In case you didn't know, pixelpusher (evan.raskob) is a live video performance artist, or "pixelist" based in London, UK. Click the Info button above for hiring and contact info.
by pixelpusher on Thursday 2 September 2010
[Blog, Software]
Result – this is actually game-like!
CatFishTron Creative Pact Day 3
Today’s lesson in that things are always more difficult than they seem. Tried adding a MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVED detector to the onSceneTouchEvent() method of my TouchSprites so they could detect when a finger dragged over them and subsequently would knock them about, but had a bit of trouble. Apparently, as I’ve learned on the excellent AndEngine forum, an object needs to first catch an ACTION_DOWN event before it will start to receive subsequent ACTION_CANCELED or ACTION_MOVED events. This makes sense in hindsight, but it also make things a bit more difficult when you’ve started thinking about it from the other way, as if these events were just globally propagated down the chain of objects that are subscribed to receive them, until one steps up and handles it.
The solution is to create another physics object that’s hidden, and move it about to knock the other objects around when necessary. Also, I had to update it in a different thread, and I still get some crashes occasionally due to memory errors. Need to look at those…
So it looks like “kicking” an object (a cat, in this case) is going to be all I can get done today, because tonight is the opening at The Brick Box in Brixton Market and I’ll be showing Drawn Together there amongst some other visual and artistic goodness.
I did add simple scoring to this version – this should be handled by a GameLogic class, which I’ll work on a bit tomorrow if I get a chance (have some other stuff to do).
by pixelpusher on Wednesday 1 September 2010
[Blog, Software]
Creative Pact Day 2
Today I’m going to create more of a “game,” eventually called CatFishTron. No, really. I’ll be learning how to add sound to a game, a moving background, and maybe, if I have time, add some self-removing sprites (for explosions, etc!)
First task – to make a sprite “blow-up” in AndEngine you use a SequenceModifier and attach it to the Sprite:
this.mBlowupModifier = new SequenceModifier(new ScaleModifier(1.0f, 1.0f, 0.2f));
final IShapeModifierListener listener = new IShapeModifierListener()
{
public void onModifierFinished(IShapeModifier arg0, IShape arg1)
{
// this is a function in my main Activity that removes a sprite entity and physics body in a separate thread
destroySprite(_spriteEvent.mSprite);
}
};
//set a listener to listen for the modification having finished
this.mBlowupModifier.setShapeModifierListener(listener);
// attach it to the sprite entity object
_spriteEvent.mSprite.addShapeModifier(mBlowupModifier.clone());
Here’s today’s code (again, it’s not complete, just building on the previous day, but you might find it interesting…)
Here’s the app itself, you can open the link on your android phone to install it.
It’s a work in progress, remember. It take a bit to make a video game… even a crappy one!
Also, I promise that at the end of this I will write a tutorial.
For Creative Pact 2010 I’m going to be teaching myself how to make a game using the open source AndEngine for Android mobile devices. apparently, Android apps are the next goldrush, the biggest thing since skinny jeans, and I never got a pair of skinny jeans so I might as well jump in the deep end here.
Firstly, I already blogged about starting with AndEngine, so I won’t repeat myself here. I’ll instead start with my current app, which is going to be a physics-based game with draggable characters.
AndEngine uses Box2D under the hood as its physics engine, which you can find here in project form. Of course, you don’t need to download the project unless you want to see the source code (which can be useful as I couldn’t find any javadocs as of yet). You can instead use the Java jar that comes with the main AndEngine project from GoogleCode.
To get started, I imported the main AndEngine project into Eclipse (New Project->Android Project->create from existing source) and followed the 5 minute video on starting a project in Eclipse, then dragged one of the Physics example Activities from the main project into my new game project (called, funnily enough, GameTest).
The next bit caught me – I need to drag the andenginephysicsbox2dextension.jar (whew… what a name) into my lib folder from the AndEngine main project, and also create a libs folder in my new project and then drag the libandenginephysicsbox2dextension.so from the main project’s libs folder into my new libs folder. If you don’t do this, you will get immediate, fatal errors every time you launch your new app. Of course, in hindsight, this seems perfectly obvious, doesn’t it?
I decided to take the plunge and develop an Android app. We’ve got a good idea for a game for all ages. A really good idea. I could have started on a iPhone/iPad app, but I am put off by Apple’s “curatorial” ways and can’t afford, as a small developer, to be denied or held back from developing my app. That, and I don’t have an iPhone (yes I am the only media arts person in London without one, it seems). I have a semi-ancient Google G1 running on T-Mobile, and I love it because it has a thumb keyboard and usually works well as a phone.
It also runs WikiNotes, where I keep all of my notes and diary. WikiNotes is a free-form notepad-like tool (a wiki, like Wikipedia) that I can organize (or dis-organize) my thoughts and notes into. It really needs an update and some more features, but even without things like undo and revisions it still beats the pants off anything else out there, as far as I’m concerned.
Moving on – developing Android on Eclipse is so easy to set up I thought something must have been missing. Especially on OS X. Instructions are well-written and organized on the Android developer’s website. You can also use Processing to develop to Android but my aging phone only runs Android OS 1.6, and Processing supports versions 2.X and up. I understand the need for forward-compatibility, so I won’t complain. Most new phones run 2.0+ these days. Rumor has it that the G2 is due out soon from T-Mobile…
After writing a simple “Hello, Android” app, I looked for a Java games engine and found the AndEngine project.
It’s open source and has some good, clear documentation, including this excellent 5-minute video that takes you from 0 to an app. Rock. Done. The physics examples are great, too. More to come…
I’m pleased to say that my performance piece, ICE_SNAKE==NOISE will be adapted into an interactive audio-visual installation for Unleashed Devices at Watermans Gallery from 1 September to 22 October 2010.
After a few years of adding visual flair to the sonic cacephony of countless (nearly) NOISE==NOISE nights across London, I finally jumped into the thick of it and created my own audio-visual performance piece.
ICE SNAKE==NOISE slithered up out of a dark period of my life. Literally, it was dark: the dead cold of winter in England, depressing December, where sunny days are a far off memory chewed up and spat out by a biting, inescapable cold. I had a clear goal – to take the frustration and cold anger of a winter away from loved ones and bring that energy into a dramatic performance, at once sonically powerful but also textured and ever-changing, wriggling, like a true snake.
Ryan Jordan, the maestro of audiovisual vertigo who organizes NOISE==NOISE, asked me to perform in Ipswitch, and as I wasn’t going anywhere for the December holidays I agreed. With little time to prepare, I hashed together bits of pieces I was working on using 3D drawing of wormlike, slithering shapes in Fluxus, and lashed them to a soundtrack of chaotic distortion using SuperCollider (for the first time). For the texture of the snake, I used photos of these lattice-like networks of ice, frozen to the roof of our Dalston studio overnight before the winter sun’s moderate warmth blunted their edges, into shapeless, gray slugs.
I’m very pleased with the result – performing it is like taming a wild beast, you don’t control it as much as ride it through until you both tire out and surrender.
For this installation, I invite others to experience the piece by performing it themselves. Put on the headphones and imagine yourself in the dead of winter in the ancient countryside, the howling wind slashing at your skin, piercing spikes of cold penetrating your bare flesh under your clothes, the swirling snow dizzying your mind until all grows numb and silent.
Here is a live recording of myself playing it back in December:
