05
May
reality-check

[Rant] Reality Check - HTC Has Plans For Bluetooth LE And OpenGL ES 3.0 But It Doesn't Make Them "Android 4.3 Features"

Posted by in Editorials, HTC, Leaks, News, One, Rumors

It's 4 a.m., I just read the 6th mention of the same misleading story in the last 24 hours, and it's time for a rant.

Yesterday, several "independent" reports all claiming to arrive at the same conclusion at the same time (does anyone properly credit their sources anymore?) appeared on the web suggesting HTC had just (*gasp*) leaked two new Android 4.3 features: Bluetooth Low-Energy and OpenGL ES 3.0. And it's done so via a public meetup organized by the San Francisco Android User Group. HTC is so careless that they've just published not one but two unreleased features coming in the next version of Android and therefore protected by strict NDAs.

25
Sep
voxeltiny

Voxel Invaders Is A Galaga-Like Space Shooter That Thinks Two Dimensions Just Isn't Enough

Posted by in Games, News

You seen one top-scrolling space shooter, you've seen 'em all, am I right? No, as a matter of fact, I am not. Voxel Invaders is here to prove that. Take a look at the trailer below and you see that the game starts off simple enough. Some nice, 3D-ish graphics adorn an otherwise banal battleground. Or so it seems. Until around ten seconds into the video, when the world shifts and we see things from a whole new perspective.

It's not just a plane change here, either. Voxel Invaders incorporates elements from a variety of different retro and modern game styles for an elaborate experience.

06
Aug
opengles2

Khronos Announces OpenGL ES 3.0 Spec - Get Ready For Faster, Better-Looking, More Desktop-Like Games

Posted by in Apps/Games, News

Speaking at SIGGRAPH 2012, a yearly computer graphics convention featuring some of the most prominent names in the business, Khronos unveiled updates for several key OpenGL properties including the specs for Open GL ES 3.0. OpenGL ES is the primary graphics API for mobile device platforms, including Android and iOS. As you would expect, the updates are rather technical, but here's an overview of what we can expect in the future.

Much Better Texture Compression

texturecompressionkhronos

Perhaps the biggest noticeable change in this iteration is that texture compression has been improved, and the spec now has required support for the ETC texture compression format.

23
May
hi-256-0-982dd593f7cdd0043aa6d69d4adaeea3692552e3

[New App] Chainfire3D Hits The Android Market, Tweaks Your Graphics To Improve Performance And Battery Life

Posted by in Applications, News

Android app developer Chainfire released an interesting app into the Market recently called Chainfire3D - "an intermediary OpenGL driver." Basically, this app sits between your app and the proprietary graphics driver on your device and can manipulate the commands between the two.

This enables you do some pretty rad things with your device in order to increase efficacy, battery life, performance, etc. For example, you can use Chainfire3D to enable night-mode, which basically only powers the red pixels on your device in order to save battery life (yes, it makes everything look red - see below).

ss-0-320-480-160-0-7b46e2f3b4bc3120b2ab56575cb9520dd2599a88 ss-1-320-480-160-0-c44134631c942dd44b7384480d5603faa10e0cb8 ss-2-320-480-160-0-28fb0509d774fdcb17de4c78f4c0cca18873b455

Other features of Chainfire3D includes a multitude of texture manipulations, including the ability to reduce texture sizes and quality (for faster gaming) and unroll textures, which converts non-32 bit textures into 32 bit.

16
Nov
image

PapayaMobile Announces A 3D Scripting Runtime Game Engine For Android, Integration With The Social SDK

Posted by in Development, News

Papaya Mobile, the maker of the popular Papaya game and the social SDK behind it, today announced the upcoming release of the Papaya Game Engine for Android. The new engine is completely free to use and offers a number of benefits to developers looking to write Android games. It isn't available for download just yet, but it should be available shortly.

Before I proceed to the features, have a look at this quick video showing Papaya's 3D aquarium developed using the new engine in about 2 weeks.

So what are some cool things about the new engine?

  • it's free
  • it lets you write OpenGL 3D applications using PapayaMobile's scripting support.