MvR, GPU scaling, in-app purchases, bugfixing...

You thought development had stopped? Keep reading :)

First of all, let me announce (if you haven't read it yet) that Pixelatom has released Monkey vs Robots for Android. We've worked closely to bring this game to life and, as a result of this cooperation, I've added some pretty cool features to BennuGD on devices.
But, first of all, the game trailer:

The game is pretty fun to play and if you want to support either a small indie game development studio or BennuGD development on devices, buying the game is a good way to do so. We've also released the Ouya version as a demo. Once you download the demo (from DISCOVER in your Ouya) you're given the option to purchase the full game as an in-app purchase.
So, again, if you want to have a good time playing a nice game or just reward us for our good job :) just:

Or just switch on your Ouya and purchase the full version in-app

Like I said before, while developing the game, I've improved the port in a few ways. Let me talk to you about some of them.

Hardware scaling

I already talked to you about it. GPU scaling is now ready for primetime and I must say it's working beautifully. In the next few days I'll be uploading the code to the SVN server in Google Code. I'll post a small update when it's ready, but you might also want to follow my public twitter account to know about it as soon as it happens.

Ouya in-app purchase module

In order to get the in-app purchase experience going, I had to create an in-app purchase module. If I have to tell you the truth, it's pretty cumbersome to set up and to get it working you probably want to have a notion of what you're doing.
I'll also upload some sample of the module working, and have some "fake" modules so that you can compile your games in your computer.
As a side benefit, this module allows you to tell an Ouya apart from a regular Android device.

Nuts & Scrap

Our friends at Devilish Games recently celebrated their 15th (wow!) birthday. To celebrate, they released Nuts & Scrap -one of their first games ever- on Android for free.

The game is coming to iOS, too (and uses hardware scaling :) and uses Pixjuegos' on-screen controls. In fact, it was Panreyes from Pixjuegos who did the Android port and adapted the game code from Fenix to BennuGD.

PixTemplate

People are complaining that using the Android port is too hard and Panreyes created a template for you to use. It includes all you need to port your BennuGD games to Android (if you're on Windows, that is).
It's pretty useful, and includes some of their goodies (like on-screen controls and a great control abstraction layer). Be sure to give it a try!

Ripollés' Nightmare

Something quite nasty happened to the great guys at PixJuegos with this game that they had already finished. I'll talk to you more about it on a later post but didn't want it to go unmentioned on this one.

That's it for today. I'd say you've got quite a few things to check out!

Happy coding

[Updated] Good news, everyone!

We landed on Mars today!

This is, for itself, great news but there's more!

Yesterday Pixel (from PixJuegos) released a preview release of PixFrogger2 for Android. You can download it from here.

PixFrogger is GPLv2, get the source from here.

Also, I'm working in a small utility which will package your games for Android easily. It's very simple, but the basics are already working. The initial version will look something like this:

It'll work in Windows, Linux and OSX!

Expect a release early enough (but you'll still have to install the Android SDK yourself).

[Updated] Changed the link from a previous version of the apk to a newer one that includes support for both ldpi and mdpi.

mod_key working

At some point in the past, I had removed libkey & mod_key from the default Android build as the SDL2 API for managing keyboard has changed/improved substantially and I hadn't taken the time to upgrade the code.
A few days ago, Pixel reminded me (thanks!) that I hadn't done so, so today I've taken some time to fix this.

Here you can see a small video of the sample code running in the ICS emulator:

As for what I've been doing lately: I've worked on better integration with the window manager events (mouse_status, focus_status and so on) in Android and the BennuGD code is now compiled as a single APK for armv6, armv7 & x86 so that at least I can run the tests at a decent speed in the android x86 emulator.

Also, as packaging for Android is a bit frightening for the typical BennuGD user right now, I'm doing a small app for Linux/Windows/OSX that should take care of the packaging process for you. More on this later.

As a last note, I've set up a public Twitter account that you can follow me. I'll publish small status updates there and from time to time I'll also drop some builds for you to test and report back:
@josebagar_p