Mobile Games Development: July 2016

What I did in June

in the very end of June finished Football Star game for Gamee platform. You can play it here:

during month we did small adjustments requested by customers to HTML5 version of Shards. It is now published by Famobi and you can play it here:

started work on levels for our big game "Pirates! - the match-3". We build Cordova version with Google Analytics for testing. In Google Analytics we collect data on how difficult it was to finish levels. Currently, we have levels for half of the first world:

in the end of June I started work on HTML5 version of our older Android/iOS game Flat Jewels Match 3. It is now finished and we are looking for sponsors. Game is very simple, but fast paced match 3 game. You are given simple tasks in 150 levels or you can target highest score in Time Attack mode:

during work on Flat Jewels I wrote small tutorial, that was published in beginning of July. In it I explain how to add images into font definitions, so you can print them along with other text,
started to write book! Its theme is how to make complete procedurally generated horizontal infinite runner in Typescript with Phaser engine. First 5 chapters (about 50 pages) is finished.

Report

Here is income from mobile games:

It is better, than previous month ($119,6), which was really weak. I am afraid, that July will be bad month again.

More income from paid apps and from in-apps decreased Ads share from 91% in May to 83%. But still, most income is from ads.

Income from HTML5 hired work and HTML5 licences for June is $2 440,20.

Total income for June is $2 583,30. It would be great if I managed to keep it on this level in future.

In July we will try to get next sponsors for Shards and for Flat Jewels Match 3. I will continue to build new levels for Pirates! - the match-3 and to fine tune older ones. I will also continue work on my first Phaser book. Beside this, I have some client work to do.

Follow @SBC_Games

Previous Phaser tutorials and articles:
Phaser tutorial: Using Spriter player for Phaser
Phaser tutorial: Merging fonts into sprite atlas
Phaser: Typescript defs for Phaser Box2D plugin
Phaser tutorial: Spriter Pro features added to Spriter player for Phaser
Phaser tutorial: Using Phaser signals
Phaser tutorial: Breaking the (z-order) law!
Phaser tutorial: Phaser and Spriter skeletal animation
Phaser tutorial: DronShooter - simple game in Typescript - Part 3
Phaser tutorial: DronShooter - simple game in Typescript - Part 2
Phaser tutorial: adding 9-patch image support to Phaser
Phaser tutorial: DronShooter - simple game in Typescript - Part 1
Phaser tutorial: custom easing functions for tweening and easing functions with parameters
Phaser tutorial: sprites and custom properties for atlas frames
Phaser tutorial: manage different screen sizes
Phaser tutorial: How to wrap bitmap text

Introduction

Very often I need to display some information for player in GUI in my games. It is usually composed of some text and icon. And it also often takes some time to fine tune positioning of text and icon. Things get complicated if part of it can change width like number on following image:

Then, if you update number, you also have to update position of icon. Making some longer text, like the one on image bellow, with small images inside of it, is tedious work and usually needs lot of code.

Solution

Fortunately, solution is easy. We can add images as special characters into font and then print whole text, including images, in one call in code.

Let's say you have font called "Font" and atlas called "Game". Font is made of texture with characters and xml metadata file. It can be font made with Littera or any other font tool. Atlas is standard atlas with your game images.

After these are loaded in your preload function - for example like this:

            this.load.atlas("Game", "assets/Game.png", "assets/Game.json");
            this.load.bitmapFont("Font", "assets/Font.png", "assets/Font.xml");

you can start your adjustments in create function. First we get reference to our loaded assets:

            let atlas = this.cache.getImage("Game", true);
            let font = this.cache.getBitmapFont("Font");

Next we get reference to loaded font xml data and also reference to capital "A" character. Reason for this is, that we will center added images on the same level as center of "A" is.

            let fontData = font.font;
            let charA = fontData.chars[65];

Now, in my case, I have 7 gem images in atlas with names Gem1 ... Gem7. I will add them as special characters. First, I have to choose character code for them. Here I chose 5000 for Gem1, 5001 for Gem2 ...

            for (let i = 0; i < 7; i++) {
                let f = this.cache.getFrameByName("Game", "Gem" + (i + 1));

                fontData.chars[5000 + i] = {
                    x: f.x,
                    y: f.y,
                    width: f.width,
                    height: f.height,
                    xOffset: 1,
                    yOffset: charA.yOffset + Math.floor((charA.height - f.height) / 2),
                    xAdvance: f.width + 2,
                    kerning: [],
                    texture: new PIXI.Texture(atlas["base"], new PIXI.Rectangle(f.x, f.y, f.width, f.height)) 
                };
            }

First, we get Phaser.Frame from atlas, so we will have access to position and dimensions of image within atlas. Next, we add new object with all font metadata to current font characters data at position of character code we chose before. For yOffset we are doing small calculation to center added images relative to "A" - we want center of A and added images on the same level. xOffset is 1 and it says, that there will be 1 pixel space after previous character. xAdvance then says how much has font renderer step to draw next character. We set this to width + 2 (= xOffset + width + 1). On last line, we are setting texture property. Here you may get error - just head to phaser.d.ts and change BMFontChar interface to use PIXI.Texture instead of PIXI.BaseTexture.

Test

To test our gem images in text add this code:

            let text = "Hi, " + String.fromCharCode(5000, 5005, 5006) + " there!\n\nHow are you? " + String.fromCharCode(5001, 5002);
            let bmText = new Phaser.BitmapText(this.game, 0, 0, "Font", text, 110);
            bmText.anchor.x = 0.5;
            this.world.add(bmText);

To include gems we make string from character codes with call to String.fromCharCode(). You should see this on screen:

Draw calls

While everything works, there is small issue you should be aware of. As our font images and gem images are in different textures, there can be more draw calls. In above case there are four draw calls to draw this single piece of text.

Fortunately, there is also solution for this. Merge your font into atlas as described in one of previous tutorials. Code changes only very little:

            let font = this.cache.getBitmapFont("Font");
            let fontData = font.font;
            let charA = fontData.chars[65];

            for (let i = 0; i < Level.MAX_GEM; i++) {
                let f = this.cache.getFrameByName("Game", "Gem" + (i + 1));

                fontData.chars[5000 + i] = {
                    x: f.x,
                    y: f.y,
                    width: f.width,
                    height: f.height,
                    xOffset: 1,
                    yOffset: charA.yOffset + Math.floor((charA.height - f.height) / 2),
                    xAdvance: f.width + 2,
                    kerning: [],
                    texture: new PIXI.Texture(font.base, new PIXI.Rectangle(f.x, f.y, f.width, f.height)) 
                };
            }

You do not need reference to atlas, because gem images are in the same texture as font characters and in last line you can get base texture from font data.

This reduces draw calls to one.

Conclusion

With presented solution you can easily mix text with icons. If you merge font with atlas, there are no additional costs in terms of draw calls.

Mobile Games Development

Pages

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Mobile Income Report #24 - June 2016

What I did in June

Report

Next

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Phaser tutorial: Fun with bitmap fonts

Introduction

Solution

Test

Draw calls

Conclusion

About Me