B4A Library libGDX - Game Engine

alienhunter · Jun 24, 2014

Hi Informatix,
i used the very first time your library , it is very nice works very well
I want to create a small CAD/CAM app to start with (basic elements> shaperenderer) with your library but i could not find any example of
zooming with Camera As lgPerspectiveCamera.
I went thru all your examples but there is only one with Camera As lgOrthographicCamera
I might not fully understand all libgdx library but i am stuck to go one step forward
thanks AH

Chrrris · Jun 24, 2014

My first post to this forum, so apologies if this is in the wrong place or anything.

I'm using the libgdx library to write a 2D scrolling shooter and so far it's going really well; I'm loving libgdx and B4a, and the way the library integrates so seamlessly. However, my scrolling level is a tiled map (lgMapTiledMap) and I am stuck on one thing:- I want to have a few animated tiles scattered around the map and I can't work out how to do this at all. The lgMapAnimatedTiledMapTile object appears to have no means of specifying the animation interval or list of animation frames. I am probably overlooking something, or missing something obvious, but I can't figure it out. Is this object missing an Initialize() method, possibly?

The libgdx examples are fantastic and have been a great help to me so far, but there is no example for lgMapAnimatedTiledMapTile and I can't seem to work it out for myself.

Hope you can help!

Informatix · Jun 25, 2014

alienhunter said:
Hi Informatix,
i used the very first time your library , it is very nice works very well
I want to create a small CAD/CAM app to start with (basic elements> shaperenderer) with your library but i could not find any example of
zooming with Camera As lgPerspectiveCamera.
I went thru all your examples but there is only one with Camera As lgOrthographicCamera
I might not fully understand all libgdx library but i am stuck to go one step forward
thanks AH

"Zoom" does not mean anything in 3D, that's why there's no function in lgPerspectiveCamera. If you're in the street and notice something interesting in a store, you walk to go closer. It's the same thing for the camera. You move it along one of its 3 axis to move closer. The orthographic camera cannot do that because there's no depth in 2D.
EDIT: you can also alter the size of the viewport to simulate a zoom.

Informatix · Jun 25, 2014

Chrrris said:
I want to have a few animated tiles scattered around the map and I can't work out how to do this at all. The lgMapAnimatedTiledMapTile object appears to have no means of specifying the animation interval or list of animation frames.

Exact. These informations are supposed to be stored as properties in the map. Not all map editors are able to generate animated tiles so it would be a good addition to the lib to allow to create these animations at runtime. I will add this to the v1.0 which is going to be released next week.

Chrrris · Jun 25, 2014

Informatix said:
Exact. These informations are supposed to be stored as properties in the map. Not all map editors are able to generate animated tiles so it would be a good addition to the lib to allow to create these animations at runtime. I will add this to the v1.0 which is going to be released next week.

Ah, I see, thanks. I'm using Tiled and it doesn't generate animated tiles -- I will try some other editors. But the ability to create them dynamically in code would be very useful too.

Keep up the great work, Informatix. The combination of B4A and your LibGDX wrapper is awesome. Really looking forward to v1.0.

alienhunter · Jun 26, 2014

Informatix said:
"Zoom" does not mean anything in 3D, that's why there's no function in lgPerspectiveCamera. If you're in the street and notice something interesting in a store, you walk to go closer. It's the same thing for the camera. You move it along one of its 3 axis to move closer. The orthographic camera cannot do that because there's no depth in 2D.
EDIT: you can also alter the size of the viewport to simulate a zoom.

thanks for the reply
I altered the viewport with but it works only on "x axis" , hmmm sorry i try to understand your library,
I did a couple of 3D projects in opengl in VB6 and but i want to switch everything in Android and FX (once it is supported ), it is not much difference but for some reason
i got a brainf... on this .
many thanks

Informatix · Jun 30, 2014

alienhunter said:
I did a couple of 3D projects in opengl in VB6 and but i want to switch everything in Android and FX (once it is supported ), it is not much difference but for some reason
i got a brainf... on this .

Here's a simple way of simulating a zoom (replace this function in my ShapeRenderer demo):

B4X:

Sub IP_TouchDragged(ScreenX As Int, ScreenY As Int, Pointer As Int) As Boolean
    If Pointer <> 0 Then Return False

    'Zoom in/out
    If ScreenX > LastX Then
        Camera.Translate(0, 0, Camera.Position.Z * 0.06)
    Else
        Camera.Translate(0, 0, -Camera.Position.Z * 0.06)
    End If
    Camera.Update

    LastX = ScreenX
    Return True   
End Sub

sterlingy · Jun 30, 2014

Informatix,

I have an odd situation

I have some text and buttons that are displayed on the screen. I remove the Capture Listener so only the buttons can be touched. Once a button is touched, I add the Listener back to the hosting Stage.

The problem is that there are three lines of text, and when I remove the Listener, the middle line is not displayed. If I don't remove the Listener, everything is fine. I should also add that the line that is not displayed is animated.

Can you think of something that might cause this?

-Sterling

Informatix · Jul 1, 2014

sterlingy said:
Informatix,

I have an odd situation

I have some text and buttons that are displayed on the screen. I remove the Capture Listener so only the buttons can be touched. Once a button is touched, I add the Listener back to the hosting Stage.

The problem is that there are three lines of text, and when I remove the Listener, the middle line is not displayed. If I don't remove the Listener, everything is fine. I should also add that the line that is not displayed is animated.

Can you think of something that might cause this?

-Sterling

No idea. Could you send me an example reproducing this issue?

sterlingy · Jul 2, 2014

Informatix,

I sent the code to you for the above problem. I think I forgot to mention that when you lose a level, i.e. GAME OVER, you have to click on Play Again to see the problem.

That issue aside, could you give some clarity the Asset Manager?

For example, if I use it to load a sound (your example: "Dim mySound As lgSound = AM.Get("audio/bubblepop.ogg")" do I not have to initialize it as I would normally do if not using the Asset Manager so I can then use mySound.play?

Also, in your example, you have the following line: "lGdx.Graphics.ContinuousRendering = False"

How is it that the above line does not disrupt the normal flow of rendering, after the assets have been loaded?

Cheers,

Sterling

Informatix · Jul 2, 2014

sterlingy said:
Informatix,

I sent the code to you for the above problem. I think I forgot to mention that when you lose a level, i.e. GAME OVER, you have to click on Play Again to see the problem.

The problem in your code is that you call HUDStage.Initialize (HUDStage_Init) many times. So you create a new stage with each call. If you want to clear all children, actions and listeners, call the Clear function instead.
In LibGDX (as in many wrappers), the wrapped class is usually instantiated in Initialize (Dim instantiates only the wrapper), that's why calling Initialize many times has to be avoided. As you won't probably be the last to do this mistake, I'm going to protect my code a bit more against multiple Initialize. What do you think is best? Crashing the app to warn the developper or destroying the previous stage and recreating a new one (not my favourite)?

Informatix · Jul 2, 2014

sterlingy said:
That issue aside, could you give some clarity the Asset Manager?

For example, if I use it to load a sound (your example: "Dim mySound As lgSound = AM.Get("audio/bubblepop.ogg")" do I not have to initialize it as I would normally do if not using the Asset Manager so I can then use mySound.play?

Also, in your example, you have the following line: "lGdx.Graphics.ContinuousRendering = False"

How is it that the above line does not disrupt the normal flow of rendering, after the assets have been loaded?

The AssetManager initializes all loaded resources, so they are ready to use. After "Dim mySound As lgSound = AM.Get("audio/bubblepop.ogg")", you can call mySound.Play.
In my demo, I produce no visual result so I don't need to render continuously once all resources are loaded, that's why lGdx.Graphics.ContinuousRendering becomes false. If I set it to false before loading my resources, then the Render event would never be called and nothing would be loaded (as the loading is made via the AM.Update call). ContinuousRendering does not stop the flow. It prevents the event from being triggered again.

sterlingy · Jul 2, 2014

Informatix said:
The problem in your code is that you call HUDStage.Initialize (HUDStage_Init) many times. So you create a new stage with each call. If you want to clear all children, actions and listeners, call the Clear function instead.
In LibGDX (as in many wrappers), the wrapped class is usually instantiated in Initialize (Dim instantiates only the wrapper), that's why calling Initialize many times has to be avoided. As you won't probably be the last to do this mistake, I'm going to protect my code a bit more against multiple Initialize. What do you think is best? Crashing the app to warn the developper or destroying the previous stage and recreating a new one (not my favourite)?

The reason I call HUDStage repeatedly is because I have multiple Stages, and for some reason A stage with a Listener on it does not respond if another stage has been initialized after the HUDStage, even though the latter stage has no Listener, or if you remove the Listener from the latter stage. Assuming I am wrong about the problem I just mentioned and that there is a solution to the problem, I think crashing the app to warn the developer is probably the best solution, though destroying the previous stage may prevent less headaches for everyone involved.

Informatix · Jul 2, 2014

sterlingy said:
The reason I call HUDStage repeatedly is because I have multiple Stages, and for some reason A stage with a Listener on it does not respond if another stage has been initialized after the HUDStage, even though the latter stage has no Listener, or if you remove the Listener from the latter stage. Assuming I am wrong about the problem I just mentioned and that there is a solution to the problem, I think crashing the app to warn the developer is probably the best solution, though destroying the previous stage may prevent less headaches for everyone involved.

One stage is enough. You can create different groups in your stage: one for the HUD, one for the moving sprites, one for the menu, etc. Having multiple stages means having multiple batchers for the rendering, which is not very efficient. If you want to keep your existing stages, change Initialize to Initialize3 and share the same spritebatch instance.
I never did a test with more than one stage so maybe there are issues. I will look into that.

sterlingy · Jul 2, 2014

Informatix said:
One stage is enough. You can create different groups in your stage: one for the HUD, one for the moving sprites, one for the menu, etc. Having multiple stages means having multiple batchers for the rendering, which is not very efficient, and multiple input processors. If you want to keep your existing stages, change Initialize to Initialize3 and share the same spritebatch instance.
I never did a test with more than one stage so maybe there are issues. I will look into that.

I'm sloe t o having a beta version of my app ready for testing. Once that is finished, I'll break the code while I try to clean it up and make it more efficient.

The reason I have multiple stages is because of Tables. I despise working with Tables in libGDX. Anyway, there are situations where table cells would overlap, instead of monkeying around trying to get my Table Cells exactly where I want them, I just created multiple stages with different tables.

Informatix · Jul 2, 2014

sterlingy said:
I'm sloe t o having a beta version of my app ready for testing. Once that is finished, I'll break the code while I try to clean it up and make it more efficient.

The reason I have multiple stages is because of Tables. I despise working with Tables in libGDX. Anyway, there are situations where table cells would overlap, instead of monkeying around trying to get my Table Cells exactly where I want them, I just created multiple stages with different tables.

Tables are groups. You can have hundreds of them in the same stage, overlapping or not. For now, I see no reason to have more than one stage.

Informatix · Jul 2, 2014

I looked closely at my Java code and I confirm that multiple stages at the same time are not fully supported because the last one replaces the input processor of the previous one. I will mention that in the guide.

sterlingy · Jul 2, 2014

Informatix said:
Tables are groups. You can have hundreds of them in the same stage, overlapping or not. For now, I see no reason to have more than one stage.

Okay, I'll re-code. As you can see, this will be quite the undertaking, but cleaned up, which is better.

Thanks for your help.

sterlingy · Jul 2, 2014

Informatix, I thought I had this figured out, but it is not playing my sound. Here is my code:

B4X:

    Do While AM.Update = True
            Log("Progress=" & Floor(AM.Progress * 100) & "%")
    Loop
   
    'Logs some information about the loaded assets
    Log("------")
    Log("Loaded assets:")
    Dim L As List = AM.LoadedAssetNames
    L.Sort(True)
    For i = 0 To L.Size - 1
        Log("- " & L.Get(i) & " (" & AM.GetAssetType(L.Get(i)) & ")")
    Next
    Log("------")
   
    Dim horseSFX As lgSound = AM.Get("audio/horse_neigh.mp3")
    horseSFX.Play2(1)

The log shows that the sound is loaded, and I don't get any errors.

Informatix · Jul 2, 2014

sterlingy said:

Informatix, I thought I had this figured out, but it is not playing my sound. Here is my code:

B4X:

    Do While AM.Update = True
            Log("Progress=" & Floor(AM.Progress * 100) & "%")
    Loop
  
    'Logs some information about the loaded assets
    Log("------")
    Log("Loaded assets:")
    Dim L As List = AM.LoadedAssetNames
    L.Sort(True)
    For i = 0 To L.Size - 1
        Log("- " & L.Get(i) & " (" & AM.GetAssetType(L.Get(i)) & ")")
    Next
    Log("------")
  
    Dim horseSFX As lgSound = AM.Get("audio/horse_neigh.mp3")
    horseSFX.Play2(1)

The log shows that the sound is loaded, and I don't get any errors.

Did you remove Activity.Finish at the end of the demo? Because you cannot play any sound if the activity is finished.

B4A Library libGDX - Game Engine

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