Programming
- page 14Unity: Scaling the GUI based on the screen resolution
Posted by Dimitri | May 12th, 2011
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 | May 4th, 2011
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 | Apr 30th, 2011
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”
Android: Acessing the gyroscope sensor for simple applications
Posted by Dimitri | Apr 27th, 2011
This post explains how to get values from the gyroscope (or any sensor that returns the device’s relative angle) to create simple application. The reason why I’m stating ‘for simple applications’ is because the code featured here is already deprecated. I’m just explaining how to do it because it still works, and it’s very clean and short to explain, as opposed to the new method, which is much more accurate but more complex to implement.
Still, it’s possible to use it for simple applications, although, if the application requires accuracy from the sensors, such as augmented reality applications or even games, it’s recommended to use the getRotationMatrix() method from the Sensor Manger class instead.
With that said, the following code just prints the rotation values from the gyroscope on the screen: Continue reading: “Android: Acessing the gyroscope sensor for simple applications”