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Mad Marbles by
undead
Time Spent:
30 days
Date Added: Sep 19 2012 03:03 AM
The image is a screenshot of my android live wallpaper: Mad Marbles. It renders multicolor marbles on your device home screen. Marbles move according to your device orientation and they can collide with each other. They are also interactive: you can select a marble with your finger and move it (or throw it) around the screen.
Physics is implemented using Box2D in C/C++ compiled for ARM and JNI. Marbles are rendered with an OpenGL ES 2.0 fragment shader.
I decided to develop for android because when my old phone stopped working I found a good deal for an android phone.
At the beginning I thought learning android programming would be nice so I developed an app for internal use checking a web service status.
After that I wanted to give a try to something I enjoy more: graphic programming.
Well.. Mad Marbles is the result.
Some of the lessons I learned during this project are:
- how to write (and use) native code in android for CPU-intensive tasks
- how to implement a live wallpaper with OpenGL ES using custom preferences, reading orientation, etc.
- how to effectively use intents, create a shortcut, select (and scale) images from device, write code adapting to different resolutions
- how OpenGL ES works (I've been a Direct3D guy for years)
I also learned how hard it is to get visibility on google play!!!
If you have an android device you can give a try to the free version:
https://play.google.....madmarbleslite
Date Added: Sep 19 2012 03:03 AM
The image is a screenshot of my android live wallpaper: Mad Marbles. It renders multicolor marbles on your device home screen. Marbles move according to your device orientation and they can collide with each other. They are also interactive: you can select a marble with your finger and move it (or throw it) around the screen.
Physics is implemented using Box2D in C/C++ compiled for ARM and JNI. Marbles are rendered with an OpenGL ES 2.0 fragment shader.
I decided to develop for android because when my old phone stopped working I found a good deal for an android phone.
At the beginning I thought learning android programming would be nice so I developed an app for internal use checking a web service status.
After that I wanted to give a try to something I enjoy more: graphic programming.
Well.. Mad Marbles is the result.
Some of the lessons I learned during this project are:
- how to write (and use) native code in android for CPU-intensive tasks
- how to implement a live wallpaper with OpenGL ES using custom preferences, reading orientation, etc.
- how to effectively use intents, create a shortcut, select (and scale) images from device, write code adapting to different resolutions
- how OpenGL ES works (I've been a Direct3D guy for years)
I also learned how hard it is to get visibility on google play!!!
If you have an android device you can give a try to the free version:
https://play.google.....madmarbleslite
I used Box2D, Android SDK, Android NDK, Eclipse, a few devices for testing (Galaxy S2, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Tab 2, Evo 3D)... and Paint.net for awful programmer art. 
2 Comments
How did you find OpenGL ES?
What is a little weird for a D3D dev is texture handling which is high level compared to pointers and double pointers we are used to work with when using D3D. Also setting states is a little different.
Also fragment and vertex program parameter binding is a little weird. I had the same inputs, same names and same position for vertex and fragment shaders params so I assumed they were shared or at least ordered the same way. When testing on a SG S2 it worked perfectly, but on a SG TAB 2 it didn't render anything unless I bind both parameters.
I'm glad you like it, thank you!