Archive for the ‘Programming’ Category
Android: Loading files from the Assets and Raw folders
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Programming
This tutorial will explain how to load files from the res/raw and the Assets folder using a String to specify the file name. Yes, there are a lot of tutorials on this subject, but they all use the automatically generated integer IDs from the R class as inputs and not many of them even mention the possibility of loading files from the Assets folder. As a result of depending on the ID, the file reference must be known beforehand.
Instead, the code featured in this post will explain how to find the reference to the file and then load it at runtime based solely on its name. This means that the reference ID and the file don’t even have to exist in the first place, and can be acquired at run time.
Continue reading: “Android: Loading files from the Assets and Raw folders”
Unity: How to make an overview map
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Programming
This Unity tutorial explains the required steps to create a map that displays the level in a top-down view. For a real-time, precise map, an orthographic camera can be placed on the top of the map and set to exclusively render a specific layer. However, this post isn’t about creating a precise map, instead it shows how to create a stylized one. A Unity project with everything explained here is available for download at the end of this tutorial.
The first step is to create a plane by clicking on GameObject->Create Other->Plane. Resize it underneath your level, making it have the same size of your scene, not bigger or smaller, just enough to fit all of the elements inside it. Continue reading: “Unity: How to make an overview map”
Unity: Scaling the GUI based on the screen resolution
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Featured, Programming
As hinted by other posts, here, you will find how to properly scale the GUI elements based on screen resolution. As one may have noticed, Unity doesn’t scale the GUI elements based on the screen resolution, requiring a script to do the job, which is explained in this post. I will assume that the reader already knows how to create and render GUI elements in Unity using the MonoBehaviour’s OnGUI() function and GUISkin objects.
The best way to explain how to properly scale a GUI element is through an example. That said, for this post, let’s assume that we wanted a yellow rectangle to be rendered at the top left and bottom right corners of the screen, like this: Continue reading: “Unity: Scaling the GUI based on the screen resolution”
Android: take a picture without displaying a preview
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Programming
Accessing hardware functionality when programming for an Android device is generally quite straightforward. The same can be said about writing an Activity that takes a picture, but Android requires a preview of what the camera will capture to be displayed prior to capturing an image. This post explains how to “cheat” this requirement imposed by the OS, and how to write an application that takes a picture and displays it.
An Eclipse project with all the code explained here is available for download at the end of the post.
Before going into the Activity code, the interface layout (the main.xml file) must be edited to add a Surface View and an Image View to the interface. To add an element, just drag and drop it from the list inside your layout, like this: Continue reading: “Android: take a picture without displaying a preview”
Unity: Creating a simple billboard
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Programming
Sometimes, when creating a game, there is the need to use a billboard. In the Unity game engine there is no billboard rendering component, and that’s why this post is going to explain one of the options to do so, it’s advantages and disadvantages. It’s not going to require a single line of code, but it’s not going to be the most optimized option either. At the end of the post a Unity project with all the game objects and components configured here is available for download.
To make a billboard in Unity, there is basically three different options: Continue reading: “Unity: Creating a simple billboard”