Thursday, October 27, 2011

Repulser, pass #1



I modded the libgdx particle emitter class to allow the programmer to have old particles track a specific angle.  I did this so that I could get the effect you see above.  It's a repulse ray.  I need to polish it up a bit -- the player's tracer line appears when it shouldn't (this is a screenshot of the first, proof-of-concept pass).  But, it looks functional and I like how it emanates outward.  I was going to try to animate this action with multiple images, but using particles gives a waaaaay better effect.  Things should be fixed up tomorrow.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

*DING*

Slide rule Android app - 10k user Achievement Unlocked.

Checked the developer console today and saw this:

"10012 total installs (users)"

Cool!  Broke the 10k barrier.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Training Level 07 is done

Finally.  Done.  With training level 07.  I wanted to create a new pendulum object for this one and had a bit of trouble initially getting it to work the way that I wanted to.  After getting a tip from a Box2D guru, I was able to get things working.  The problem had to do with me creating an axle that had no fixture.  When I did this, the pendulum rod quit swinging.  Double plus ungood.  You need to have a fixture in place or the fixtureless body constrains rotation.

So, yeah, WOOT!  Here's a screenshot.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Bobbing for crates

I wasn't happy that I had this fancy dancy new water texture but no physics behind it to make things (like crates) float.  I went out and discovered that the Box2DFlash port by "BoristheBrave" had already implemented this.  I ported that over to the libgdx library... and was able to do it by adding shape extensions so I didn't need any updates to the underlying libgdx JNI code which was cool.  After realizing that Box2DFlash's coordinate y-axis was inverted from my environment's y-axis AND fixing a couple of bugs I introduced, it's now working flawlessly.  Here's a screen shot of a couple of crates floating:






One other thing that I did last night was to integrate ACRA.  This is Application Crash Reporting for Android.  If you give your application Internet permission, it will send crashes off to Google docs for analysis.  This will give you the trace you need that the standard 'Force Close' window absolutely does not provide.

The best thing about this is that the overall impact on the app is minimal.  You add a new class and override the onCreate() method in that class, set up a Google docs form, and you are ready to go.  I was a bit confused at first because I wasn't sure how to integrate it with libgdx, but it really boils down to just adding the class as part of the Android project & including the acra .JAR file.  QED!

Monday, October 3, 2011

Training Level 06 is in the bag

Added a new water texture to short out the main character's circuits.  Take a peek below.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Evolution

It's been a while since I've posted on here.  Why is that?  I've been working pretty damn hard on my game!  That's why!

Below are some screenshots of the current build.  I'm currently looking for an artist to give the game that extra polish.  I've been able to find one on indiegamer and have a offer extended to him that I'm waiting on for acceptance.  We'll see how it goes!  Very exciting stuff.