AirPlay support in Gideros

Mells

@techdojo
First of all as you know my technical skills are still limited so I probably made a lot of false assumptions
Also, the discussion became a bit confused (to me) because this last topic (Pinch) differed from my initial question so I didn't put enough thought in it. I just shared some things that came to my mind.
So, you probably are right when saying I am wrong

So back to my initial question, would you say that :

• your advices apply to the following image in 2 players Mode
• in 1 player Mode, an AppleTv is enough

@OZApps
I am 95% ready to open my app to beta, but my animations require a gazillion frames to be drawn and this has bored me to death, I lost all excitement and coincidently broke my Wacom pen at the same time.
Now waiting for a replacement, and getting excited about working on something else

techdojo

@Mells - no worries - in short YES.

The clue is in the picture you've drawn - each person has a pad in front of them, therefore you'd need one pad per player.

Regarding the "apple tv" (read server) you have a choice.

Either have a dedicated server machine either an AppleTV (if possible), an Ouya, a PC, or even an iDevice connected to a TV - the server is responsible for rendering the output on the TV and also communicating with the clients.

The TV then becomes the main media for all clients to see and react to, eg - in a quiz game, you would display the main question on this, or any other "shared" content.

If you used an iDevice (iPad or iPhone etc) as the server then you could have a human "quiz master" (or teacher) who controls the flow of the game, chooses the questions etc - just like the host in a normal quiz game, they might have access to the answers or hints that they could reveal etc etc.

Each "player" (or client) would then communicate with the server via Wifi or Bluetooth and once they'd registered their devices would be able to participate in the game that is controlled by the server by transmitting their moves / responses and then updating their own local displays based on player input and information received back from the server.

Alternatively you can opt for a integrated client / server model where a single app acts as both a client and also (in the background - a server) - this would probably be the player who sat closest to the telly (for a wired display connection) or who's display was potentially being mirrored, and would be responsible for "starting the game", the "game ai" would then choose the questions etc and act as a "virtual" host and run the game so that no one player has an advantage.

Going back to your classroom idea
The classic example would be for the "teacher" to act as the "host" directing the learning or the shared experience with each child or "player" contributing as and when required.

In this instance (as horrible as an idea as it sounds) - you could even replace the teacher with a virtual "host" displayed on the main screen that could use AI to "manage" the class and "play" the prescribed lesson, similar to a classic remote learning experience or as a way of getting an experienced "teacher" to say a remote African village by just sending in a server box and a display.

EDIT -->

I was just thinking, lua might be a perfect scripting language so that a server could upload content directly a client device from the server, so you could use the same player and then just update the server when new content was to be released.

However chances are you wouldn't be able to do this via iDevices as it would contravene Apple's restrictions on app's being able to download executable code.

In fact this is pretty much how the model works for the Gideros player if you think about it.

+1 for Android then...

techdojo

- REMOVED DOUBLE POST - (and no @Scouser - I'm not post whoring )

ar2rsawseen

I intentionally will not delete the previous post

Mells

@techdojo wow, thanks!
I think this is not realistic for me to aim so high from my first experiment (no network knowledge).
I will focus on 1 device + airplay first (kids touches an animal on the ipad, an animation is played on the tv) and follow @OZApps advices on how to use Tv Out + BHWax
(

Ideally I would like to be able to do on both screens what Gideros currently allows.
If I understand well, I will have to create/update/modify my objects using iOS Api through BHWax, and manipulate them in Gideros with Lua.

).

And if the experience is successful enough I'll look into applying your comment.
Again, I appreciate! (although I suspect you chimed in to protect your silver star )

OZApps

@Mells, there is a lovely article geared towards Networking and Gideros written by @Ar2rsawseen on his website. That should get you ahead and fill in the networking gap you mentioned.

Mells

Hi @atilim, @deniz,

about the implementation of multi stages (stage:addChild() so we can do stage1:addChild(), stage2:addChild())
-> Being realistic, could you say if this will happen :

1. whithin 3 months
2. between 3 and 6 months
3. 6 months+
4. 12 months+

I would love to get an official confirmation, ###just the number of your answer would already be enough.###

atilim

Hi @Mells,

Sorry for late reply. I can say between 3 and 6 months. While moving to OpenGL ES 2.0, I'll definitely consider implementing multiple render targets.

Mells

Hi @atilim,

I saw it on my news feed (well, that's why I wanted to bet on Airplay 6 month ago) :


New in Unity 4.1
iOS: full multi-screen support (AirPlay). Look for added Display class for an array of connected displays (only iOS is properly implemented now - all other platforms will have only one display in there).

As you said :

While moving to OpenGL ES 2.0, I'll definitely consider implementing multiple render targets.

I was wondering if that was still on your list, or maybe you have already made some progress on it?

Thank you