Month: June 2010

Android Game Development (Day 5)

Day #5, Sunday, June 27th. Here’s the rough concept for timed events I already mentioned in my last posting. It’s working for now, but I’ll do some more tweaks to abstract this even further and make it more flexible. Keep reading below if you’re interested in today’s progress. Comments are welcome! In case you missed it, also don’t forget to read the reports on my steps in Android game development: Steps 1-3 and Step 4.

Android Game Development

I’m building rather boring enterprise applications at work and I love creating more appealing things in my spare time, so I do a bit of game development whenever I can. The main problem for a programmer is to get some graphics, but fortunately I have some nice renderings from my old Project E tutorial and the even older Project D game by sechsta sinn on my harddisk that I could put into use (all done by my friend and favorite artist Martin Ernst, btw.). This is what I managed to do in three after work sessions so far, if you’re interested in the details, continue reading after the video.

Sculptris

There are a very few people who are genius, disciplined and focussed at the same time and thus can put their productivity to a maximum. One of the most talented guys in the Indie gamedev scene I’ve seen so far in that regard is Tomas “DrPetter” Pettersson. Late 2007 he already came up with a really useful little tool called SFXR (not to mention the even more impressive Musagi) and now it got even better. Within only six months he produced an amazing 3D mesh sculpting tool called Sculptris, now available as version 1.0. Check out his trailer and see for yourself. Isn’t that great?

Don't ever say it's almost done.

Chris Pruett at Google I/O on Android Game Development. Besides that quote I used as the post caption he shows some very interesting ideas how he analyzed the behavior of his users in order to improve their game experience. I love that hotspot idea, probably something useful for my friends working on Glow as well. And for the record, also watch the excellent day 2 keynote. I had a good laugh at all the Apple taunting. For example, Android 2.2 features tethering and portable hotspot mode and guess what they’re showcasing? They’re using a Nexus One as an AP for “… another device that doesn’t have connectivity. What about that iPad?” Apple, Google, whatever… they all have their downsides. But they bring so much innovation that I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing more cool things becoming reality in the next years and building cool things with them myself.