Web Start

geminidev — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:40:27 +0000

Back when working on one of my educational games, I was really impressed with Guild Wars. They had it so you could download a small (100k-200k) installer, which would download and install the game automatically. Once the game was installed, it would constantly stream resources to you as you played. I liked it a lot since it was virtually a zero hassle setup, and I wanted it for my game. I also wanted to do things cross-platform.

Then David shows me Java Web Start, which was pretty impressive. I wasn’t too excited at the time, since I had a lot of that negative experience with working with Java in my early school days, and I was too much of a C++ snob at the time. After cutting teeth against JRuby for a while, web start felt like it was the only way to deploy a JRuby desktop app.

One of the things I want to work really well in Gemini is the ability to pop out web start deployments. This will also include Applets. As an applet, Gemini will make browser-based game development possible without Flash, which isn’t really a tool designed for game development. I can’t speak for Silverlight, but that’s Windows as far as I understand.

Last night, I got webstart working for one of our examples (although I’m finding out that it isn’t working for everyone):

http://www.happycamperstudios.com/gemini/ultra-table-tennis/ultra-table-tennis.jnlp

Spline Support

loganbarnett — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:50:14 +0000

I just recently put in a first draft for Splines. Splines are functions or data that define a transitional value. You want an object roll onto the screen, and then roll off? With a spline, you could assign the object’s movement a series of changing values. Maybe the object rolls really fast on to the screen, and slows down really quick near it’s destination, making for a really smooth movement.
David Koontz and myself discussed this before, but my main inspiration to work on it comes from Castle Crashers. The game has just lovely stylized art. They bring it to life more by animating just about everything. Key areas on the world map bob, and pillars of ice stretch into existence. This effect is achieved with Ortho2D simply by changing the size of the sprite, but many times over a small period of time, and not in a linear manner. That stretch data is the spline itself.
I’ve taken our pong game and made some of the balls so that they throb in size in a smooth manner. This is a very simple feature that will go a long way for Gemini. I’d like to make a lot of behaviors use splines in the future, or at least provide counterparts that can use them.
Something that will be somewhat of a necessity will be a Spline Editor. I would love to see a graph showing how a value changes, and the points in the spline can be set. The editor could also show a game object with an embedded Gemini panel, and how the spline applies to the object.
I’d post some screenshots, but it’s an animation thing.

Gemini game engine development

Web Start

Spline Support