Working on decent sprite engine

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Thu, 2004-12-16 09:45
aehrath
Joined: 2004-11-09
 Forum posts: 23
Hi all!
I am currently working on a decent sprite engine for Symbian 60 devices. I am wondering what people would like to see in it. So far I am planning to support, collision buffers, alpha blending and fast rotation. I already have some stuff working and I am refactoring a bunch of stuff now to support my new resource/zip file management system.  You can see an early demo of my game Gundown Preview which can be found on handango (just search for it) or off my website http://www.hipergames.com
I also have released the zip library I wrote (load standard zip files from your S60 app) which is also located in the symbian engine section. I would love for people to give it a try and let me know if you run into any problems.
Thanks, Symbian is great!
Alex

Thu, 2004-12-16 19:44
Corvus
Joined: 2004-06-02
 Forum posts: 31
Working on decent sprite engine
This kind of site is very much appreciated; Symbian needs good game/demo developer tutorials.

Have you checked out Develant Gapidraw? This is another Symbian 2D graphics library.
 
Fri, 2004-12-17 04:09
aehrath
Joined: 2004-11-09
 Forum posts: 23
Working on decent sprite engine
Interesting... no haven't seen this engine before... I want to try to write one from scratch and see what I can come up with. As an exercise mainly Smiley
Hopefully other people can benefit from it. I am not sure how the resource management works with the other engine (if there even is one) but my goal is to make it as painless as possible to add resources to an app and have it take as little space as possible. Hence my ZipLibrary stuff.
I would be greatful if people could give that zip stuff a whirl.. I am curious if it works well for others.
As far as my website, I want to focus primarily on Game Programming stuff with Symbian in mind, since there seems to be very little info out there.

Thanks, Alex
 
Fri, 2004-12-17 18:06
Anonymous (not verified)
Forum posts: 2043
Realtime sprite decompression and sprite centers
Hmmm... I came to think last night... I want to do this crazy lossless compression scheme, that should also draw faster than just straight forward drawing as long as there are an average of 4 transparent pixels per scanline in your sprite (unless you are drawing a bunch of squares this is usually the case). This method would also allow you to define a sprite center to which your sprite is ankered to.  Gonna have to write a tool on the PC to support this. I want to go further and let the developer specify animations as well... This should work pretty well... but it will take me a little while to implement.
Who would like to see tools like this?
 
Fri, 2004-12-17 18:07
aehrath
Joined: 2004-11-09
 Forum posts: 23
Re: Realtime sprite decompression and sprite centers
Quote from: Anonymous
Hmmm... I came to think last night... I want to do this crazy lossless compression scheme, that should also draw faster than just straight forward drawing as long as there are an average of 4 transparent pixels per scanline in your sprite (unless you are drawing a bunch of squares this is usually the case). This method would also allow you to define a sprite center to which your sprite is ankered to.  Gonna have to write a tool on the PC to support this. I want to go further and let the developer specify animations as well... This should work pretty well... but it will take me a little while to implement.
Who would like to see tools like this?

sorry forgot to log in.. this was my post Smiley
 
Fri, 2004-12-17 20:29
Corvus
Joined: 2004-06-02
 Forum posts: 31
Working on decent sprite engine
Quote
As far as my website, I want to focus primarily on Game Programming stuff with Symbian in mind, since there seems to be very little info out there.
Amen to that. Sites like yours are needed.

Quote
Who would like to see tools like this?
I will download your ZipLibrary sample and test it out.

There is an open source cross-platform graphics API called LibSDL which supposedly has some support for Symbian. Has anyone used this?
 
Sun, 2004-12-26 18:28
aehrath
Joined: 2004-11-09
 Forum posts: 23
Working on decent sprite engine
Nope never used OpenSDL... I am working on a high speed 2D solution for the phone right now. Being a professional game developer for more than 13 years, I want to approach this problem from a game developers point of view and am hoping to pull some tricks out of my hat that the Symbian guys might not have thought of (no offense). Unofrtunately I cannot work on this full time, as I am still working my regular job so I can pay my bills. Currently I am working on a sprite compression tool that generates sprites that will draw very fast on handheld devices.
Check my blog on my website for whats going on.  I will try to update it as much as I can.
http://www.hipergames.com
http://www.hipergames.com/forum

-Alex
 
Sun, 2005-01-02 21:31
aehrath
Joined: 2004-11-09
 Forum posts: 23
Working on decent sprite engine
Already, my sprite tool is coming along nicely.. got the first screenshot up in my BLOG on my board (http://www.hipergames.com/forum -> BLOG)
Check it out if you like. I am not sure how much more I will get done before I leave on my trip on tuesday. I will be gone for 8 nights.
Enjoy!
Alex
 
Mon, 2005-01-03 09:55
AlfredoNewLC
Joined: 2004-12-30
 Forum posts: 25
Working on decent sprite engine
Hello aehrath,

I see that you have been working with mobile devices for a long time. Please, could you take a look at my post "Migrating a Graphics Application to Symbian" to help me. I'm new to mobile devices and need some support.

Thank you very much Wink

P.D. The post is very near from yours.
 
Mon, 2005-01-03 17:25
aehrath
Joined: 2004-11-09
 Forum posts: 23
Working on decent sprite engine
Actually I have been working with gaming consoles, such as PS2 and XBOX for a long time. I am still fairly new to mobile gaming although I made strides in progress. I am using Direct screen access for my applications. If you search the forums for DSA or direct screen access, there should be plenty of threads helping you on this matter.
Hope this helps.
-Alex
 
Mon, 2005-02-14 17:43
aehrath
Joined: 2004-11-09
 Forum posts: 23
Working on decent sprite engine
Sprite tool version 1.0 is done!
I will now work on the phone side so I can draw these animations on the phone. Already have it working on the PC so it should be easy to port.
A new screenshot is up in my game forum at http://www.hipergames.com/forum in the blog section!
Alex
 
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