Monthly Archives: May 2012

It’s been a while since I have written anything in the developers log, so I thought it would be nice to share two new avenues of the web marked that can benefit from smart mobile studio. In fact, I’m scheduled for a meeting with a Norwegian publisher regarding our upcoming command-line compiler. There is a huge demand for template based projects in the multimedia scene (where only the content is changed but the code remains the same).

Adobe PDF embedding of javascript

Fairly simple coding, but good revenue

If you own an IPad and have children you will no doubt have noticed how much attention children give to iPad games, books and media. I have a 5 year old daughter that have no interest what so ever in computers, PlayStation or the sorts – but the moment she sat down with the iPad all that changed. I don’t know how many interactive books we have bought for her since we got the iPad but it’s quite a few. So where computers and digital gadgets used to be the domain of a predominantly male group in society – the ability to touch and interact with the devices is changing all that.

One of the latest advances in rich media (or should we say: interactive books that includes media) is not simply that they use javascript -but that the latest additions by Adobe to their PDF format is pretty much tailor made for iBooks and Amazon’s reader. But someone has to program the effects and movements of images using javascript (Adobe actually started adding javascript support 10 years ago, but hardly anyone have noticed that is not in the publishing business).

This is perfect for smart mobile studio which is capable of producing advanced yet compact apps that makes full use of hardware acceleration and all the latest web technologies. So if you’re into graphics and know smart – then this is absolutely knowledge publishers will be interested in. You wont believe some of the prices these publishers pay just for some javascript animations (I was gobsmacked by it). And with smart you can compete not only in terms of code complexity, but also in time to deliver.

Games and multimedia

Dune II, Amiga classic

Javascript games is becoming more and more popular. I really had to see it for myself to believe it, but kids today don’t grow up with or care about Amiga’s or commodore 64’s – they grow up with the browser. My 9 year old son loves to play online games but to my surprise, he is more interested in either retro games (super mario, sonic etc. in an emulator) or javascript games. He occasionally plays a game of FIFA on the PlayStation 3, but his generation prefers to play javascript games.

A good javascript game that can run in any webkit browser (we also support FireFox) can go a long way. Since smart compiles to javascript it can be played on all operative systems (linux, mac, windows, whatever has a modern browser, even my TV runs smart apps) and reach all mobile phones and pads at the same time. With a dedicated server and a REST API you could do a lot of cool stuff.

And one of our advantages that the others dont have, is quite frankly classes. Take something simple like hardware accelerated graphics. Sounds easy yeah? Well actually it’s not, at least not when you are hacking away in a javascript notepad editor, having not only to code the game – but also create the OOP layer as well (or use a framework that mimic these things). Most javascript developers end up with canvas games, because mixing pixel graphics with other elements is — well, let’s just say it quickly turns into a mess after 10.000 lines of javascript.

I invented the term ‘Object-Oriented’, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.
-Source: Alan Kay. Creator of Smalltalk.

Since smart comes with a full implementation of sprite3d, reverse engineered in object pascal — creating responsive and blistering fast javascript games is really not that hard. And we have the benefit of classes, so our monsters can inherit things like behavior, animations and so on. For us coming from delphi we take that for granted, but it’s actually not something we should take for granted – because in a lot of languages you are expected to type quite a bit of code before you even see a pixel on screen.

Had I not been busy with the first smart update, I would probably be coding a Dune II clone right now.

Smart Mobile Studio now supports helper objects for various elements, including classes, records and arrays. Helper’s are extremely valuable in leveraging complex data-structures. This is a very powerful addition to Smart’s already impressive list of “must have” features when working with javascript. Features that no existing javascript framework or utility provides.

Here is a small taste of how you can use a helper object to enrich something as simple as an array of TPoints. These are pure “trig” rotations (just one way of doing it).

[sourcecode language=”delphi”]
unit w3polygons;

interface

uses w3system;

type

TPolygonHelper = helper for TPointArray
Procedure Rotate(const angle:Float;const centerX,centerY:Float);
Procedure Scale(factor:float;Const centerX,centerY:Float);
End;

Implementation

procedure TPolygonHelper.Rotate(const angle:Float;
const centerX,centerY:Float);
var
i: integer;
r,p: Float;
begin
if self.Length>0 then
Begin
for i:=self.low to self.high do
begin
r:=sqrt(sqr(self[i].X – centerX) + sqr(self[i].Y – centerY));
p := angle + arcTan2(self[i].Y – centerY, self[i].X – centerX);
self[i].x:=Round(centerX + r * cos(p));
self[i].y:=Round(centerY + r * sin(p));
end;
end;
end;

Procedure TPolygonHelper.Scale(factor:Float;
Const centerX,centerY:Float);
var
i: integer;
r,p: float;
begin
if self.length>0 then
begin
for i := self.low to self.high do
begin
r:= factor * sqrt(sqr(self[i].X – centerX) + sqr(self[i].Y – centerY));
p:= arcTan2(self[i].Y – centerY, self[i].X – centerX);
self[i].X := Round(centerX + r * cos(p));
self[i].Y := Round(centerY + r * sin(p));
end;
end;
end;

end.

[/sourcecode]