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Getting started with the Universal Tween Engine

This is a guest post by Alexander Fröhlich. Alexander is a freelance developer and is supporting ANDLABS at its libgdx-based development. 

If you are not familiar with libgdx yet, please check out the first part of this series, the Getting started with libgdx-guide.

 

1 Tweening?

“Tweening” in games is the process of creating intermediate states and thus frames between two or more given states.

Example (Sprite Translation):
The most simple example would be moving a sprite or image from one x1, y1 position to another x2, y2 position on the screen.

Yet, as you might already suspect, this “Universal Tween Engine” is capable of manipulating not only x, y coordinates for sprite objects…. no, this cross-platform-engine written entirely in java language lets you tween every property of any object given that it has its getter/setter methods attached.

In this tutorial I will show you how this comes in handy for game developers when building ingame hints or tutorials for their game.

The following sample code illustrates basic use and setup of the universal tween engine in a libgdx code project.

2 Ingame Tutorial Tweening

First of all, declare your tweenManager instance. The tweenManager lets you keep track and manage all your tweens (i.e. tweening, tween actions and so on)

public class MyGame implements ApplicationListener {

    // Only one manager is needed, like a 
    // libgdx Spritebatch (MyGame.java)

    private static TweenManager tweenManager;

}

Instantiate the manager inside create() of your libgdx lifecycle:

Register an accessor class, which is the key binding between the manager and the object to be tweened. Here this will be the TutorMessage class. (see below).
So after calling registerAccessor every single object of class TutorMessage we create can be tweened by the TweenManager.

@Override
public void create() {
    setTweenManager(new TweenManager());
    Tween.setCombinedAttributesLimit(4);// default is 3, yet
                                        // for rgba color setting          
                                        //we need to raise to 4! 
    Tween.registerAccessor(TutorMessage.class, new 
                             TutorMessageAccessor()); 

}

The TutorMessage’s are the internal game objects for this sample which hold the position, scale and color message attributes.

public class TutorMessage {

    private String message; // string objects can not be tweened
    private float x;
    private float y;
    private Color color;
    private float scale;

}

To tween these message properties and make them accessible by the manager we have to declare how getting and setting every single attribute works.

Getter/Setter
So we define 3 sections (POS_XY, SCALE, COLOR) that process the current float[] values, handled over by the manager during runtime when tweening is active.

Of course same applies for the setters.

public class TutorMessageAccessor implements TweenAccessor<TutorMessage> {

    public static final int POS_XY = 1;
    public static final int SCALE = 2
    public static final int COLOR = 3;

    @Override
    public int getValues(TutorMessage target, int tweenType, 
                           float[] returnValues) {
        switch (tweenType) {
            case POS_XY:
                returnValues[0] = target.getX();
                returnValues[1] = target.getY();
                return 2;

            case SCALE:
                returnValues[0] = target.getScale();
                return 1;

            case COLOR:
                returnValues[0] = target.getColor().r;
                returnValues[1] = target.getColor().g;
                returnValues[2] = target.getColor().b;
                returnValues[3] = target.getColor().a;
                return 4;

            default: 
                assert false; 
                return -1;
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void setValues(TutorMessage target, int tweenType, 
                            float[] newValues) {
        switch (tweenType) {
            case POS_XY: 
                target.setPosition(newValues[0], newValues[1]); 
                break;

            case SCALE: 
                target.setScale(newValues[0]); 
                break;

            case COLOR:
                Color c = target.getColor();
                c.set(newValues[0], newValues[1], newValues[2], 
                        newValues[3]);
                target.setColor(c);
                break;

            default: 
                assert false;
        }
    }
}

Having bind our TutorMessage class to the TweenManager we can now integrate it into the game.
Remember? We want to provide a kind of ingame tutorial system. So every time our user should see an animated on-screen help, we call the now defined method. The tweenHelpingHand method takes the parameter targetX, targetY that indicate the position where the helping hand (sprite) and its bound message (bitmapfont) should move to.

Then we say Tween
  .to (
      – TutorMessage currentTm ( the message to be moved )
      – int TutorMessageAccessor.POS_XY (constant to select which property should be tweened)
      – float 3f (total tweening duration)
  )
  .target (
    – targetX, targetY ( the final screen position of our tweened message )
  )
  .ease (
    – TweenEquations.easeOutCirc ( one possible interpolation pattern – i.e. moving pattern here)
  )
  .start (
    – MyGame.getTweenManager()  ( binds this tween to the manager )
  )

private void tweenHelpingHand(int targetX, int targetY) {

    // kill current tween - or pre-existing
    MyGame.getTweenManager().killTarget(currentTm);

    // move
    Tween.to(currentTm, TutorMessageAccessor.POS_XY, 3f)
         .target(targetX, targetY)
         .ease(TweenEquations.easeOutCirc)
         .start(MyGame.getTweenManager());

    // colorize
    Tween.to(currentTm, TutorMessageAccessor.COLOR, 3f)
         .target(1f, 1f, 1f, 1f)
         .ease(TweenEquations.easeOutCirc)
         .start(MyGame.getTweenManager());

}

Finally we have to call update inside the libgdx render() method to have the started Tween be updated constantly.

MyGame.getTweenManager().update(delta);

Here you go!
Enjoy this very powerful any easy to use tweening library.

Combining Scene2d animations and Tweening is also possible. You just have to write the ActorAccessor binding class and provide access (getter/setter) to its properties.
Like with Scene2d actions, the universal tween engine also allows sequencing of multiple tweens!

 

If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment.

The AndEngine PhysicsEditor Extension

[Update] Now supports circle sprites. Also, Andreas Löw, the creator of PhysicsEditor will link to it with the next update of the editor. [/Update]

If you ever created a physics game, for example with my favorite game engine, AndEngine, and wanted to produce a polygonal body, you probably did something that sucked big time. Something like defining your vertices in code. This is

  1. Dirty
  2. Really painful
This is why we looked around and found the PhysicsEditor, a simple to use tool to create an output that describes physic definitions. While iOS integration seemed to work both from the editor into the code, it only provided an AndEngine Exporter-format, but no tool to integrate it back into the engine.
Until today.

 

Capabilities

Here is what it’s capable of:
  • Definitions of (multiple) bodies
  • Definitions of (multiple) fixtures
  • Definitions of polygon shapes
  • Definitions of circle shapes
  • Definition of density, friction and elasticity
  • Definition of dynamic and non-dynamic bodies
  • Definition of sensor and non-sensor fixtures
  • Collision filtering
  • Automatic setting of a body’s user data

 

How to use it

For this part I assume you already know the very basics of AndEngine development. Let’s start from the beginning.

First, download the PhysicsEditor. Open it and import your sprite of choice. I chose the star from the examples project:

Now, draw your physical representation. You might want to use the Shape tracer for that (the wand icon):Now make your settings on the right

and push ‘publish as’. Save your XML somewhere.

Next, it’s time to get the source. Clone the repository using something like git clone git://github.com/ANDLABS-Git/AndEngine-PhysicsEditor-Extension.git. Import the source. Now, make sure you also have the AndEngine and the AndEnginePhysicsBox2DExtension in your workspace. You may have to update this dependencies.

A good match: PhysicsEditor Extension, Box2D Extension, AndEngine and PhysicsEditor Examples

A good match: PhysicsEditor Extension, Box2D Extension, AndEngine and PhysicsEditor Examples

Now in your project, create a new PhysicsEditorLoader-object using the default constructor:
final PhysicsEditorLoader loader = new PhysicsEditorLoader();
Use it to load whatever you want:

try {
loader.load(this, mPhysicsWorld, "xml/", "star.xml", star, true, true);
} catch (IOException e) {
//...
}

The parameters provided are a Context, the PhysicsWorld you want to attach your body to, the base path, the path to your specific definition, the IAreaShape (for example a Sprite) you want your definition to be connected to, whether you want your object’s position to be updated and whether you want your object’s rotation to be updated. And that’s it.

There are some other use cases covered like drawing lines for debugging or loading multiple definitions, but that’s not more than about five keystrokes of additional work. You can take a look at the examples to see what I mean (in case you are curious).
It is possible to use the PhysicsEditor as a tool for level creation. In fact, it enables you to actually ‘draw’ your levels in your graphics tool of choice. Please keep in mind though that the maximum size of an IAreaShape in AndEngine is 2048 pixels, so you may want to use multiple sprites to achieve big levels. Also, memory is low on mobile devices, depending which device your are targeting, you maybe want to think about using a different method than this.

 

A ball jumping on a polygonal physical representation

A ball jumping on a polygonal physical representation

Please keep in mind that this is a very early release that may still contain some bugs and needs some refactoring. Please feel free to leave any issue you discover in the project’s issue tracker.

So far, we have tested the four sample projects on the following devices:

  • Samsung Galaxy Y (2.3.6)
  • Nexus One (2.3.6)
  • Galaxy Nexus (4.0.4)

Tutorial: How to play animated GIFs in Android – Part 3

Animated GIFs in Android is a difficult topic. It is an issue that has been discussed heavily and still, it is very difficult for developers to bring GIFs to life. There are three ways to animate GIFs on Android, each of them has its pros and cons. Each part of this series will cover one of these approaches.

Getting started

For this example, we will use an image I found on gifs.net, it’s this one:

I will store it in our project’s asset folder and name it ‘piggy.gif’. We will also use an Activity to set the views we define as content views. If you want to know everything about playing GIFs, please start at part one.

Approach 3: Using a WebView

This is the by far easyest way. As you might know, a WebView is able to do what a browser does. And since the browser of Android devices using Android 2.2 + supports the animation of GIFs (at least on most devices), we can just use that.

So, at first, we extend our own class by a WebView:

public class GifWebView extends WebView

We create a constructor that takes both a context to call the constructor of the mother-class and a path to the file. We use loadUrl() to load that file into our WebView:

   public GifWebView(Context context, String path) {
      super(context);
      loadUrl(path);
   }

Now, let’s go back to our Activity which we created in the first tutorial. Here, we create our view and pass it a context and path to our GIF-file:

   GifWebView view = new GifWebView(this, "file:///android_asset/piggy.gif");
   setContentView(view);

And now, believe it or not, we are done.

Movie, GifDecoder or WebView?

Which way you take depends on your needs. When your app is targeting users mainly using devices with Android 2.2+, the way described above is probably your way to go. If you want to support as many devices as possible and don’t care much about memory footprint, you can also use the GifDecoder-method. When you want to support many users but don’t want to recycle tons of Bitmaps, and are sure the format of your GIFs can be played using the Movie-class, then this approach is for you.

Personally, I prefer the WebView-way. Because WebKit is already implemented native, it’s memory footprint is really low, especially when compared to the GifDecoder. Operations on images like scaling can be performed simply by using HTML and the overall code is really short and pretty.

 

You can checkout the code of the three parts of this series at http://code.google.com/p/animated-gifs-in-android/.

 

Which method do you like best? As always, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Tutorial: How to play animated GIFs in Android – Part 1

Animated GIFs in Android is a difficult topic. It is an issue that has been discussed heavily and still, it is very difficult for developers to bring GIFs to life. There are three ways to animate GIFs on Android, each of them has its pros and cons. Each part of this series will cover one of these approaches.

Getting started

For this example, we will use an image I found on gifs.net, it’s this one:

I will store it in our project’s asset folder and name it ‘piggy.gif’. We will also use an Activity to set the views we define as content views.

Approach 1: Using Movie

Android provides the class android.graphics.Movie. This class is capable of decoding and playing InputStreams. So for this approach, we create a class GifMovieView and let it inherit from View:

Public class GifMovieView extends View

Now we create a constructor that receives a Context object and an InputStream. We provide our class a member variable which is an instance of the Movie class. We initialize this member by calling Movie.decodeStream(InputStream):

    private Movie mMovie;

    public GifMovieView(Context context, InputStream stream) {
        super(context);

        mStream = stream;
        mMovie = Movie.decodeStream(mStream);        
    }

Now that our Movie-object is initialized with our InputStrem, we just need to draw it. We can do this by calling draw(Canvas, int, int) on our Movie-object. Because we need a Canvas, we should do this in onDraw(). But before we drawing, we have to tell our object what to render. For that, we need a simple calculation to determine how much time has passed since we started the Movie. To do that, we need another member of the primitive type long, I named it mMoviestart. Now we get a timestamp, for example by calling SystemClock.uptimeMillis() or System.currentTimeMillis(). We determine how much time went by since our movie started and tell our movie to play draw the according frame. After that, we invalidate our view so that it’s redrawn:

private long mMoviestart;

    @Override
    protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
       canvas.drawColor(Color.TRANSPARENT);
       super.onDraw(canvas);
       final long now = SystemClock.uptimeMillis();
       if (mMoviestart == 0) {
          mMoviestart = now;
       }
       final int relTime = (int)((now - mMoviestart) % mMovie.duration());
       mMovie.setTime(relTime);
       mMovie.draw(canvas, 10, 10);
       this.invalidate();
    }

All we have to do now is initialize our new View with a Context and an InputStream and set it as content view, we can do this in our Activity like this:

    // ...
    InputStream stream = null;
    try {
       stream = getAssets().open("piggy.gif");
    } catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
    GifMovieView view = new GifMovieView(this, stream);
    setContentView(view);
    // ...

That was easy, right? So where’s the contra? Well, here it is:

As you can see, the Movie-class is not able to deal with every type of animated GIFs. For some formats, the first frame will be drawn well but every other won’t. So when you walk this route, make sure your GIFs are displayed correctly.
If you want to know another, maybe better way of playing animated GIFs, stay tuned: The next part of this series will come tomorrow.

 

You can checkout the code of the three parts of this series at http://code.google.com/p/animated-gifs-in-android/.

 

As always, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

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