Moai Meetup in San Francsico !!!

Details

Category: Blog

Published on Tuesday, 09 April 2013 10:48

Written by Francisco Tufró

Yes! We finally decided to do a meetup in San Francisco.

Thanks to our friends from MindSnacks that made this possible.

All the info for the event here: 

http://moaimeetup.eventbrite.com/

New Moai SDK Book!

Details

Category: Blog

Published on Friday, 22 March 2013 19:02

Written by Francisco Tufró

Hi everybody!

Short blog post to tell you that the first book about Moai SDK will be available on March 26th.

It's a step-by-step introduction to the framework, where you will build 2 prototypes.

It's been written by me (Francisco Tufró) and reviewed by Adam and Eric from Zipline!

 

http://www.packtpub.com/developing-mobile-games-with-moai-sdk/book

We hope you enjoy it!

Ideas for Google Summer of Code 2013

Details

Category: Blog

Published on Friday, 22 March 2013 10:05

Written by Francisco Tufró

Hi everybody! We're applying to this year's Google Summer of Code, in search of new members that will join the community and help the project.

Here is a list of ideas for the potential projects:

• Better documentation: Documentation in Moai SDK is hard to read and not always correct. We need to review the whole framework's docs, create samples that are missing and update the existing ones.
• Unified build system: Maintaining a lot of different build systems for each platform has become a probem. We would like to have something like cmake creating projects for the different systems.
• 3D framework: Right now 3D support is really small, we need to create a unified way to work with models, create model import classes, and usual 3D stuff.
• New audio framework: Untz, our current audio framework, is far from ideal, so we need a new one. 

Hope you like these ideas and join us!!!

Moai SDK 1.4p0 Released

Details

Category: Blog

Published on Saturday, 02 March 2013 03:39

Written by Francisco Tufró

Finally!!! After about 4 months we have a new release!

We've been dealing with a lot internally, the studio had a lot of work to do with Slots but here we are.

The news are that I (Francisco Tufró) am going to be taking care of Moai SDK releases, pull requests and all things SDK.

What's new?

Since this release, we removed the sign up requirement for Moai SDK Download. So just head to our Downloads section and get the latest release.

We also added nightly builds, so you don't have to wait until an official release is done in order to try edge stuff. But keep in mind that nightly builds are extremely unstable.

Another thing that we're going to do from now on is to keep a file named CHANGELOG.txt in the root of the release package, it will include info about all the commits included in it and credits to the developers that collaborated.

Highlights

• Android Keyboard
• Better Threading support
• Offscreen frame-buffering

Directory structure

Even if there were no huge changes in the SDK I decided to bump to 1.4 because we changed the directory structure of releases.

The new structure is as follows:

bin/ Development binaries for Windows and MacOSX, Linux will be added soon
docs/ Documentation for this release and attribution images
hosts/ Source and IDE projects for the different platform's hosts
include/ Include headers
lib/ Compiled (static and/or dynamic) libraries for all the supported platforms
samples/ Moai SDK feature samples 

The main idea behind the changes was splitting the executable binaries from the libraries and also to give better naming to platforms (ant now is android for example).

Hope you enjoy this release and keep creating amazing games!

We love you! ❤

ChangeLog 

Version 1.4p0
-------------

by Patrick Meehan ( https://github.com/patrickmeehan )
* Added setTerrainMask () to MOAIPathFinder; renamed setTerrainScale () to setTerrainWeight ()
* Some work has been done on threading. Check MOAIThread.
* added support for default texture; finished async load; samples for async texture load
  and default texture
* added support in MOAIDataBuffer to detect zip files, inflate on load; added inflate on load
  support to MOAIDataIOTask
* moai coding style guide in .doc format
* first phase of offscreen rendering architecture completed
* added setClearColor () to MOAILayer
* samples to test multiple viewports inside an offscreen buffer
* integrated sfmt random number generator
* Merged playnomi contribs to MOAIImage, MOAIImageTexture, MOAIParticleSystem and MOAIParticlePexPlugin

by Adam Villalobos ( https://github.com/adamvillalobos )
* Adding GCM support ( replacing C2DM ) to Android host.
* Adding file not found log if a texture file fails to load
* Fixing build errors for DataTaskIO
* Fixing issue with setting visibility not properly updating dependencies
* Fixing bug with Font reloading on Android
* Added Android keyboard support

by John Copic ( https://github.com/JohnCopic )
* Adding sfmt lib to android build.

by JoakimBlomberg ( https://github.com/JoakimBlomberg )
* Script node apply of attributes should unpack attribute id or it will not be applied

by Bogdan Tatarov ( https://github.com/btatarov )
* adding MOAIUnitzSound::_getFilename()

by mxttie ( https://github.com/mxttie )
* updated box2d physics sample adding mouse manipulation using mouse joint

by Tommo Zhou ( https://github.com/tommo )
* fix edge case that new-created-paused action cannot receive further update
* fix: MOAIImageTexture not override OnInvalidate

by Antonio ( https://github.com/antback )
* Initial Camera Support for iOS

by sporksmith ( https://github.com/sporksmith )
* Log file-open failures

by Clement Farabet ( https://github.com/clementfarabet )
* Fixed VSYNC issue for OSX host.
* Added missing files to iOS (XCode) project.

by Francisco Tufro ( https://github.com/franciscotufro )
* Several fixes in build systems for all platforms
* New release script in bin/distribute

by Stephen Belanger ( https://github.com/Qard )
* Recommended to enable this with C-Ares
  http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/curl_easy_setopt.html#CURLOPTNOSIGNAL

by Ben Borowski ( https://github.com/typeoneerror )
* Adds call to FMOD update to iOS sample project.

by Robert Wahler ( https://github.com/robertwahler )
* GlutHost will run "main.lua" if host binary is called without arguments
* add Lua global 'arg' that mimics the lua/luajit built-in global 'arg' to GlutHost

by Alexey Zankevich ( https://github.com/Nepherhotep )
* MOAIJsonParser fix - checking if lua number is integer has been added
* Added EVENT_PAUSE, EVENT_RESUME events to MOAISim
* Fixed MOAIEnvironment.screenDpi nil issue for Android
* Fixed MOAIEnvironment.screenDpi nil issue for iOS host

by Seebs ( https://github.com/seebs )
* Clarify description of textbox color escapes, fixing one typo and reducing confusion
  between number of bits and number of values represented.
* build.sh: Terser output
* add (untested) support for controlling GL blend equations.

by ChairGraveyard ( https://github.com/ChairGraveyard )
* Add support for collideConnected flag to MOAIBox2DWorld::_addRopeJoint

by out-of-pixel ( https://github.com/out-of-pixel )
* Fixed last Key Error from MOAIAnimCurve

by superquadratic ( https://github.com/superquadratic )
* Fix Clang 4.2 (Xcode 4.6) Compiler Warnings

 

 

MOAI FAQ in Serbo-Croatian

Details

Category: Blog

Published on Thursday, 14 February 2013 21:34

Written by Francisco Tufró

Thanks Vera Djuraskovic for translating our FAQ to Serbo-Croatian!

We hope this allows people from the former Yugoslav Republics to join our community!

Check it out here: http://science.webhostinggeeks.com/moai !!!

New Books Featuring Moai

Details

Category: Blog

Published on Friday, 18 January 2013 17:46

Written by Patrick Meehan

Just a quick post to tell you about two cool new books that have chapters on Moai. The first is 'Learn Lua for iOS Game Development' by our friend Jayant Varma:

http://www.apress.com/9781430246626

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1430246626/ref=nosim/apre-20

The second is Jason Brownlee's 'Mobile Game Engines: Interviews with Mobile Game Engine Developers':

http://mobilegameengines.com/interviews_with_mobile_game_engine_developers

Check them out!

Moai SDK 1.3r2 is now available

Details

Category: Blog

Published on Tuesday, 23 October 2012 14:37

Written by Adam Villalobos

Summer is well and truly over here in Seattle, but the good news is that the pace of Moai development is picking up! The new Moai SDK 1.3r2 is now available for download. This release saw a focus on iOS, with support for the iOS 6 SDK and Xcode 4.5 plus a round of new features and bug fixes for all platforms.

Most importantly, we have updated the Moai Xcode project to support Apple's latest Xcode version 4.5 and the iOS 6 SDK. What does this mean for you? The biggest change is that Xcode 4.5 adds support for armv7s and the iPhone 5, but drops support for older armv6 iOS devices, and requires a minimum of iOS 4.3. Apple's armv6 devices include the iPhone 3G and earlier iPhones, and the first two generations of iPod touch devices. The Moai codebase on github can still be used to build to armv6 with previous Xcode versions, but your build flags will need to be reverted to support this.

Thanks again to Moai contributors and developers who assisted with this release.

 

What's new in Moai SDK 1.3r2:

 

Want to discuss this update in the Moai Forums?  Go for it.

AppThwack - A New Weapon for Your Testing Arsenal

Details

Category: Blog

Published on Friday, 05 October 2012 15:04

At Zipline, we run a busy game studio as well as building the Moai platform. We know that successful games require great reviews, getting good reviews requires a great player experience, and ensuring a great player experience on all kinds of different devices and device OSs requires a lot of testing. We've learned a lot about testing since we started Zipline, and today we are announcing a partnership with AppThwack to help all Moai developers streamline their game testing on Android.

AppThwack is a great service for Android game devs who don't have access to a large QA department or device budget. Simply upload your Android APK and see it run on over 100 real, physical phones and tablets in a few minutes (no emulation here). You can detect screen layout issues, crashes and other problems immediately. You can also instrument your APK via Robotium if you want to script more in-depth testing.

Using AppThwack, even the smallest studio can test their game for a fraction of the time and cost of traditional manual testing, and there are special rates for indie developers.

Sound useful?  You can sign up for a free AppThwack account here. Let us know what you think in the Moai forums.

Interview on state of mobile advertising

Details

Category: Blog

Published on Monday, 01 October 2012 16:11

A lot of modern mobile games are supported by mobile advertising (either exclusively or in addition to in-app purchases). But there are a lot of ad networks out there, and in some cases the the fill rates and monetization on a per user/per impression basis is quite disappointing. In this interview, Mike from the Moai team questions Ryan Morel (of PlacePlay) about the state of the mobile advertising space and innovations in the market.

 

 

- Mike.

New Moai SDK 1.3 release now available

Details

Category: Blog

Published on Friday, 28 September 2012 14:14

The latest Moai SDK is now available for download. For this 1.3 release, we have new features, bug fixes and we have brought Android closer to feature parity with iOS.

MOAISim.setTraceback saw a lot of attention, which will allow for better error reporting. We've also got improved Crittercism crash reporting with Lua stack traces and support for the Facebook SDK 3.0 on iOS.

A special thanks to Moai contributors markusFisch, mirsadm, tommo, shanehyde, franciscotufro, and sgeos for their contributions to this latest release.

Coming up next for Moai SDK - support for iOS 6 and iPhone 5 with Xcode 4.5.

Here are the highlights of the Moai 1.3 release.

• Added MD5 Hash Writer to compute a hash of a stream as it writes
• Added Crittercism crash reporting for Lua stack traces, See samples/util/util-crash-report
• Fixed network reachability initialization on iOS
• Fixed input bug with multiple presses in one 'Frame'
• Android - Fixed incorrect accelerometer data on tablets
• Android  - Added C-Ares ( Fixes DNS lookup blocking on HTTP calls )
• Android  -Added MOAILocationSensor
• Android - Added MOAICompassSensor
• Android - Fixed status bar issues with 3.1 tablets
• iOS - Updated Facebook SDK to 3.0
• iOS - Updated Crittercism SDK
• MOAIApp - Added getUTCTime to Mobile
• MOAILayer - Fixed bugs where MOAILayer:setVisible had no effect
• MOAIHttpTask - Added 'getProgress' function to HTTPTask for Curl
• MOAIJsonParser - Fix for issue with 64bit ints
• MOAIFmodEx fixes for 'setLooping'