Mario Zechner

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since May 06, 2011
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Recent posts by Mario Zechner

Congrats to the winners from my side as well. I had quite some fun here. I'll for sure stick around, this is an excellent forum! Big thanks to the organizers as well for giving me this promotion oportunity. Much appreciated!
12 years ago
Game development would in so far be a good way to get back into the field as it touches a ton of different things: file i/o, networking, input handling, graphics & audio programming, etc. etc. etc. You might consider checking out some of the new features introduced in Java 1.5, most importantly generics and the modified collection classes.
12 years ago
Yes, the concepts are easily transferable to Android, and the book talks a lot about 2D programming (and 3D programming as well). You'll be pleased with the increased capabilities of the Dalvik VM and runtime libs in comparison J2ME.
12 years ago
Oh, you will certainly not need anything like eigenvalue decomposition. The linear algebra used in 3d graphics is mostly constrainted to vector/matrices/quaternions. Add computational geometry and some trigonometry to the mix and you are all set. There's a wonderful book called "Mathematics for 3D Game Programming & Computer Graphics" which covers a lot of ground. I highly recommend it. My book teaches the basics needed for simple 3d games in a hands on manner.
12 years ago
Programming a game is sadly nothing one can learn by copy & pasting code. If you've just started out with Java i'd suggest starting small and working your way upwards. I don't want to discourage you, but it might be very very frustrating to start out with 3D if you are not yet familiar with basic 2D graphics programming concepts.

If you are really new to Java you might consider starting out with basic text adventures to get a feel for designing a game idea and actually implementing it. This also involves getting familiar with programm if you just started out. This includes things like basic control structures, data structures and so on. It also includes things like file i/o, all the mundane things that one would not directly associate with game programming.

If that is to boring you can skip the text adventure part and go for a very simple 2D game, provided you have general programming experience. Usually you'd try to implement an old class like Pong or Breakout. From there you should have a good enough crasp about general game development that you can focus your learning on aspects like graphics for a while.

3D can be a bit of a bitch at first, especially if you lack the necessary knowledge of linear algebra. Don't get discouraged, it has a steep learning curve, but once you grasp the basics it's extremely satisfying!

The book follows this progression (with the assumption that you already know the basics of Java) so it might well be what you are looking for. The concepts are transferable to any other platform as well!
12 years ago
You could have a look at the source of Replica Island, a 2D platformer a former Google engineer named Chris Pruett created. It has a pretty big following on the market and is of high quality. For someone just starting out with game development or Android in general it might be a bit of a tough nut to crack though.
12 years ago
WebGL in Chrome/Firefox has come a long way. The problem is that WebGL is basically OpenGL ES 2.0 (give or take a couple of minor features and extensions). The state of OpenGL drivers on Windows is a bit of a problem: vendors like ATI seem to not have any incentive to get their act together (all hail Nvidia for providing super awesome OpenGL and OpenCL drivers, even for Linux). Google actually made a WebGL implementation called Angle that is actually translating OpenGL calls to DirectX to circumnavigate the driver issue.

WebGL on mobile devices is still in its infancy. The Android Browser (which is not Chrome btw.) does not support WebGL at this point. I don't know of any plans for that either. What's available at the moment is the HTML5 Canvas which offers sufficient performance for many tasks. It's 2D only though. We'll see what the future holds, i hope to see some development over the next year. Maybe we can see that feature at Google I/O 2012
12 years ago
At the moment i would not suggest writting an games more complex than say pong as a web app. While javascript is pretty fast on Android, and while even sensors are exposed to some degree, it's still not comparable in terms of performance, feature richness and look & feel to "native" applications, be they written in Java or C++. You also have to come up with your own monetization scheme if you provide your apps/games via a website instead of putting it on the Android market.

For the future i definitely hope that in-browser gaming becomes relevant on Android devices. A good step in this direction would be supporting WebGL in the Android browser, which would open up a lot of oportunities. Not all games are of course suiteable, javascript can only be so fast.
12 years ago
I'd suggest getting at least a good crasp of the basics of Java. The book does not use any advanced Java concept apart from one class called Pool which uses generics. We also use the Java collections like List, Map and so on, but that should be pretty standard. I'd suggest brushing up a little on Java and give the source code a look.
12 years ago
You can find a Kindle version on the Apress site actually
12 years ago
Only very briefly with some general advice. I'm a programmer not so much a marketing guy i'm afraid
12 years ago
There is not clear cut answer to that. Casual games like Angry Birds or Abduction (Doodle Jump game) or even simpler games are pretty big due to them catching the largest audience (non-hardcore gamers). However, there are also a couple of titles that are less casual but still successful.

I think what's more important than the genre is the accesibility of a game (how easy is it to pick it up) as well as the marketing that goes along with releasing the game. If people don't know about your game it can be as good as can be, you won't have any players.
12 years ago
You generally develop for Android with your favorite Java IDE (Eclipse, Netbeans, Intelij Idea). The officially supported IDE is Eclipse. In addition to your standard Java development setup (IDE + JDK) you have to install the free Android SDK. Programming for Android is pretty much the same as programming any other Java application: create a project with the correct type in your IDE, write Java code against the APIs provided on Android and run/debug your app either on the emulator or a device connected via USB. A good starting point is the Android Developer Guide.

Graphics alone don't make a game, a common misconception. In general you have

- design (game mechanics, story, art style)
- asset creation (graphics & audio)
- implementation (coding & tools creation)

With experience (emphasis on experience here) one can create a VERY simple platformer game in a day. I did that for the last Ludum Dare, a game development challenge where you have to write a game in 48 hours. You can find out more about it here (with source code).

Here's a timelapse of the complete 13 hour creation period.

Pulling this off needs a lot of experience though, something that takes a while to acquire. I can not claim that you can do the same in the time frame i used after reading the book, but you should be able to do it in a few weeks if you don't have any previous game development experience. Can't really generalize here, it all depends on the individual and dedication.
12 years ago
Testing without at least one single device will be hard, the emulator just doesn't cut it. I have 6 devices currently (one directly for free from Google and one from Nvidia) so i'm in an extremely lucky situation. I'd say get one of the current generation phones, or if the you have a tight budget, get one of the last generation phones (HTC Desire/Nexus One, Motorola Droid). The later can be found on ebay and similar sites for OK prices.

I'm European so i sadly can't comment on any carrier related issues.
12 years ago