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Open Source 2D iPhone and iPad Game Framework

John — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:49:23 +0000

There are several iPhone game engines available, and of course Cocos2D is extremely popular in the development of 2D games on the iPhone and has a considerable community beside it.

That being said, if you’re just starting out, or you just don’t like how things are done with what’s out there I’ve found a great looking alternative.

While I’m not entirely sure of the direction this framework will take, I can tell you that it appears to be one very different from the Cocos2D philosophy to include everything that developers will ever want in a 2D game engine.

That alternative is the Sparrow Framework which is an open source game framework from Incognitek. From what I’ve seen from looking at the framework it is very lightweight, and easy to use with all the core features you’d need to be able to create a good 2D game.

You can find the framework here: Sparrow Framework
Read about the features here: Sparrow Framework Features
And the philosophy behind the engine here: Sparrow Framework Philosophy

If you’re not sure about the alternatives, check out the Open Source iPhone and iPad Game Engine Comparison.

[Via: Nick Vellios]

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Free Advanced iPhone and iPad Development Course Available

John — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:28:28 +0000

Good iPhone training can be tough to come by, and it seems like there are now hundreds of course available. Unfortunately many of the local courses are just taught by the book so there is little to no advanced instruction.

So here is some good news for those looking for some professional, advanced instruction.

A free advanced iPhone development course has been released on iTunes featuring Dr. Brad Larson of Sunset Lake Software, creator of the popular open source iPhone app Molecules. The course features 14 sessions (over 35 hours!), and comes complete with notes.

Topics covered include iPad specific programming, threading, Core Animation, Quartz 2d and OpenGL ES.

You can find the course on iTunes here.
The notes are available in html format here.

Update: It was suggested that I compare this to the CS193P course for iPhone development that was previously released on iTunes. This course is completely different, expects that you already know Objective-C, and is much more advanced. From what I’ve seen so far this course goes much deeper into the advanced topics which are barely mentioned in the Stanford CS193p course. It is not a course for new programmers who only have a basic Object Oriented programming class under their belt like the Stanford one.

[Source: Sunset Lake Software Via: Alex Curylo]

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A Couple Of Great Videos On iPhone OpenGL ES

John — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 08:21:31 +0000

Apple has recently released a couple of terrific videos on iPhone OpenGL ES from their Tech Talk. I haven’t finished watching the videos, but already had some takeaways that I’m going to implement immediately.

You can get the videos free here on iTunes: Advanced Videos From Apple

You’ll definitely want to check them out if you haven’t already.

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Mixing iPhone Components With OpenGL ES

John — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:26:45 +0000

Something that I’ve been asked in the past is whether it was possible (or allowed) to mix the iPhone’s UI (UIkit) components with OpenGL ES views. I can certainly understand the desire to do this, after all who wouldn’t want the convenience of using interface builder while having the power of raw OpenGL ES. My response in the past was always, yes it is possible, but there are performance implications, and Apple used to give warnings about instability.

I never really pursued going too far with this as when I initially saw a perofrmance loss I just figured it wasn’t worth pursuing any further, but I was wrong.

Noel Lliopsis has mastered mixing OpenGL ES and UIKit and in his Flower Garden app does this extensively. He recently gave a presentation at GDC, and if you’d like to see the slides from Noel’s presentation where he goes into this in-depth check out the article on his blog: GDC 2010: The Best of Both Worlds: Using UIKit with OpenGL. If you want to find out the exact techniques Noel uses to do this beautifully without any noticeable performance loss you’ll want to check this out..

[Source: Games From Within]

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Adding A 2D Hud To A 3D OpenGL ES Scene

John — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:04:56 +0000

Drawing a 2D Hud on a 3D OpenGL ES scene is a common task when developing games.

To do this without any distortion in OpenGL ES you need to draw your HUD through a matrix different from the projection matrix used for 3D objects.

Jeff LaMarche, co-author of Beginning iPhone 3 Development, and More iPhone development has added a new tutorial on Drawing a Hud Display in OpenGL ES.

In the tutorial Jeff takes you through the process of adding a simple HUD to a 3D Scene.

Be sure to check out the iPhone OpenGL ES resources list for more OpenGL ES resources.

source Jeff LaMarche’s Blog

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4 Top Resources For The Unity iPhone Game Engine

John — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:47:47 +0000

Updating this old list with a few changes. A lot has happened in the Unity 3D community since I created this list: a basic Unity 3D is now free for Mac development, and DiamondTearz blog is no more, but has been changed to another site known as InfiniteUnity3D

Official Unity Resources – This is a wide collection of Unity iPhone resources including tutorials, sample projects, and the like. The Unity 3D people have really done a great job putting all this together. It’s really second to none when you look at the resources available for other iPhone game engines. The place to start is the videos. I think this is a great example of what other engine/game creators should try to put together.

Infinite Unity 3D – This is a terrific resource, the creator who ran the DiamondTearz blog previously has now created this site exclusively for helping Unity 3D users.

Learn Unity 3D – Another great resource for Unity 3D info with some great video tutorials. The video tutorials along with some great Photoshop/PHP/Indesign tutorials can be found on Learn Me Silly.

UnifyCommunity Wiki – A great wiki that is a tremendous resource for those developing with Unity 3D.

Those are the most helpful resources that I’ve found for dealing with the Unity iPhone game engine, as I said the documentation/examples are extensive on the Unity 3D site so you will want to start with those, but it can be great to find other perspectives.

The engine has also made great strides since their initial iPhone release so if you didn’t like it initially (there were some performance issues that seem to have been alleviated) you will probably want to check into it again as it has really become the market leader for 3D game creation tools on the iPhone. The iPhone version offers a free trial.

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18 OpenGL ES Resources That You Must Know!

John — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:15:39 +0000

OpenGL ES is the graphics API used for programming the iPhone. If want to create your own game engine, design a game from scratch, or create some other graphically intensive app that requires you to go beyond Core Animation and Quartz, then you will need to have a good understanding of OpenGL ES. I updated this list previously upon the release of the OpenGL ES 2.0 capable iPhone 3GS, and since then I’ve received a few messages about some of the resources being updated, and found a couple new resources that i have listed below. If you want to have an understanding, or just want to see if learning OpenGL ES is your cup of tea then you will want to check out these resources.

Math Resources

If you don’t have a basic understanding of 2D and 3D math for computer graphics your head will probably explode once you try learning OpenGL. To prevent that from happening you should at least understand the terminology, and the reasons why this math is needed. No need to grind through math problems like in college.. that’s what computers are for.

1. The Black Art of 3D Game Programming Chapter 10 This is a great introduction to graphics math, and really tells you what you need to know about 3D math without getting into what doesn’t really matter. What I really love about this book is that unlike most similar books this is not a textbook, but rather designed for personal learning which makes a huge difference.The whole book can be found here for free. It is an old book, but the math still holds true.

2. Vector & Matrix Math Tutorial If you feel that everything in the resource above is flying above your head then you probably will want to take a look at this. I normally wouldn’t reccomend a resource that brags about being "book sized", but it is very good.

iPhone Specific OpenGL ES 2.0 Resources

3. The OpenGL ES Shading Language This is a free pdf book from Khronos, and actually a really good read, and will teach you what you need to know, again don’t try this until you at least have some OpenGL understanding or your head may explode. Thanks to Bill Dudney one of the authors of iPhone SDK Development for pointing this out.

4. Hello Triangle: An OpenGL ES 2.0 Example – This is a sample chapter from the OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide. If you’re thinking of getting this book you will probably want to check this out to see if the book is for you as it is, how should I say this… rather academic.

5. The OpenGL ES Programming Book This code from this book has been updated to run on the iPhone and can be found here, and you’ll probably want it if you go through the chapter listed above. Make sure you have a solid understanding of OpenGL (or OpenGL ES 1.x) before starting this book. Now it might seem odd to put a paper book here, but you can learn alot from the sample code, and what’s given from the book.

6. The Oolong Engine An Open source 3D OpenGL ES Game Engine for Iphone, MIT licensed. Written by Wolfgang Engel former Rockstar Games programmer, and author of some intense DirectX books. Great to see the libraries in here for handling memory, loading 3d models, performing math, and now code is rapidly being added for support of OpenGL ES 2.0 features.

7. Getting Started with OpenGL ES 2.0 on iPhone 3GS A getting started with OpenGL ES 2.0 tutorial that explains some of the most basic differences between OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0.

iPhone Specific OpenGL ES 1.1 Resources

8. iPhone OpenGL ES Tutorial Series I don’t know if Maurice SImon is the smartest person alive, but this is the smartest set of OpenGL ES tutorials I’ve seen. A terrific resource.

9. Jeff LaMarche’s iPhone Blog Blog from one of the authors of the excellent Beginning iPhone Development book with many articles on OpenGL ES, and an ongoing OpenGL ES from The Ground Up series.

10. SIO2 Engine this is an excellent Open Source 3D OpenGL ES engine, look at the code, understand, and maybe even use the engine rather than write your own from the ground up (nothing wrong with that).

11. Cocos2D Iphone This is an excellent Open Source 2D OpenGL ES Game Framework for iPhone you can learn alot from going in and looking around the code. As far as Open Source frameworks go this extremely easy to use, well documented, and has an active community.

12. SDL for iPhone (SDL Version 1.3) The SDL library has been a popular open source library for probably over a decade, and has been used in many games. This is the iPhone port, and a great resource.

Non-iPhone OpenGL ES 1.x Resources

If you use these resources you’ll need to put in some time to get things running on the iPhone, but they are still excellent.

13. Nehe Tutorials Converted To OpenGL ES Michael Gorchak creator of the GluES library has put together this collection of tutorials converted from their original Nehe form. In case you haven’t heard of them the Nehe tutorials were the definitive free tutorials for learning OpenGL. Michael has done an excellent job of writing comments for these tutorials. These tutorials have been updated as of late, and more has been added so be sure to check it out.

14. Khronos OpenGL ES Page This is the OpenGL ES "homepage" on which you will find the reference manual, and lots of examples. Not specifically IPhone, but there are some great examples here and even a complete racing game BSD licensed.

15. Khronos OpenGL ES 1.x Step-By-Step Tutorials This page is from Imagination Technologies makers of the Iphone GPU, and it contains the Khronos tutorials converted to OpenGL ES and created for the PowerVR technology. Good to lean from especially as to how they load Pod files.

16. Zeus CMD OpenGL ES Tutorials This site contains 25 Great OpenGL ES Tutorials and they are extremely well paced, this was a site I learned alot from.

17. Typhoon Labs OpenGL ES Tutorials Another excellent set of OpenGL ES tutorials if you’re addicted to tutorials you might want to check these out too.

Interesting OpenGL ES Related Sites

18. GLBenchmark This is a just an interesting site that compares the different mobile devices available that utilize OpenGL ES. At this point it’s only showing OpenGL 1.1, but you can see how much faster a 3GS is than a 3G even at this stage.

This is just a quick video on an approach to getting started with iPhone OpenGL ES, emphasizing that it’s helpful to start with learning 3D math:
This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

That’s the latest version of the list, be sure to post below if you find out about any other useful OpenGL ES resources.

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iPhone Game Development Resources Compendium

John — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:01:50 +0000

I’ve posted many iPhone game development resources on this website, and I can see that many of the searches on this website are iPhone game development related so I have decided to create this post which is basically a table of contents containing my other iPhone game development posts, along with some new iPhone game development resources that I have not mentioned before.

iPhone Game Engines

When most look to develop a game on the iPhone typically alot of time can be saved by using an already existing game engine. Some of these engines use Wysiwig editors and their own scripting languages while others provide a collection of functions to us in your code.

Commercial iPhone Game Engine List
Open Source iPhone Game Engine List

Game Engine Resources

Unity 3D and Cocos2D are two widely used game engines, I highly suggest looking into these two engines if you are getting started with iPhone game development.

Unity 3D Game Engine Resources
Cocos2D Resources
Open Source Cocos2D Games

Graphics Programming

You may want to use Core Animation to program your game, often this is the easiest way to program simple 2D games with low performance requirements as you can lay out elements in interface builder and the functions are very easy to understand if you’ve done other iPhone Objective-C Programming.

Core Animation Resources

OpenGL ES is the rendering API used on the iPhone. If you are looking for maximum performance and don’t want to purchase or use an already existing iPhone game engine you will need to use OpenGL ES.

OpenGL ES Resource Sites
OpenGL ES Tutorials

Free Game Graphics

Something I see commonly asked is where to get graphics, well the fact of the matter is you will typically have to pay an artist to create them, or create them yourself, but there are some free graphics available. The games you can make with these are somewhat limited, but they can be good for prototyping before finding an artist to assist you with iPhone game development.

Massively Large Collection Of Free Graphics Links

Audio Programming

The iPhone uses OpenGL AL, as mentioned above Cocos2D now includes a sound engine, but if you’re programming from scratch here’s a basic engine for you to learn from.

Finch Simple OpenAL Sound Engine

Free Game Audio

Here’s some links to some free audio as with graphics you’ll typically have to find someone to custom create the sound you want or create it yourself to get things right.

Collection Of Free Game Music And Sound Links

iPhone Game Development Community

You may want to check out iDevGames if you’re looking for a forum for iPhone game development. It is fairly active.

iPhone Game Development Tutorials

The guys at 71 squared have put in a tremendous amount of work into creating some iPhone game development tutorials with video, be sure to check them out.

iPhone Game Programming Tutorials

That’s it for my iPhone game development resources compendium, as always if you know of any other great resources feel free to post them in the comments, and I will likely update this post in the future so look for them to be added later on.

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The Categorized OpenGL ES Tutorial Collection

John — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:12:09 +0000

I’ve received several requests for this, and I agree that finding the right OpenGL ES tutorial can be difficult so what I’ve decided to do is go through many of the available tutorials and order them by both degree of difficulty, and the native device type for the tutorials.

Below you will find OpenGL ES tutorials covering OpenGL ES 2.0, 1.1, 1.0, 1.x, for the Apple iPhone, Google Android, Pocket PC, and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Any of these tutorials cannot be converted from one device to another, but the original device type for each tutorial is listed.

Please note, i have only listed 2 OpenGL ES 2.0 tutorials as there just aren’t many available, there is the OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide which contains a set of OpenGL ES 2.0 tutorials and examples that run on the iPhone. I recommend you do not do anything with OpenGL ES 2.0 until you have a complete grasp of OpenGL ES 1.x.

When two tutorials on the same material, for the same platform were found I only listed the better of the two. If there any tutorials that you believe should be added to the list please post them below.

Here are the tutorials:

Beginner

What is OpenGL ES? (all) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Xcode Project Set Up (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
An Introduction To OpenGL (Google Android) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Setting Up Your Environment (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
OpenGL Window (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Keyboard Input (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Mouse Input (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Viewports in Perspective (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Drawing Primitives 1 – Triangles (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Drawing Primitives 2 – Squares (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Rendering (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Orthographic Projection (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Colour and Shading (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Color And Shading (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Window Resizing (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Transformations (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Transformations (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Depth (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Perspective (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Solid Shapes (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
The Final Primitives: Points and Lines in a Stride (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Objects in 3D (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Translating Objects Independently (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1

Intermediate

Monkeys on Your Back and Geometric Shapes (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Interleaving Per-Vertex Data (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Landscape View & Handling Touches Part 1 – 2D World (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Backface Culling (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Lighting (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Directional Lighting (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Texture Mapping Our Square (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Texture Mapping (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Texture Functions (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Multiple Textures, Repeating Textures, and the End of the Book Era (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Blending (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Transparency (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Single Texture, Multiple Looks, Render to Texture, and Getting Inspired in Maths (iPhone) – OpenGL ES 1.1
Masking (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x
Uncompressed TGAs (Pocket PC) – OpenGL ES 1.x

Advanced

For a list containing specific sites with OpenGL ES tutorials please check out my Killer OpenGL ES Resources list.

That’s my list, in the future I may break these down further by command if there is an interest. As I stated above please post the links of any OpenGL ES tutorial that you feel should be added to this list, especially OpenGL ES 2.0 tutorials as at this stage the only OpenGL ES 2.0 specific resource I know of is the OpenGL ES Programming Guide.

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iPhone OpenGL ES 3D Collision Detection Tutorials

John — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:47:18 +0000

Simon Maurice, has added two new tutorials to his collection of iPhone OpenGL ES Tutorials which I mentioned on my iPhone OpenGL ES resources page.

Tutorials:
1. Collision Detection
2. Collision Detection 2: Moller & Trumbore’s Fast Triangle Ray Intersect

**** Tutorials are currently deactivated they may be back in the future (due to contract issues with the Author and employer).

I haven’t had a chance yet to check these out, but they look fantastic. Just looking from the pictures I can see that they are damn cool.

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