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

[michalis]

Hi everyone,

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

1. We support Android and iOS (iPhone, iPad) now.
2. During a weekend "gamejam" in November 2013, I made a small game "Darkest Before the Dawn". See http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net...efore_dawn.php. The game is available for Android (from Google Play), you can also download a standalone version for Linux or Windows. Have fun

More news about the recent engine developments are here.

Happy new year!

darkest_before_dawn_1.png

[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?

[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.

[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/castl...1-04/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.