xtoff's devblog

🔘 iOS 14 Game Center features in Cordova App

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0200

About I updated my fork of the Game Center Cordova plugin to support the new Game Center Access Point. This is an addition to my last Game Center entry. Access Point: Game Center Feedback while playing The Access Point is a simple way to quickly allow to show the player’s achievements or leaderboard positions. As a developer it frees us from query the data from Apple’s Game Center server and simplifies the whole process a lot....(more)

🔌 Fix: Reconnect wireless debugging with Xcode and iPhone

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0200

Issue When you develop an App with Xcode on macOS you can test your app without the need for a cable. Once setup is done you can select your iPhone in Xcode and just hit the ▶️ Button. The app starts directly on your device, no cable required. However, sometimes Xcode seems to forget how to reconnect to your device. I haven’t figured out the exact circumstances but I figured out a workaround....(more)

👉🏻 Links 2021

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0100

A list of links and notes I collect throughout the year.

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🤓 I wrote a QuickBasic 4.5 Interpreter

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +1200

About

I always had that idea of writing my own Quick Basic interpreter. A few weeks ago I did exactly that and like to share a bit of my experience. The Quick Basic (or QB) I used to know is Microsoft’s Quick Basic 4.5. If I write about QB I mean that particular version running on MS-DOS PCs.

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🎮 Apple Game Center with Cordova

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +1200

About

My game project Ghost Jump Go! on iOS shall offer access to Apple’s Game Center features. As my game is written in Javascript and deployed using Cordova I like to share how I integrated a plugin to bring Game Center into my game.

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Javascript ➡️ Typescript: Conversion of a Game

Sun, 06 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0900

tl;dr Typescript can generate efficient Javascript code and I decided to switch. I approached the code conversion by simply rename the files from *.js to *.ts and then slowly migrating the code base file by file and case by case. During all phases I had a working build and a running game.

About

I switched my game code from JavaScript to Typescript. I like to share some of my reasons and how the process went.

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Dynamic Music in Games using WebAudio

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0400

tl;dr WebAudio is a solid API with many features. It is easy to create complex effects (like pitching, panning and even dynamic music transitions). However, there are many small details to consider when dealing with browser variations. A battle proven wrapper like howler.js that takes care of the details is definitely a thing to consider. [DEMO is pending]

About

Working on my game Ghost Jump I came to the point where I needed to integrate sound and music. GhostJump is written in pure JavaScript and I think WebAudio is my best option. I have never used the API before but I do have some experience with audio programming. To get the full experience I decided to not start with a wrapper like howler.js or soundjs.

The WebAudio API is very powerful but also full of strange vendor specific behaviors. For example, it is not possible to create an AudioContext on iOS Safari or desktop Chrome if you are not in some kind of magic user input event context. This and other things I intend to explore and write about it here.

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TouchThing JS Example Code

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0200

I published TTjs example code on GitHub: I had a longer session with my friend jbrosi to rethink the module approach I used in TouchThing JS. We soon had a chat about the pros and cons of Typescript. He proposed some very cool ideas to make a Typescript version of TouchThing JS. To be able to test his ideas and to finally have some working example code for TTjs I put together an example project and pushed it to GitHub....(more)

SchnackScript JS

Sun, 02 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0200

tl;dr Check out my NPC-talk-script-approach ported to JavaScript and pushed to github. A simple text file syntax can be enough to control NPC dialogs.

About

SchnackScript (pronounced snack script) is a simple-to-write, simple-to-parse and simple-to-execute “scripting language”. It is meant to write and process dialog-text-files for NPC’s in game like environments. In those scripts you can output text, set and change variables on a shared state and use if-conditions to branch the output.

I ported SchnackScript manually from C++ to JavaScript and pushed it as part of my JavaScript open source engine: TouchThingJS. I used the script engine for a wide range of NPCs and it covered many use cases I had while creating a game.

The port is not optimized when it comes to garbage collection but it is pretty stable and should be simple to integrate. Don’t expect cutting edge parser technology, though.

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Links 2020

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0100

A list of links and notes I collect throughout the year.

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Integrate Amazon InApp Payments in Unity app

Sat, 23 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +1100

tl;dr Be aware of the different regions when setting up test accounts for Live App Testing (Amazon.de != Amazon.com). If Live App Testing throws INVALID_SKU just wait a few days and try again. In all cases call NotifyFulfillment().

About

We like to publish our game Nory’s Escape on Amazon Appstore. To introduce it to a wider audience and publish it without an upfront paywall we choose to use InApp payment. We won first price during Gamescon 2017 and on Amazon we exclusively offer the first part of the game for free.

In this article I like to collect my findings and share some of the things I learned during the integrating of the Payment process.

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Change Spell-Check-Language in Atom

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0900

tl;dr Copy this in your Atom init.coffee file to quickly change the current spell-checking-language. About Atom is a brilliant editor. Not just because of all the things it can do but especially because of the things it could do. It’s easy to add functionality by installing a package. However, what I really learn to love is adding things into init.coffee. Let me show you my code to quickly switch between spell-checking languages....(more)

Cordova + Webpack + Babel + Onsen UI + AngularJs

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0800

About I like to write down my notes while setup a Cordova based application with Webpack, AnuglarJS and Onsen UI using Babel for ES2015 support. It’s not my first Cordova project but I like to write down all the things I touched and thoughts I had so maybe next time I don’t have to dig it out all over again. Clients stack Basically I’d like to combine the following tools with the following motivation:...(more)

Metal, DirectX and Vulkan => bye bye OpenGL engine?

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0300

tl;dr Deploy games written in C++ and OpenGL via WASM + Electron

About

I like to propose an idea for (small) OpenGL games written in C++

Custom C++ engine using OpenGL feels deprecated

A few years ago I wrote a custom engine, using C++ and OpenGL. It’s been a fun project and back then the decision to use OpenGL felt just right: it’s supported by Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and even macOS. Consoles aside: the major platforms.

However, things have changed. Considering what happened the last years I’m not so sure OpenGL has a future. Apple focuses on Metal, Microsoft on DirectX and there is Vulkan.

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Git-submodules in Unity (my notes)

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0100

tl;dr (see table)

Test	Result
Link the library project into the project’s `Assets` folder, without remote git repo?	Doesn’t work: For submodules we need a remote-origin
Link the library project into the project’s `Assets` folder with remotes repo?	Doesn’t work: Unity doesn’t like a complete sub-project in the Assets folder.
Maybe git-subtree does the trick?	Doesn’t work: Subtree is more or less an import and not a link.
Use the new Unity PackageManager features?	Doesn’t work: Complicated and doesn’t work with older Unity versions
Use a submodule and a symbolic link?	It works!

About

Submodules can be a great tool for sharing library code and I like to make use of them when working with Unity. In this article I share my notes on my experiments around git submodules in Unity projects.

The development model I have in mind looks like this: I like to have on or more product project sharing one or more library project and want to able to commit, push and pull in each of them. Also I want to have reproducible connections between the project and the library code. So if I check out an old commit of a product it shall checkout the matching library project commit as well. All this without Unity plugins or the need of none-git work before or after the code change. No Unity packaging. No extra steps when committing.

To use this model one has to solve one issue: Unity (in it’s current state) forces the game creator to put all source-codes and assets into one folder named: Assets. As I had several ways in mind how I could solve this I took the liberty to write down my approaches and share them here.

I’m using Unity 2017.4.11f1, macos 10.13.6 and Sourcetree 3.0.0.

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