I want to create a simple game, and as I understand it OpenGL will make that happen but could I make the menu, high score list and every thing except the game with regular xcode?
For instance, for Windows Phone (where im comming from) you could create XAML/DirectX where you totally could make the menu in xaml/cs and then the game in directx
Yes, the main view element in iOS is called an UIView and you use it to present openGL content on it. This results in being able to overlay it with any other views, subviews, put it in a superview, have multiple views with openGL content... All the events such as touches work as well. In summery implementing openGL in iOS UIView will simply override the visual content of the view leaving rest of the functionality as it is.
Related
Our company is using a TV in portrait orientation hooked up to an Apple TV running our own custom app to serve as a status board. This is purely an internal, hacked-together app - no worries about sending to the App Store.
To avoid things being rendered sideways, we have a base class view controller doing a 90 degree CGAffineTransform on the view (and all other view controllers in the project inherit from this base class):
class PortraitViewController: UIViewController {
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
view.transform = CGAffineTransform(rotationAngle: -1*CGFloat.pi/2)
}
}
This works great for showing images, text, videos, custom UI controls, etc. However, the focus engine does not rotate with the view, and because it expects the TV is still being shown in landscape orientation, the Apple TV remote gestures end up 90 degrees off from what we want. Here's an example:
Here, we would want swiping right/left on the remote to move the focus of the segmented control between the two segments. But because the Apple TV thinks it's being shown in landscape mode, it thinks the segmented control is oriented vertically, and swiping up/down moves the focus of the segments.
Does anyone know if there's a way to convince the focus engine not to rotate alongside the view, or alternatively, a different way to display the view in portrait mode without rotating the view?
This is terrible, but the only way I can think of to achieve what you want is to take over the focus system entirely. So making your root window/view focusable to hijack all input events, listening to raw input events, and managing your own focus system from raw touch/press events as needed. You can still use preferredFocusEnvironments + setNeedsFocusUpdate to leverage all system UI + animation for focusing/unfocusing elements, but would need to take full ownership of how to shift focus based on user input and how to forward focus update hints for parallax effects.
Overriding sendEvent(_ event:UIEvent) at the UIApplication or UIWindow level to transform input events into portrait coordinates before passing them on to the system seems like a great idea on paper and almost works. Except that it is impossible to generate or modify touch events programmatically. Since you are not concerned about App Store viability though maybe you can hack a way to generate or modify touch events programmatically? Subclassing UITouch/UIPress? Using performSelector to call private or undocumented methods?
I would like to be able to use the areas that are occupied by the iOS in my app, using javaFX and Gluon. How can this be done?
That means any javaFX controllers functions as expected. Now they are almost impossible for a user to focus. When I have another controller in the middle area of the screen that one works like normal.
On iPhone 6 you can press the top most area and drag down to get access to a menu. The same exact thing with the bottom-most area by pressing then dragging upwards. And I believe that OS related functionality to be the reason.
The touch event probably do not reach the app properly over these areas. I am seeking to be able to have controllers placed here and have them work just as they are in other places.
This was done by adding a VBox layout, with TextField and TextArea to Gluon Layer - and then adding it to Layers of a class extending Gluon View (Called "BasicView").
I am in talks with a client to do an app, but in it, they are wanting it to revolve around a little character that follows you throughout the app (think Clippy, from the old days of Microsoft Word :)).
One thought I had was, can I use an SKSprite/Node inside an iOS app not using the SpriteKit framework?
Or is this a matter of animating through an array of UIImages?
Those were my first thoughts - does anyone know the best direction to go in for something like this? I need basic animations for a character throughout the whole app.
Depending on the detail of animation needed, you could do it with just CoreAnimation and possibly selectively choosing the image to display in an UIImageView. For example, see the answers to this question: rotate a UIView around its center but several times
Simple answer is, No, out of the box you can't use a class from a framework and choose to not use the framework. Though I'm not exactly sure what that question means. An SKSpriteNode renders via an SKScene node, and an SKScene node renders via an SKView, which is rendered by a View Controller.
You could do something fancy like dedicate the SKView as only part of the screen, and have a standard UIKit view as the other part, or only have the SKView appear on the screen when you needed it I guess.
I have been working on an iOS, OpenGL-based app for the past few months. During this time, I have created both the main UIWindow and a single UIView in code, as opposed to using a storyboard. An important item to note is that I create an instance of EAGLView (used in many Apple examples), which inherits from UIView.
The code base I am working with is quite extensive, and among other things, it uses a separate rendering thread. I'll come back to this point near the end of this post.
With this in mind, I am now at the point that I want to add native UI support. To do this, I am using a storyboard (for the first time). My current setup consists of a main/root view with two buttons. Each button uses a modal segue to place a new view on the screen.
To reuse as much code as possible, I have specified that the views I segue to are of type EAGLView (as opposed to UIView). The only change I've had to make is that instead of initializing with "initWithFrame", I now initialize with "initWithCoder".
Other than moving to a storyboard, nothing else in the code base has changed. However, when I segue to an EAGLView, nothing renders -- all I see is white. I am hesitant to use GLKit because it duplicates much of the functionality I have already written (I had everything rendering just fine prior to using a storyboard). In addition, GLKit provides a callback for rendering, whereas, I have a separate render thread.
My scenario sounds a lot like this post:
OpenGL iOS view does not paint
I have GL error checks for every call (or for every group of calls), and no errors are being reported. What's even stranger is that when I capture an OpenGL ES frame for debugging (in Xcode), the debugger actually shows the content I expect to see.
Any ideas here? I am stumped.
Please try the following:
Verify that you stop rendering in the view that you're segueing from (stopping times etc.) - this view is still alive since you only pushed a new EAGLView on top of it.
Use XCode's OpenGL ES Frame capture to debug your OpenGL state in the new view. Verify that you're not missing binding to textures or other objects.
If the above doesn't work - write the simplest rendering possible (simple quad, for example) and debug that code.
I'm working on an iOS game that supports multiple orientations. For most Game Kit views, it's easy to support rotation; you can grab the view property off of the appropriate view controller and apply the proper transform when you show the screen.
However, I've found no way to do this with the Game Center banners that pop up asynchronously, like the "welcome back" popup that happens after successful login. That's got no view controller I can find since it's shown by the runtime independent of my code.
Anyone know?
Answering my own question: make sure you have a root view controller attached to the top level window, and that view controller is properly responding to orientation changes, even if you're doing the rest in GL...