Libgdx on iOS

[badlogicgames]

Early days, but i managed to get all the low-level stuff to work. Biggest pain point was JNI, that works fully now. The screenshot doesn't give it away, but it exercises all the OpenGL ES 2.0 classes (meshes, shaders, etc.). Input works as well, so does audio. Images aren't loaded correctly at the moment, probably due to them being mangled by some iOS "optimization" tool.

edit: well, looks like it's actually the shitty iOS tools messing with the PNGs. Renaming the files to something else works. https://dl.dropbox.com/s/r5mq0obvhw1fdnd/IMG_20121009_011249.jpg?dl=1

[Nate]

For ease of viewing:

[badlogicgames]

Good work minion!

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[ra4king]

Amazing job! Is this made with the expensive Monotouch route or with Jack?

[badlogicgames]

MonoTouch, i don't have a lot of free time at the moment, so i have to prioritize things. The MonoTouch backend is a lot easier to handle.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ssc7IYnGq2M?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Ssc7IYnGq2M?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

[ReBirth]

SUBARASHII!

[badlogicgames]

Got three of our demos to run (pretty easily actually). None of them are super demanding and all of them run perfectly fine on my IPad 2 and 3. Don't have anything lower-end, might have to acquire an Ipod or something.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/UEF4Mv-9Rko?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/UEF4Mv-9Rko?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

[badlogicgames]

And here's a full-blown game working on iOS, Operation Stormfront by Noble Master Games. GC hiccups, but we can fix that (uses Boehm GC, will switch to Mono's SGen).

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/sgjGyU6WFl0?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/sgjGyU6WFl0?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

[noblemaster]

yep, things are slowly coming together 

[concerto49]

These videos look awesome. Been a libgdx user for a long time and now we can move to ios. Great! Thanks for all the great work so far.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[ra4king]

It's not all cookies and cream though. To publish on iOS through libGDX, you need to pay the yearly $100 fee for an Apple membership and the yearly $400 license from MonoTouch. :/

[princec]

Dude, if you can't afford $500 then you're wasting your time publishing on iOS anyway.

Cas

[badlogicgames]

I can't do anything about the 100$ you have to give to Apple. The 400$ for MonoTouch are indeed a bit of a bummer. However, i only have so much sparetime. I haven't given up on Jack, and Avian got some new additions recently (ARM 7 support, OpenJDK on iOS support), so those "free" options are still available. If i had more time to work on this stuff i could provide a cheaper solution. I guess the next viable option would probably be Avian, though that has zero debugging support. Jack will probably stay a pipedream

[ReBirth]

I don't know much about Apple's market, but your consumers have to jailbreak to install third party app right? On android we just need change on option.

[StumpyStrust]

"jail breaking" an iPhone is child's play. For android I think you just need to tick the "allow third party apps" The thing is most kids on iPhone are nublits to computers and they have daddy paying phone bill so they just pay for everything. Just about every person I know that uses an android phone gets there apps illegally. I don't even have a smart phone so its not like I just hang around all the pirates.

[Jimmt]

"jail breaking" an iPhone is child's play. For android I think you just need to tick the "allow third party apps" The thing is most kids on iPhone are nublits to computers and they have daddy paying phone bill so they just pay for everything. Just about every person I know that uses an android phone gets there apps illegally. I don't even have a smart phone so its not like I just hang around all the pirates.

Oh yes my current high school...this guy gets all the high end computer stuff and says he has $30,000 in a bank account that's his...
oh, and the guy that claims to be a computer genius but spends all day playing games...

[badlogicgames]

No jailbreaking is required. We use the same underlying platform as Unity (Mono), all the code is ahead of time compiled.

[feelingtheblanks]

It's not all cookies and cream though. To publish on iOS through libGDX, you need to pay the yearly $100 fee for an Apple membership and the yearly $400 license from MonoTouch. :/

Xamarin also seems to offer professional licenses of MonoTouch for $79 for students currently enrolled at an accredited institution

http://support.xamarin.com/customer/portal/articles/177042-do-you-have-any-student-or-academic-discounts-

[badlogicgames]

Hah, i just wanted to post that. Great info, thanks!

[ra4king]

One. More. Year. And I'm off to college!!!

[princec]

Phew, hopefully they'll have a proxy server and a firewall there and we'll barely see you any more 

Cas

[theagentd]

Phew, hopefully they'll have a proxy server and a firewall there and we'll barely see you any more 

Cas

It's not like I'm streaming anime during my lectures or anything... Our 40Mbit wifi is only for school work.

No, seriously, the only thing they disallow is Bittorrent because it puts such a strain on their connection. We even have Ethernet jacks we can use freely if 40Mbit isn't enough.

[ra4king]

Phew, hopefully they'll have a proxy server and a firewall there and we'll barely see you any more 

Cas

[badlogicgames]

Ahhh, god old thread derailment, i already missed it.

In other news, i got full Java source level debugging working, as well as method level profiling and (limited) memory profiling (i only know what gets allocated, not where the hotspots are). So, i consider iOS/MonoTouch a fully working dev platform now.

[ra4king]

All hail Mario, the baddest of all logic!

[princec]

Ahhh, god old thread derailment, i already missed it.

In other news, i got full Java source level debugging working, as well as method level profiling and (limited) memory profiling (i only know what gets allocated, not where the hotspots are). So, i consider iOS/MonoTouch a fully working dev platform now.

What sort of APIs have you got to cope with the general iOS-ness of things? (Like touch, screen rot., varying resolutions, etc.?)

Cas

[badlogicgames]

Not a lot really, a tiny bit of cocoa for life-cycle and window managment, opentk to setup the gl rendering surface (we use our custom GL ES 2.0 JNI bindings and not the OpenTK stuff), AVMediaPlayer for audio (though that's not quite optimal). See https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/tree/master/backends/gdx-backend-iosmonotouch/src/com/badlogic/gdx/backends/ios

[gouessej]

Do you plan to fully develop your backend based on Jack? Do you need some help (money)?

[badlogicgames]

i currently have no plans to continue with jack in the next 3 months. i need to budget my little freetime around other more pressing issues (better 3d api, mavenization, cross platform in-app api)

[Cero]

i currently have no plans to continue with jack in the next 3 months. i need to budget my little freetime around other more pressing issues (better 3d api, mavenization, cross platform in-app api)

You guys need more people and budget. For Libgdx is one of the nicest and now most important things in java gaming.