The modern mobile device is an immensely powerful piece of equipment. Technology has advanced to such an extent that the current generation of cell phones and tablets are able to host games and applications that are both graphically and sonically impressive, and can even be compared to the titles available on home consoles and computers.
However, writing a game that will run on the plethora of available devices is difficult. There are a number of different platforms to support (for example, Android and iOS) and each platform can have devices that range considerably in terms of capabilities and processing power.
This is where the Marmalade SDK comes to the rescue! Marmalade is a cross-platform solution that allows us to write the source code for a video game once in C++ (a language that most video game developers will already be familiar with) and then deploy it to a number of different platforms, including iOS, Android, and BlackBerry PlayBook.
In this book we shall be learning how to use the Marmalade SDK to implement all the features demanded of a modern mobile video game.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Marmalade: We start our journey into the world of the Marmalade SDK by learning how to install the SDK and build a simple "Hello World" application. We will then discover how to deploy and run the finished program to a number of different mobile platforms.
Chapter 2, Resource Management and 2D Graphics Rendering: Most video games are media-rich experiences packed full of superb graphics and stunning sound effects and music. In this chapter we will first look at how Marmalade makes it easy for us to load graphics and other resources into memory by using the built-in resource handling system. We will then discover how to render simple two-dimensional graphics on the screen.
Chapter 3, User Input: Our games will need to allow the user to provide input to control the action; so in this chapter we will be looking at how to respond to keypad, touch screen, and accelerometer inputs.
Chapter 4, 3D Graphics Rendering: Mobile devices now feature graphics processing units that enable them to easily render beautiful 3D graphics. After a brief overview of the basics of 3D rendering, we will then learn how to use Marmalade to render a spinning cube, first by generating the 3D model data in code and later by discovering how we can use a 3D modeling package to create and export a 3D model that can be loaded and drawn in a Marmalade application.
Chapter 5, Animating 3D Graphics: Building on the foundation of the previous chapter, we will then cover how to make our 3D graphics more interesting by making them animated.
Chapter 6, Implementing Fonts, User Interfaces, and Localization: Before a user can even play the first level of our game, they will first need to navigate its menu system. This chapter covers Marmalade's support for font rendering, the ways in which a user interface can be constructed, and finishes up with a look at how to localize a game so it can support multiple languages.
Chapter 7, Adding Sound and Video: Sound and music are both very important aspects of a video game and can make a game feel much more immersive and exciting, so learning how to add these elements to a game is the main aim of this chapter. Marmalade. also allows us to display full motion video clips, so we'll take a brief look at this too.
Chapter 8, Supporting a Wide Range of Devices: Different mobile devices have different capabilities and can also vary in terms of both main processor and graphics rendering power. In this chapter we look at ways in which Marmalade helps us to support as wide a range of devices as possible by allowing our game to adapt to the hardware it is running on. We'll also look at using Marmalade's built-in support for compressing and decompressing files to reduce the size of our game's installation package.
Chapter 9, Adding Social Media and Other Online Services: Since most devices are now permanently connected to the Internet, this chapter explores some of the options available to us for adding online features to our games, from integration with Facebook to displaying adverts as a possible revenue stream.
Chapter 10, Extending Marmalade with the Extensions Development Kit (EDK): While the Marmalade SDK does a great job of standardizing most of the normal requirements of writing a videogame, such as displaying graphics or playing sounds, there sometimes comes the requirement to access a device feature that Marmalade does not support directly. This chapter shows how we can get access to the underlying SDK on Windows, iOS, and Android in order to access device features that we would otherwise not be able to.