Castle Game Engine on Android and iOS, and "Darkest Before the Dawn" game release

[michalis]

Hi everyone,

Two great news about Castle Game Engine (http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/) (open-source 3D game engine for FPC/Lazarus):


We support Android and iOS (iPhone, iPad) now.
During a weekend "gamejam" in November 2013, I made a small game "Darkest Before the Dawn". See http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/darkest_before_dawn.php. The game is available for Android (from Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.sourceforge.castleengine.darkestbef oredawn)), you can also download a standalone version for Linux or Windows. Have fun :)


More news about the recent engine developments are here (http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/news.php?id=2014-01-02).

Happy new year! :)

1230 (http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/darkest_before_dawn.php)

[AirPas]

hi
this is really good news , +1 for supporting such platforms
i downloaded the game and it works perfectly in windows , but android i got nothing only black screen (samsung galaxy s advance) .
am not sure but i think it is because opengles , i have installed an opengl application called (opengl 3D Showcase) , this app extract opengl informations such as
GL_VERSION : OpenGL ES-CM 1.1 , GET_GLES_VERSION:2.0 , now i don't fully understand what's the difference between these 2 informations!.

keep developing this great engine :)

[michalis]

GL_VERSION : OpenGL ES-CM 1.1 , GET_GLES_VERSION:2.0

It looks like you have both 1.1 and 2.0 OpenGLES version, which is a common situation for Android >= 2.3. The engine uses only OpenGLES 2.0. If you would not have OpenGL ES 2.0, Google Play would not even let you install the app on the device, so you're fine in that regard :)

As for the black screen, I already have 2 other bugreports about it. It looks like NativeActitivity fails on some Samsung devices... We're investigating a fix :)

Thanks for the good words!

[AirPas]

remark ,i think its the only (disadvantage) for this engine
the engine seems large in size , empty window = 4Mb ! , i think its too much , since some people inculding me having allergy :) against the app size.

[azrael11]

Great news michalis and great work... συγχαρητήρια...

My small suggestion is to add/hire a graphic designer and a wed designer to give a large push to your work...
This is my problem too ;) ....

Keep programming...

[laggyluk]

remark ,i think its the only (disadvantage) for this engine
the engine seems large in size , empty window = 4Mb ! , i think its too much , since some people inculding me having allergy :) against the app size.
but how many people won't play a game because of that? :P

[de_jean_7777]

I don't think a large size for an engine is that much of a problem, if the engine has a lot to give. And that might be possible to trim down even more (using strip I suppose).

The problem I found with the game on my phone (Nexus S with CyanogenMod 10.2), is that I can't look and move at the same time. Like it does not support multi-touch, or simply is not intended to work that way. I don't have this problem with other games. Also, it ran only with the fastest setting, but the phone is limited I suppose with the amount of stuff I got installed.

[AirPas]

but how many people won't play a game because of that?
i was talking from the programmer's perspective and not from the user , some users don't even know where is the exe

in the end its just an opinion , i remember Tomb Raider Anniversary exe was 4Mb

[SilverWarior]

in the end its just an opinion , i remember Tomb Raider Anniversary exe was 4Mb

If my memory serves me correctly Tomb Raider Anniversary also had a bunch of dll's in its folder. So don't you think it is posible that one of them actually contained graphical engine?
You see the size of the exe itself can't be used to tell the size of an app. You need to check the size of all binary files which include (graphical engine, sound engine, network engine, etc.).

Do you know that empty LCL based Application build with Lazarus using default settings already use 4,2 MB of memory and that the exe is 14.1 MB in size?

[laggyluk]

Do you know that empty LCL based Application build with Lazarus using default settings already use 4,2 MB of memory and that the exe is 14.1 MB in size?yeah but that's with embedded debug info. without it my game.exe is 2.4MB using LCL and some other stuff

[AirPas]

Tomb Raider Anniversary also had a bunch of dll's in its folder
its installed in my pc already , there is no dll's around the exe except binkw32.dll (which used to decode videos streams). so yes 4mb contain all the stuff

[michalis]

remark ,i think its the only (disadvantage) for this engine
the engine seems large in size , empty window = 4Mb ! , i think its too much , since some people inculding me having allergy :) against the app size.

It is 4 MB for empty window, but grows only to 6.3 MB if you add all the 3D bells and whistles (and use CastleWindow without LCL). See e.g. http://michalis.ii.uni.wroc.pl/castle-engine-snapshots/2014-01-04/win-i386/ for various exe sizes on Windows 32-bit. That's small for me, considering that game data may easily be 50-100 MB for small games and gigabytes for large games :)

See also http://wiki.freepascal.org/Size_Matters for some arguments.

IMHO, it's better to work on more compact data formats (like binary X3D, that loads faster, is much smaller and is even smaller when compressed). This can easily shave many MB from your game data size.

[michalis]

The problem I found with the game on my phone (Nexus S with CyanogenMod 10.2), is that I can't look and move at the same time. Like it does not support multi-touch, or simply is not intended to work that way. I don't have this problem with other games.

Multi-touch is just not handled yet in the engine SVN. It will be done before release, and then indeed you will be able to look and move at the same time :)



Also, it ran only with the fastest setting, but the phone is limited I suppose with the amount of stuff I got installed.

The beautiful/average/fastest options mainly change how much data we load to the GPU. Since GPU memory is quite limited on mobiles (but it also differs wildly between devices), I added this option. If only the fastest works, then probably other versions just don't fit into your GPU memory.

BTW, I do plan to make this situation handled more gracefully, with some dialog saying "We didn't fit in your GPU, maybe try lower quality", and/or just automatically lowering the quality.

The amount of stuff you have installed should not matter (although there is also a beta version that allows installing to sdcard on http://michalis.ii.uni.wroc.pl/~michalis/tmp/darkest_1.1.1_allow_sdcard/ ). Unless you have something GPU heavy running in the background.

[de_jean_7777]

Multi-touch is just not handled yet in the engine SVN. It will be done before release, and then indeed you will be able to look and move at the same time :)

The amount of stuff you have installed should not matter (although there is also a beta version that allows installing to sdcard on http://michalis.ii.uni.wroc.pl/~michalis/tmp/darkest_1.1.1_allow_sdcard/ ). Unless you have something GPU heavy running in the background.

Great that you're adding multi-touch support. Nothing GPU intensive running, but there are memory-intensive applications otherwise.

[phibermon]

Looking awesome guys :) keep up the good work!

How many people do you have working on the engine code at the moment?

[michalis]

How many people do you have working on the engine code at the moment?

There are just two active engine developers :) Me (Michalis Kamburelis) and Jan Adamec.

Also, 2 people are taking care of Debian packaging (which also results in Ubuntu packaging): Abou Al Montacir and Paul Gevers. Yes, our engine and tools are in Debian (http://packages.debian.org/sid/fp-units-castle-game-engine and http://packages.debian.org/sid/view3dscene ).

And there are people who test the SVN versions of the engine and/or view3dscene and provide useful bugreports and suggestions.

More developers are always wanted :) Everything is public and open-source, and some ideas for help are on http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/forum.php .

[phibermon]

Ah brilliant :) it's really not easy working at such a scale as I'm sure you can testify!

I would very much like to work with other engine devs, I may submit some of your proposed developments at some point (you'd like a cocoa interface? why I have one right here. Hint : the GL3.2 implementation on OSX is buggy as hell, throw the specs out the window)

Keep up the amazing work guys!