IwGame Engine 0.4 has Landed - Massive Update, Lua, Camera, C++ free and more

Oct. 12, 2012 - PRLog -- Its been a while since Pocketeers Limited released a major update to their cross platform game and app technology, but the wait has been well worth it.

> Moving Towards a Portable Engine

IwGame is moving towards becoming 100% portable as Pocketeers no longer see the IwGame engine as a Marmalade learning tool. With this in mind Pocketeers have started abstracting Marmalade specific code out of the main code and into its own platform section (see Marm sub folders). Over time all Marmalade types, classes, functions and constants will be moved out and replaced with a universal system that can be easily ported. Pocketers will then be porting IwGame to each individual native platform, These platforms include:

* Windows XP/Vista/7/8
* Mac OS
* Android
* Apple iOS
* Windows Phone 8
* BlackBerry OS 10
* PlayStation Vita
* Marmalade SDK

> Lua API

By far the most interesting addition to IwGame is the Lua API. The IwGame Lua API enables developers to develop games and apps without any need to fall back to C++. Just about anything that can done in C++ can now be done using Lua + XOML. Pocketeers want to move IwGame towards a none compiler based system where you can create great games and apps without the need for professional level knowledge of C++ or compilers or IDE’s. In fact, Pocketeers have a new service for Marmalade and none Marmalade developers called AppEasy that is built upon the IwGame core that does just that and is available at http://www.appeasymobile.com

Actors can call scripts and scripts can create and modify actors, scenes and all sorts of other stuff. You can even execute inline script in XOML!

> AppEasy for Marmalade

AppEasy for Marmalade has been included in this distribution of the IwGame engine. AppEasy for Marmalade is a cool little project manager that lets developers organise assets, scripts, icons, splash screens, set app info and generate a fully working MKB project for developers that you can build and deploy.

> Apple iOS Wizard

Developers now have access to the Apple iOS Wizard tool. This handy little tool is ideal for beginners or even veterans who sometimes forget the complex procedures involved in generating signing certificates requests, creating developer / distribution certificates, provisioning devices, creating App ID’s etc.. Well this little tool will walk developers through the whole process so it can be done in minutes.

> Support for Video Camera Streaming

Developers can now declare a new VideoCam tag in XOML which enables them to stream the users front / rear camera to an image then display that image as an actor. Check out the VideoCam example for a cool demo.

> Remote Requests

Pocketeers have also made it possible to construct POST and GET requests in XOML and send and receive responses from XOML / Lua. This is a very interesting new feature that enables communication with web based services declaratively.

> Multi-touch Actors

Actors can now handle up to 5 simultaneous Begin / End touch and Tapped events in XOML. This enables you to create some very interesting styles of app and game play as you can monitor and react to 5 touches at the same time.

Web View Reworked

The Web View control has been reworked and can now display dynamic html content that can be set via XOML, Lua and C++.

This represents a small portion of the huge number of changes that IwGame has undergone. Check out the iwGame blog at http://www.drmop.com/index.php/2012/10/12/iwgame-engine-0... for a full list of changes / features and to download the very latest version of the IwGame Engine SDK.