ZDefense

[zergling_zzh]

We just published the game ZDefense to android market. It uses AndEngine as its game Engine. This is my first android game, before that I didn't know how to make a game. It is AndEngine that makes me successfully build my game just in a few months.

Thank you , AndEngine!

I also use some libgdx code in the performance critical part in my game. Now my game can get 60 FPS just on mid-end android phone like Defy.

This is my game's URL. https://market.android.com/details?id=mobi.zstudio.avi

[dironto]

Hi.
Looks promising. Will download it. what libvgdx pieces did you use and could you integrate it easily?

[zergling_zzh]

Some utils classes, like Array IntArray IdentityMap Mathutils Pool BufferUtils .
Array IntArray IdentityMap are faster than standard container class.
MathUtils provides a faster sin cos funtion.
Pool can be used for reuse object to reduce GC.
BufferUtils use JNI to provide faster speed.

Another thing I done is porting the SpriteBatch to andengine. It boosts the performance on the low-end phones like G1 hero and slightly increase the performance on mid-end and high-end phones.

[AfroFire]

Nice work, great finds. Recently Nicholas has implemented a SpriteBatch in to AndEngine (for anyone else who might read this).

[Nicolas Gramlich]

Hi,

your game kicks fucking ass
I love it

Only a few things to complain about:
1. It cannot be installed on the XPeria Play (Android 2.3.2) but it works (at least on) the LG Optimus 3D and the Motorola Xoom. The Market-webstore says it is not compatible with the XPeria Play.

Nicolas

zdefense_1.png (248.39 KiB) Viewed 1680 times

2. On the Xoom, the graphics are quite pixelate - see below. (On the LG Optimus 3D with its fairly large 4" - 800x480 px screen, it's perfect!)

3. The hexagons on the LG Optimus 3D look "non-uniform" the "shooting-radius-circle" is perfectly round. On the Xoom the haxagons are "uniform" but the "shooting-radius-circle" is an ellipse. I'm not sure if that is intended.

zdefense_2.png (163.31 KiB) Viewed 1680 times

zdefense_3.png (119.65 KiB) Viewed 1680 times

Do you have a Gameplay video somewhere I'd like to feature this on the blog soon

Best Regards,

[Nicolas Gramlich]

Hi,

one other thing that could be improved is the level-selection.
Currently what you see is:

Tutorial
Tutorial 1
Tutorial 2
Tutorial 3
Tutorial 4
Tutorial 5
Normal

The problem is that it doesn't look like a list. I think this can be easily solved by making the listitems slightly smaller, so that we can see a part of the first item of the "Normal" category.

Best Regards,
Nicolas

[zergling_zzh]

Nice work, great finds. Recently Nicholas has implemented a SpriteBatch in to AndEngine (for anyone else who might read this).

Thank you for letting me know. I hasn't check the update of AndEngine for a long time.

I just took a look on SpriteBatch & SpriteGroup provided by andEngine, they looks great! Clean, well-organized and easy to use.

[zergling_zzh]

Some utils classes, like Array IntArray IdentityMap Mathutils Pool BufferUtils .
Array IntArray IdentityMap are faster than standard container class.
MathUtils provides a faster sin cos funtion.
Pool can be used for reuse object to reduce GC.
BufferUtils use JNI to provide faster speed.

Another thing I done is porting the SpriteBatch to andengine. It boosts the performance on the low-end phones like G1 hero and slightly increase the performance on mid-end and high-end phones.

Another improvement I forgot to mention is RGB_565 texture support. In our game we use many textures don't have alpha info, by modifying AndEngine to support RGB_565 texture, the performance is improved by 10%+.

It is a dirty hack, I just modified a few lines to add the RGB_565 support. It would be great if the AndEngine will officially support different textures options like RGB_565 RGBA_4444 etc.

[Nicolas Gramlich]

Hi,

Another improvement I forgot to mention is RGB_565 texture support. In our game we use many textures don't have alpha info, by modifying AndEngine to support RGB_565 texture, the performance is improved by 10%+.

It is a dirty hack, I just modified a few lines to add the RGB_565 support. It would be great if the AndEngine will officially support different textures options like RGB_565 RGBA_4444 etc.

could you share those changes with me Technically you are even required to make them public
Snippets of the relevant sections are fine, Patches would be perfect

Best Regards,
Nicolas

[zergling_zzh]

Only a few things to complain about:
1. It cannot be installed on the XPeria Play (Android 2.3.2) but it works (at least on) the LG Optimus 3D and the Motorola Xoom. The Market-webstore says it is not compatible with the XPeria Play.

I am glad you like it

On the Xperia play compatibility issue, it is really strange, I checked the supported devices list on the app management page, Xepria play is not in it. But the game just has a few market filtering, android.hardware.touchscreen /armeabi-v7a armeabi/android 2.1+ and NORMAL LARGE XLARGE screen layouts, that is all. Nothing special except armebi-v7a armeabi support. I use libgdx, that use jni. So it requires these 2 native platforms. But I search libgdx & xperia play, it seems no other users have compatibility issue. I totally have no idea.

2. On the Xoom, the graphics are quite pixelate - see below. (On the LG Optimus 3D with its fairly large 4" - 800x480 px screen, it's perfect!)

3. The hexagons on the LG Optimus 3D look "non-uniform" the "shooting-radius-circle" is perfectly round. On the Xoom the haxagons are "uniform" but the "shooting-radius-circle" is an ellipse. I'm not sure if that is intended.

The graphics on 800*480 screen is what we design. On other resolution we just scale the graphics, so that is why you see the range-circle is an ellipse. Hexagones look "non-uniform" on 800*480 screen because we find they looks good and we can use bigger place of the screen and each hexagone can be just put in a square. The lucky thing is our non-uniform hexagones just have slightly different to the uniform hexagones on width/height ratio, so it doesn't affect the game playing.

Do you have a Gameplay video somewhere I'd like to feature this on the blog soon

Best Regards,

We still have no Gameplay video now. I tried to record one by using androidscreencast (http://code.google.com/p/androidscreencast/), but the video doen't looks good. AndroidScreenCast just supports 5-6 FPS recording. But our game's FPS is 55+. The current idea is playing back the game on 1/10 speed, and record the video and use some video editor software to recover it to normal speed. This idea looks a bit complicated. I remember Farm tower has a lot of good videos. Could you share your experience on how to make a Gameplay video?

Thanks,
Zhiheng Zheng