before he launches. The game is written in actionscript 3 and the starling framework project can build mobile packages for android and ios. It also can generate the flash file for the web (using flash player). Are there any paths for porting the game to FirefoxOS?
Someone suggested using shumway. If you know about this way, or any other path, please give a bief account of advantages/disadvantages. I am specially concerned about the performance, since the game in question has very high quality graphics. I think it needs to run in a GPU accelerated environment.
EaselJS uses a similar syntax to ActionScript; it has a Display List, Stage, Graphics and even Filters, this will make working with the canvas easier for us Flash developers.
I suggest you to port that game to EaselJS and TweenJS (both from CreateJS), I have used it to develop games for Firefox OS and worked quite well.
An advantage is that CreateJS now uses a WebGL renderer, but it also has a fall back to Context2D rendering if WebGL is not available. That would make your device more widely supported.
You will find all its features very explained in the following post from Mozilla Hacks. It has also some cool benchmarks to try it.
WebGL and CreateJS for FirefoxOS
Is there any way which can be adopted, to create cross platform responsive mobile apps using Flash Builder ?
We are using our custom written Resigning Engine for this purpose right now, but we tend to replace it with any generic Resigning tool or to cater responsiveness for all kind of devices/platforms.
Being on the same cross platform development, i.e. Flex, Action Script and MXML, is there any solution for this?
Thanks
It's possible deploy Flex-apps on Mobile devices, see Mobile app development
at Adobe Devnet more details
You definitely can develop Android and iOS apps using Adobe Air, Flex, AS3, MXML and publish them on Apple App Store and Google Play Store. But it's limited to these platforms, and Adobe is very unlikely to add any new platform to this list.
Pros:
it's really cross-platform. Once your application works on one, it's really easy to get it working on the other; so the development cost compared to native applications is much lower;
you may have some OS specific features/design; using by example OS specific CSS directives;
You perfectly may create an app with a responsive design, all tools are provided, but like for HTML/CSS, it requires a lot of work;
you may access all phone features (sensors, camera, etc...) using Adobe Native Extensions
Cons:
the size of the generated application: as it includes the AIR runtime, even a very simple app will weight around 12 Mb (9 for the runtime + 2.5 for Flex);
the performances are correct but not as good as those of native apps; one of the reasons is that Flex does not allow to use GPU for rendering (but Flex is not a framework for creating games);
it would be costly to get an app looking like a native one, as you would have to mimic all of native components. There was a project to do this (Eskimo), but it looks dead, and the components were not polished enough to be used in production when they stopped the development;
Adobe Native Extensions offer is rather limited, and they are quite tricky to write; (these drawbacks are not strong ones: you can write extensions, assuming you know to write native code; and most of the common features are available as ANE);
like with any other cross-platform technology, there are a few issues that you can't fix by yourself; you just can wait for Adobe to fix them when it's a problem in the compiler or the AIR runtime; hopefully they follow a 3 months release cycle since they launched AIR on mobile;
it runs on Android 2.3+ devices only; and only devices that are matching the minimal requirements defined for the AIR runtime; that is to say, most of the smartphones and tablets, except cheap ones like ZTE products. When a device is not considered as powerful enough by adobe, the AIR based apps are not displayed in the stores.
Some recommendations:
The best way to organize your code is to create a project for each OS, with specifics assets (icons by example) and a specific manifest file (app.xml), and put all of your application code in a library used by these two projects. It will allow you to test your code (Flex mobile project can't be unit tested), and will avoid you permanent modifications of the manifest.
Worflow: it's usually faster to develop for Android, and then adapt you app for iOS, because it's faster to deploy and test on Android device (although you may use the Adobe Simulator most of the time).
Use the latest release of Apache Flex; it handles the high resolution devices. Forget Adobe's release (4.7 and lower)
Test quickly and often on mobile, especially for the responsive aspects.
Use FXG instead of bitmap graphics each time it's possible (i.e. if they arent animated); it's lighter and very easy to scale.
Mad Components
Alternatively, you may consider using Mad Components instead of Flex.
Flex was not designed for mobile at first; MC was. So it's faster (looks like native), and much lighter (although you still need the embedded AIR runtime which weights 9 Mb).
This month I started to play with Flash Builder because I don't have a mac to create native iPhone apps.
I have made a Flex Mobile Project and an AS3 Mobile project. Both do mostly exact the same and I see great differences in operation speed (AS3 version is much faster). Also the size of the AS3 version is less than the size of the Flex version when I deploy the project.
But one thing disappoints me, the size of a deployed AS3 app (Android) is still about 8MB. I think that is quite huge for a simple app, or is it normal? I did not test the iOS version because I am not an Apple Developer member (is there a trick to deploy an iOS app with fake certificates)?
Resources I have used in the apps:
Two images approx. 35kb in size
A StageWebView
I want to know:
What is the average size of a simple app when it is a native app (apk file)?
What is the difference between an AS3 app and a Flex app except the libraries that re used?
Is the AS3 app converted to C or another language?
Why is the apk so huge (IMO)?
Is there a trick to deploy an iOS app with fake certificates? (just for testing)
Thanks for the answer(s).
What is the average size of a simple app when it is native app (apk file)?
I have no idea. When you were comparing sizes; did you export a release build or a debug version? The full version of my app; using Captive Runtime is 12MB. That includes all the embedded images. I thought that roughly 8MB is the size of the embedded runtime. Of course, if you don't use Captive Runtime then the app will be smaller; but it will have a depency on the user having the runtime installed.
What is the difference between an AS3 app and a Flex app except the libraries that are used?
For all intents and purposes nothing. The Flex Framework will need to execute code to setup the framework and such. In theory this 'impact' is offset by the value that the framework brings.
- Is the AS3 app converted to C or other language?
Not for Android or Playbook. It relies on the Mobile AIR Runtime--which I assume is written as a native app somehow. For iOS there is a more in depth conversion taking place; but no on knows the exact magic sauce; but it the process is much more intensive than Android or Playbook and people believe that your code and the AIR Runtime is converted to Objective C somehow in a way that is not in violation of the Apple licensing agreement.
Why is the apk so huge (IMO)?
Huge is open to interpretation. Without seeing your full app code; it's tough to judge.
Is there a trick to deploy an iOS app with fake certificates? (just for testing)
I don't think so; although there may be possibilities on unlocked devices.
You would like to use Mobile AS3 Project if you want you apps to be smaller and your GUI mainly contains vector graphics and Mobile Flex Project if you prefer to use standart GUI Controls that comes together with Flex framework but adds overhead in size because of controls that come with it.
As of the other questions:
the size of the apps is different on mobile platforms. Typical iOS app is about 2MB - 20MB. It really depends on resources you store with your app. What might be important to you is not to overcome 20MB if not needed because 20MB+ apps require Wi-Fi connection to be downloaded.
(However you should export release build version only as mentioned by www.Flextras.com)
there is no fundamental difference between AS3 and Flex apps - they both compile to the same instructions that executes on targeted mobile platform.
as far as I know (being iOS developer myself) there is no workaround to deploy an iOS apps. You need to use Mac and become Apple Developer to deploy with valid certificate.
to make your app smaller try to pai special attention to the resources you add to the project. Although I believe the size is so big because of framework itself, you would like to use more vector graphics vs. bitmaps when compiling apps with Flash/Flex.
When you export for Android you have an option of embedding the air framework in the application, that way your users don't have to download air. you can export your application without air embed which will result in a much lighter application, however your users will need to download air runtime. http://cookbooks.adobe.com/post_How_do_I_create_an_AIR_application_for_Android_tha-19299.html
I've just stumbled upon a case when Flash app freezes in production Flash Player and works smoothly in a debug version. It doesn't throw any errors or exceptions. Has anyone ever encountered anything like this? Why is it happening or how one is supposed to debug in such case?
And a side question - what exactly is different in debug version from internal point of view? Any good writeup on the topic?
UPDATE:
I didn't mention, but the trouble is with Flash Player 11, it probably matters, cause Flash Player 10 doesn't have any problems with the same code.
In case anyone wonders here how this problem got solved.
First of all the class that was causing the hang turned out to be nifty BitmapDataUnlimited, which makes possible to overcome bitmap resolution constrain in Flash. Basically what we've changed was that we made a class directly extending EventDispatcher, rather then implementing IEventDispatcher interface and having indirect deal with private internal _eventDispatcher object.
Can anyone tell me what's the benefit of implementing IEventDispatcher interface directly?
There is great library for realtime pith shifting https://github.com/also/soundtouch-as3
If was work fine until Jule 2015 (at this time was discovered another Adobe Flash Player zero-day (assigned with CVE number, CVE-2015-5123))
Is there anybody successfully use this library? I can't debug this ... because of I know AS3 not so well, maybe anybody know the reason of this
it's not an solution to this but after a similar issue I ended up using the Sonoport libraries instead. They're worth checking out as have some cutting edge algorithms and do realtime manipulation of pitch / rate etc.
www.sonoport.com
I've made the swc available here as it looks like their downloads aren't currently available