Thursday 30 December 2010

Coming Soon.. Blockman Gets

Let's just plain ignore all the bugs, and focus on something that hasn't blown up yet!

I started Blockman Gets with a fresh Cocos2D-based engine.
I figured, if things aren't going to work, I might as well just plain scrap it all, and redo from start. so, Blockman Gets is me redoing from start.

A new engine, a new game, and a whole bunch of sprites, some of which are about 3 years old!
That's the way to do it!!



Blockman Gets is coming along nicely, and it'll be great to see if this (finally!) is something that works on an iPad!
.. Because, let's face it, this game would rock your fingers off, on an iPad!!!

Tuesday 28 December 2010

The continuing iPad Bug...

I could've sworn I'd fixed that!!
Apparently, though, the iPad hardware is doing something entirely different to what I'd like it to do, and not at all what the Simulator says it will...
*insert swearing here*

Never mind, new game on the horizon while I work out StringyThings' little issue..

Thursday 9 December 2010

The iPad Bug...

Here's what Stringy Things looks like on a classic iPhone/iPod display..


Nice and simple, exactly as expected.

When the game runs on a Retina capable display, the wonderful language that Apple gave us will automatically pick up any files that are labelled as "@2x", and load those instead of the normal versions.
That basically means that you can make all your sprites twice as big, twice as clear, and then leave it to the iPhone to pick which one it wants to use.
It's a FANTASTIC idea, and it works brilliantly.



You get lovely hires displays, and everything works neatly.

Of course, when you're snipping your sprites, it's good to know which one it's using.
If I need to cut a 256x256 image into 32x32 sprites, but it loads the 2x one, then the sprites I need to cut will instead be twice as big.
I accounted for this with a simple bit of code.
If Screen=Big, Double sizes!
That worked great!
Everything was fine.


Until this happened..



The blinkin' iPad!

For some strange inexplicable reason, the iPad, (even though it has a larger screen, and CAN/WILL achieve everything that the retina display can do) completely ignores those wonderful little @2x files, and instead loads the small ones.

This basically means that, although my "Screen=Big" code kicks in (what with the iPad saying it's got a big screen), it actually only loads the little pictures.
My sprite cutter ends up cutting strange missized chunks of random bits, and attempts to use those as if there's nothing wrong.
But there IS something wrong.
And it's blindingly obvious.

Gah!