TablePlay

Our latest game, TablePlay, has been released on the AppStore

You can watch the promotional video here:

The game features 3 different minigames, suitable for kids of all ages:

1. Jigsaw puzzle game
2. Memory-like game
3. Paint application

It also features a way for parents to limit the time their kids spend with the game:

Renaming Xcode Developer folder

When installing a new version of Xcode, you may want to keep your existing installation as well. One way to do that is to first rename your current Developer folder before installing the new version.

To rename your Developer folder, open the terminal and type the following:

sudo mv /Developer /Developer4.0

In the case above, I rename my current install (4.0) to Developer4.0. I then install Xcode 4.2 at the default Developer folder.

PrimeQuiz on AppStore

We released our first game for the iPad today. It's a quiz-game, only in Swedish at the moment. The game is great fun and I suggest you pick up a copy at: http://itunes.apple.com/se/app/primequiz/id465316270?mt=8

Upgrading to SVN 1.7

We upgraded our Tortoise SVN clients from version 1.6.x to 1.7.x. SVN 1.7 uses a Centralized Metadata Storage, which means that instead of storing a .svn-directory inside every other directory in your working copy it stores 1 centralized .svn-directory in the root of your working copy. This means far less extra directories and files scattered all over your hard drive. For our project we got the follwing numbers:

1.6.x:

• Size on disc: 3,639 Mb
• Files: 20,199
• Folders: 7,542

1.7.x:

• Size on disc: 3,559Mb
• Files: 16,178
• Folders: 1,556

Conclusion:

• Size on disc: 97.8% of 1.6 version
• Files: 80% of 1.6 version
• Folders: 20% of 1.6 version

Diff:

• 2.2% less space
• 20% less files
• 80% less folders

SVN relocate on Mac OS

This shows you how to relocate your svn directory to point at a new server ip address on MacOS. In the following example I have used the following parameters:

• Computer user: Jerry
• Directory where I have my local copy of the repository checked out: Jerry/MyProject
• SVN user: svnuser
• SVN psw: svnpsw
• New IP of my server: 89.191.11.14

1. Open the Terminal
2. Navigate to the directory where you have your version checked out
3. Type "svn info".

• If you get a message like "svn: '.' is not a working copy", then you are in a directory that is not under version control. I.e. you are in the wrong directory.

4. See where it says "URL ..." ? This is where your current directory is currently linked to. You want to use that URL in the next step. In my case it says : URL: svn://89.210.74.91/myproject/trunk

5. Write "svn switch --username svnuser --password svnpsw --relocate svn://89.210.74.91/myproject/trunk svn://89.191.11.14/myproject/trunk"

Xcode 4 - warning: no rule to process file

A while ago I posted a note about how to resolve the warning: no rule to process file warning in Xcode. That post showed you how to solve the problem in Xcode 3. The same warning can be resolved in Xcode 4 by following these steps:

1) Select Project Navigator
2) Select your project
3) Select your target

4) Select Build Phases

5) Move the files you don't want the compiler to process from Compile Sources to Copy Bundle Resources

Xcode: Converting to execution character set: Illegal byte sequence

If you are working on multiple platforms you may run into Unicode trouble if you do not save your files correctly.
This test string worked just fine in VS2010:

wchar_t* wstr = L"ÅäöJerry";

But gave the following compiler error in Xcode:

This error happens because the file was saved in a non-Xcode compatible unicode format.
If you intend to use Unicode characters in your source file, make sure the file is in a format Xcode supports. I resaved the file in VS2010 as UTF8, which solved the problem.

Xcode - warning: no rule to process file

Update: This post covers how you solve a problem in Xcode 3. If you want to know how it's done in Xcode 4, see here instead

I added 2 new files to my IPhone project today. These are two text files (two glsl files) and they should only be included in my main bundle to be accessed at run time.

However, when I build the project I get the following warnings:

warning: no rule to process file '$(PROJECT_DIR)/Content/Shaders/DistanceField.fsh' of type sourcecode.glsl for architecture i386
warning: no rule to process file '$(PROJECT_DIR)/Content/Shaders/DistanceField.vsh' of type sourcecode.glsl for architecture i386


It seems Xcode are trying to process my files during build. Why is that? I don't want that. I just want the files to be included in my bundle. After doing some detective work I found what the problem was:

Xcode automatically added my files into the "Compile Sources" group, for some reason I don't understand. After moving the files over to "Copy Bundle Resources" everything worked fine

POWERVR SGX Optimized Render Order

Basic reference of my understandings of how to batch geometry on the POWERVR SGX chip.

Render Target 1

1. Opaque surfaces

No win to sort by depth.

1. Shader
2. Texture & Uniforms
3. Other states

2. Surfaces using discard (Old Alpha Test)

Same sorting as Opaque Surfaces

3. Transparent surfaces

Sort by depth if necessary
Same sorting as Opaque Surfaces

Render Target 2
…

From Visual Studio to Xcode #2

Consider the following code:

int Test()

{

int a=10;

int c;

// Bug. User meant “=” but unfortunately wrote “==”

c==a;

return c;

}

This piece of code is obviously faulty. c is never assigned the value of a. c is actually never assigned any value.

When we compile this in VS 2008 we get the following warnings:

• warning C4553: '==' : operator has no effect; did you intend '=' ?
• warning C4700: uninitialized local variable 'c' used

In Xcode, we get no warnings at all. I just spent 30 minutes tracing this kind of bug in my code, in Xcode. I know I have made the mistake of replacing “=” with “==” several times in the past, but usually VS warns me in these occations. Xcode does not.

OpenGL ES Shading Language

Coming from an OpenGL 1.5 + Nvidia Cg environment there are some noticable differences when migrating over to OpenGL ES 2.0. This post is like a cheat sheet for myself and others to use as a quick reference to look up some major keypoints of the Opengl ES Shading Language.

Precision & range of variables

The OpenGL ES Shading Language, used in e.g. IPhone OpenGL ES 2.0, lets you decide upon the range and precision used to represent integer or floating point variables.

Precision qualifiers:

• highp (e.g. highp mat4 myMatrix)
• mediump (e.g. varying mediump vec2 myTexCoord)
• lowp (e.g. lowp float myColor)

Minimum ranges and precision

	Bits	FP Range	FP Precision	Int Range
highp	16	(-262, 262)	Relative 2-16	(-216, 216)
mediump	10	(-214, 214)	Relative 2-10	(-210, 210)
lowp	8	(-2, 2)	Absolute 2-8	(-28, 28)

default vertex shader precisions

• precision highp float
• precision highp int
• precision lowp sampler2D
• precision lowp samplerCube

default FRAGMENT shader precisions

• precision mediump int
• precision lowp sampler2D
• precision lowp samplerCube

Notice the fragment shader is missing a default precision for float. This means you must include precision qualifier for floats.

Built-in Variables

Vertex shader

	Type	Precision
gl_Position	vec4	highp
gl_PointSize	float	mediump

Fragment shader

	Type	Precision
gl_FragCoord	vec4	mediump
gl_FrontFacing	bool
gl_FragColor	vec4	mediump
gl_FragData[gl_MaxDrawBuffers]	vec4	mediump
gl_PointCoord	vec2	mediump

IPhone Development Reference Post

	3G	3GS	4	IPad
Resolution	480x320	480x320	960x640	1024x768
Ratio (*)	3:2 (1.5)	3:2 (1.5)	3:2 (1.5)	4:3 (1.33)
OpenGL ES	1.1	2.0	2.0	2.0

(*) The bigger the ratio the more “widescreen” the display is. Eg: 16:9 = 1.78, 16:10 = 1.6