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Sep. 1st, 2013 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnI was lucky enough to catch some of the stream from the Clickteam convention today, after forgetting about it during my holiday - and there's some exciting stuff planned that I had no idea about!
As anticipated a while ago, MMF is going to drop the "Multimedia" from its name because everyone has stopped using it now, and it will become Fusion 3. But unexpectedly, before that, it's going to become Fusion 2.5, which will be an overhaul that includes things like Box2D physics on every object (replacing the default movements, which have been - to be fair to them - awful for a long time) and a host of other exciting changes.
The good news for MMF3 is that the developers will have a much more streamlined process - currently they have eleven different runtimes and have to test each one. This is going to be rearranged so that most of the runtimes are branched off the C++ runtime library, and there's only one separate one for Javascript/HTML5.
Another problem that's been at the back of people's minds for MMF thus far is that the runtime system is much slower than you would think because the system to check and react to events involves Russian dolls of virtual machines in virtual machines, especially when you're running in Java. To solve this, they're on their way to translating events directly into code through a module called Fusion Event Compiler, FEC. This means the application will now be able to be exported to the target language's source (if you see what I mean) - making it much, much faster than before, and also with the advantage of being able to modify things manually if necessary. Events will be compiled to use CTLib, a game programming library for C++, in which you can reportedly also quite plausibly make applications from the ground up. These are interesting times indeed!
So I think it's high time I actually posted some activity in terms of what I promised I would do last year - namely, get some stuff working with the XBox runtime. Here's Running Free.
The main issue with converting the game between platforms is the presentation and control, especially as the game originated with very unconventional controls being almost entirely done through the rotation of the iPhone. I'm fortunate to have already done a Flash version that was sort of in-between, but even then, you're going from a game in which you could use the mouse to one in which you have pure controller support. This new title screen shows one of the simplest to correct problems.
The level select screen needed more of an overhaul because its aspect ratio was completely different from what you'd find on a television screen. Here, I've shifted the level titles over to the left, and used the extra space to provide a minimap and give myself a bit more room to display the player's overall progress.
The gameplay screen needs a lot of work done to it - I've added an arrow effect for the gravity that I don't really like, and I still need to replace a lot of the help Post-Its with controls relevant to the Xbox. I also still have to think about how I'd like to handle pausing the game - I think it should be a standard continue/retry/restart choice, but the iPhone version allowed you to rotate the screen while paused as well, giving you some breathing room... however, that was born out of necessity for the odd controls, and I think that XBox players will be able to more adeptly switch gravity non-stop. (This screenshot also proudly shows off a level-loading error.)
There are a lot of things to think about... but I really am impressed with how the whole thing really can be exported to Visual Studio and run seamlessly at this point.
As anticipated a while ago, MMF is going to drop the "Multimedia" from its name because everyone has stopped using it now, and it will become Fusion 3. But unexpectedly, before that, it's going to become Fusion 2.5, which will be an overhaul that includes things like Box2D physics on every object (replacing the default movements, which have been - to be fair to them - awful for a long time) and a host of other exciting changes.
The good news for MMF3 is that the developers will have a much more streamlined process - currently they have eleven different runtimes and have to test each one. This is going to be rearranged so that most of the runtimes are branched off the C++ runtime library, and there's only one separate one for Javascript/HTML5.
Another problem that's been at the back of people's minds for MMF thus far is that the runtime system is much slower than you would think because the system to check and react to events involves Russian dolls of virtual machines in virtual machines, especially when you're running in Java. To solve this, they're on their way to translating events directly into code through a module called Fusion Event Compiler, FEC. This means the application will now be able to be exported to the target language's source (if you see what I mean) - making it much, much faster than before, and also with the advantage of being able to modify things manually if necessary. Events will be compiled to use CTLib, a game programming library for C++, in which you can reportedly also quite plausibly make applications from the ground up. These are interesting times indeed!
So I think it's high time I actually posted some activity in terms of what I promised I would do last year - namely, get some stuff working with the XBox runtime. Here's Running Free.
The main issue with converting the game between platforms is the presentation and control, especially as the game originated with very unconventional controls being almost entirely done through the rotation of the iPhone. I'm fortunate to have already done a Flash version that was sort of in-between, but even then, you're going from a game in which you could use the mouse to one in which you have pure controller support. This new title screen shows one of the simplest to correct problems.
The level select screen needed more of an overhaul because its aspect ratio was completely different from what you'd find on a television screen. Here, I've shifted the level titles over to the left, and used the extra space to provide a minimap and give myself a bit more room to display the player's overall progress.
The gameplay screen needs a lot of work done to it - I've added an arrow effect for the gravity that I don't really like, and I still need to replace a lot of the help Post-Its with controls relevant to the Xbox. I also still have to think about how I'd like to handle pausing the game - I think it should be a standard continue/retry/restart choice, but the iPhone version allowed you to rotate the screen while paused as well, giving you some breathing room... however, that was born out of necessity for the odd controls, and I think that XBox players will be able to more adeptly switch gravity non-stop. (This screenshot also proudly shows off a level-loading error.)
There are a lot of things to think about... but I really am impressed with how the whole thing really can be exported to Visual Studio and run seamlessly at this point.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 03:18 am (UTC)It's kind of a shame that this will be released right as they're winding the whole platform down, but… maybe you can go for a Windows release while you're at it!
no subject
Date: 2013-09-07 01:29 am (UTC)