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Makin' It Rain - How Raindrop Effects Work In 2D Games

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Re: Makin' It Rain - How Raindrop Effects Work In 2D Games

#11

Post by yome »

jordanroher wrote: post #9
BPO_Quickdraw wrote: post #3

haha awesome, you blew my server up. Upgrading now but it'll take a couple days they say. Anyone reading: that's my game development blog, I'm starting an iPhone game dev studio and documenting the progress of starting it up and making the first game, day by day! Check it out if you're interested in game dev and feel free to ask any questions! - Quickdraw

I'm very interested in iPhone game development. I'm working on a title for PC/Xbox based on the XNA framework and finding it fairly easy to use. Is there anything like that for the iPhone? Any good place to find a comparison of frameworks? I'm not averse to coding interactions by hand (trying to make a 2D RPG, not a platformer, so Torque isn't appropriate), but I can't make sense of the options.

I suggest you look into Unity 3D. It's easy to make 2D stuff with it, even if it's primarily a 3D engine.

The basic version is free, so you can use that for development. When your game is ready to ship, you can upgrade your license to an iOS one and then convert and ship your game with it.

If you want to stick with XNA, there's an interesting project to port XNA to iOS platforms (http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-androi...), and there's XNATouch too. I haven't looked into those yet, but if you complete your game on XNA, by the time you'll be done there might be a viable solution to easily port your game to iOS.

Re: Makin' It Rain - How Raindrop Effects Work In 2D Games

#12

Post by stonemetal »

jordanroher wrote: post #9
BPO_Quickdraw wrote: post #3

haha awesome, you blew my server up. Upgrading now but it'll take a couple days they say. Anyone reading: that's my game development blog, I'm starting an iPhone game dev studio and documenting the progress of starting it up and making the first game, day by day! Check it out if you're interested in game dev and feel free to ask any questions! - Quickdraw

I'm very interested in iPhone game development. I'm working on a title for PC/Xbox based on the XNA framework and finding it fairly easy to use. Is there anything like that for the iPhone? Any good place to find a comparison of frameworks? I'm not averse to coding interactions by hand (trying to make a 2D RPG, not a platformer, so Torque isn't appropriate), but I can't make sense of the options.

I know little or nothing about iPhone programming. I figured I would plug a friend of mine's startup since it seems like just what you are looking for. (note: Not connected in any way other than having gone to high school with the founder.) http://gamesalad.com/

Re: Makin' It Rain - How Raindrop Effects Work In 2D Games

#13

Post by BPO_Quickdraw »

relix wrote: post #8
BPO_Quickdraw wrote: post #7

iamwil: "My first inclination was, "but of course you need the splats where the rain drop line ends! How would it make sense otherwise?"" Exactly, I think that's default programmer-logic. "If there's a drop, it must have a splat." I used to do some programming but I'm more of an artist than a progger so I figure writing about little artsy tricks like that might help other devs out. It can be rough trying to fit cool…

It's also interesting just from a project management point of view, or anyone doing a startup, imo. Good blog!

Thanks! I'm trying to cover the stuff that surrounds game dev, managing my time, keeping track of expenses, marketing the game, etc. 'cause I think that stuff gets glossed over a lot.

Like I'll be posting my financials for the month soon, even though I know they're going to be negative since my game isn't out yet haha But it's the principle of the thing, getting into the habit of keeping accurate records.

Glad you like the blog! I'm shooting for daily-esque updates so pop in again in a couple days!

- Quickdraw

Re: Makin' It Rain - How Raindrop Effects Work In 2D Games

#14

Post by BPO_Quickdraw »

jordanroher wrote: post #9
BPO_Quickdraw wrote: post #3

haha awesome, you blew my server up. Upgrading now but it'll take a couple days they say. Anyone reading: that's my game development blog, I'm starting an iPhone game dev studio and documenting the progress of starting it up and making the first game, day by day! Check it out if you're interested in game dev and feel free to ask any questions! - Quickdraw

I'm very interested in iPhone game development. I'm working on a title for PC/Xbox based on the XNA framework and finding it fairly easy to use. Is there anything like that for the iPhone? Any good place to find a comparison of frameworks? I'm not averse to coding interactions by hand (trying to make a 2D RPG, not a platformer, so Torque isn't appropriate), but I can't make sense of the options.

I'm going to be using Cocos2d, but I honestly couldn't give you many details on it because I'm going to be out-sourcing to a programmer to do that part. I'm making 2d games and Cocos2d is supposed to make it a lot easier to juggle sprites and everything...but we'll see if I can break it, hehe

- Quickdraw

Re: Makin' It Rain - How Raindrop Effects Work In 2D Games

#15

Post by alex_c »

jordanroher wrote: post #9
BPO_Quickdraw wrote: post #3

haha awesome, you blew my server up. Upgrading now but it'll take a couple days they say. Anyone reading: that's my game development blog, I'm starting an iPhone game dev studio and documenting the progress of starting it up and making the first game, day by day! Check it out if you're interested in game dev and feel free to ask any questions! - Quickdraw

I'm very interested in iPhone game development. I'm working on a title for PC/Xbox based on the XNA framework and finding it fairly easy to use. Is there anything like that for the iPhone? Any good place to find a comparison of frameworks? I'm not averse to coding interactions by hand (trying to make a 2D RPG, not a platformer, so Torque isn't appropriate), but I can't make sense of the options.

I've used Cocos2D, and it was great - I've been meaning to write some posts about it, haven't got around to it yet. I haven't used other frameworks, so I can't compare, but for a simple 2D sprite game Cocos2D was a great way to hit the ground running.

Video of me making the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se2mi_kfUko

I'm far from an expert, but if you have any questions I'll try to answer them.

Re: Makin' It Rain - How Raindrop Effects Work In 2D Games

#17

Post by BPO_Quickdraw »

kindlyviking wrote: post #16

Excessive use of font bolding in this article.

For people in a hurry. :) You can just skim the bold sections and get the important points of the post. I tend to write way more than anyone would really want to sit down and read haha

- Quickdraw

Re: Makin' It Rain - How Raindrop Effects Work In 2D Games

#18

Post by jrockway »

iamwil wrote: post #4

To me, the biggest lesson I've learn from game programming tips and tricks was to not model the world exactly. Just model it enough to trick the eye. My first inclination was, "but of course you need the splats where the rain drop line ends! How would it make sense otherwise?" But it's not until you see the video that you get that, hey that worked well enough. I imagine it's applicable to other realms of programming…

Or can we just cheat a little since the tolerance is much higher?

Sure, we call this caching. Imagine you have a blog with comments. You can generate the page for each user when he wants it, and then it's a real view onto the data that you have available. Or, you can generate it once a second and just serve the stale version -- not much can happen in one second. Making that compromise is the difference between handling 10 requests a second and 10,000 requests a second. Almost always a good tradeoff.

(Doesn't NYTimes do this?)

Re: Makin' It Rain - How Raindrop Effects Work In 2D Games

#19

Post by jon914 »

jordanroher wrote: post #9
BPO_Quickdraw wrote: post #3

haha awesome, you blew my server up. Upgrading now but it'll take a couple days they say. Anyone reading: that's my game development blog, I'm starting an iPhone game dev studio and documenting the progress of starting it up and making the first game, day by day! Check it out if you're interested in game dev and feel free to ask any questions! - Quickdraw

I'm very interested in iPhone game development. I'm working on a title for PC/Xbox based on the XNA framework and finding it fairly easy to use. Is there anything like that for the iPhone? Any good place to find a comparison of frameworks? I'm not averse to coding interactions by hand (trying to make a 2D RPG, not a platformer, so Torque isn't appropriate), but I can't make sense of the options.

Cocos2D is the most popular 2D iPhone game framework. An alternative, if you're used to the Flash/ActionScript way of doing things, is Sparrow. You may also find that if you're doing an action/physics game in the future, Box2D will inevitably be necessary.

If you're looking for a GUI as opposed to a programming API, in addition to the fine options above, my startup (http://www.stencyl.com) also does this and is based on Sparrow (and Flash for exporting to the web).

However, I'll be realistic and say that if you're making an RPG, you'll find it much easier to build it by hand.

Re: Makin' It Rain - How Raindrop Effects Work In 2D Games

#20

Post by iamwil »

jrockway wrote: post #18
iamwil wrote: post #4

To me, the biggest lesson I've learn from game programming tips and tricks was to not model the world exactly. Just model it enough to trick the eye. My first inclination was, "but of course you need the splats where the rain drop line ends! How would it make sense otherwise?" But it's not until you see the video that you get that, hey that worked well enough. I imagine it's applicable to other realms of programming…

Or can we just cheat a little since the tolerance is much higher? Sure, we call this caching. Imagine you have a blog with comments. You can generate the page for each user when he wants it, and then it's a real view onto the data that you have available. Or, you can generate it once a second and just serve the stale version -- not much can happen in one second. Making that compromise is the difference between handli…

My point was that asking the question in the first place is good practice to avoid doing work you don't need to, rather than the actual specific examples I made up on the spot. But thanks for the example!
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