AnimationEngine 5

Create fast, sprite powered games with Animation Engine, co-developed with DerBrill Software!

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malte
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AnimationEngine 5

Post by malte » Tue Oct 11, 2011 12:18 pm

Hi all!

Now that the cat is out of the back regarding liveCode 5, I would like to take the chance to also announce something. The brand new polished animationEngine 5!
We have been working hard to make this release perform better than what you are used to, taking advantage of quite some new features of the new liveCode engine. This does mean, that for animationEngine 5, liveCode 5 or higher will be a requirement. However, you can trust me, it is well worth it! Here is a short list of what is new in ae 5:

Version 5 of animationEngine has been optimized to work with the liveCode 5.0 engines and above. As I wrote earlier, previous versions of the liveCode engine can no longer be supported. This is due to the rewrite of the graphics layer in liveCode. A feature we at derbrill were most eager to learn about and are very fond of. Due to the new rendering techniques in liveCode many of the ae functionality will perform even better than before, quite some of what happens under the hood has been optimized to take advantage of the new message handling introduced in liveCode 4.6.4. If you haven't upgraded your liveCode license as yet and are looking into writing games or do stacks that involve animations, now is the time to get the most current liveCode engine.

Generic collision listener:
We have implemented a means to make controls listen to collisions with numerous other objects in your stack. You can start or stop listening for collisions at any time. ae will send callback messages to the colliding controls. This will also work for objects you are dragging around with the ae constraining handlers. No need to write lengthy scripts to check for collisions. Just set up your objects and let ae handle the rest.

App store compliance:
We have taken care that animationEngine behaves like a nice citizen in the various app stores. AE will not write any information on the users device.

Better performance on mobile devices: We put stress into rewriting core parts of AE to perform even better on mobile devices. Previous versions of animationEngine behaved differently on the desktop and mobile devices. In order to use the library on a mobile device, you had to start using it in a startUp handler. This limitation has been lifted.

No extra registration necessary:
If you have purchased animationEngine in the runrev store, your license will be added to your account. Just relicense liveCode after your purchase and animationEngine will go from trial mode into full registered mode on any machine you are using your liveCode license.

The best part: animationEngine 5 will be free with every liveCode 5 purchase made in october!
If you want to upgrade your animationEngine 4 license to animationEngine 5, the price will be USD 39. Regular purchase price is USD 79.

I hope people using ae5 will enjoy it as much, as I enjoyed writing it. :-)

All the best,

Malte

SparkOut
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by SparkOut » Tue Oct 11, 2011 4:06 pm

Exciting!
Especially about the collision messages - although I may need to have my hand held rather more, I've played with the demo and get that (I think) but dynamically handling multiple collisions with every other colliding object where each collision "pops" the two colliding objects without altering the rest of the objects, and introducing new objects to test for collision on the fly are a bit harder for my brain at the moment.
Must the list of objects to test for collision be refiltered to remove non-existent object ids every time an object is "popped"?
Must the list of objects to test for collision be filtered to remove the id of itself?
Is there a simple way to add new ids to the existing lists of objects to check for collision in every object when a new object is created?

malte
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by malte » Tue Oct 11, 2011 6:09 pm

Hi sparkout,

I will add a few handlers to the API in the coming fourtnight to make this a little easier. Also, I will be setting up a tutorial to pop objects. Will not manage before the weekend, but then I should have something.

All the best,

Malte

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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by mattrobb » Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:42 pm

Hi

Have I missed something in my AE5 download?
Where is the API guidance; I have the stack but I have no idea what commands I can use.
With AE4 I did know the commands because they were included as a sample/demo. That isn't the case this time.

I have scanned through the pdf and whilst the examples are good they are far from comprehensive. It then sends me to this forum for more info; I searched for API and there was only one small comment.

Please help; I now have AE5, but I don't know what it does!

Regards

Matt

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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by BvG » Thu Oct 27, 2011 3:46 am

HA! I told you! HA!

PS: Make my stack available, damnit!
Various teststacks and stuff:
http://bjoernke.com

Chat with other RunRev developers:
chat.freenode.net:6666 #livecode

malte
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by malte » Thu Oct 27, 2011 6:33 pm

Hey Matt,

as you see from BvGs litle sidekick, there is a docu stack by BvG in the making (by the way, you can use the documentation any way you may wish Björnke. If you feel like uploading the stack now just do it! :-P )

More examples are to follow very soon. AE5 is fully backwards compatible. Everything that worked in 4 will work in 5 (unless I introduced a bug which I do not hope, but if so, please report it) The PDF basically contains all the information that were in the previous example stack, which I changed to PDF on (many!) requests by users, because it seems to be easier to print out and read in the bathroom. :-) What I could do of course is make the old example stack available as (legacy) download.

I am still a little undecided what is the best format for documentation and examples and to be frank, I do rely a lot on user feedback here. So what would you like? A big stack? Many small stacks? PDFs? Threads in this forum? Lessons in the lessons area on runrevs homepage? This all is doable, but takes a little time to prepare. The most time consuming method would be the lessons on rrs page part. The quickest would be threads in this forums. Just open a new thread like "please tell me how to do this or that with animationEngine" or can ae do that? and I will try my best to whip up a quick tutorial.

Hope this helps a bit,

Malte

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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by mattrobb » Sun Oct 30, 2011 10:57 pm

Thanks for that

I have re-read the pdf more carefully and I now understand the AE5 functions.

My latest problem is that on testing AE5, it works fine in the runrev environment but not on the ios simulator.
On the ios simulator all the other non AE5 code works (ie placement of shapes); but nothing moves (ie none of the AE5 commands work).

Any ideas.

Note: I have included the code suggested to check that the AE5 stack is present.
After it didn't work I also opened the mainstack stack files and included animationEngine.livecode. Still no joy! I am sure it'll be something simple?
I am working on Lion with the IOS 5 SDK.

Matt

andyh1234
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by andyh1234 » Mon Oct 31, 2011 12:36 am

Do you have an upgrade option from version 3 Malte?

Im afraid I don't make the best use of AE yet, but the new features sound like something that would be good to play around with!

Thanks

Andy

malte
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by malte » Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:38 am

Andy,

AE 5 only works with liveCode engine 5.0. Today (10/31/2011) is the last day of a special offer that gives you a free AE with any liveCode 5 purchase.

After that I am afraid the only upgrade option is from animationEngine 4 to 5.

All the best,

Malte

alan6386
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by alan6386 » Mon Oct 31, 2011 3:44 pm

I am using LiveCode 5 and AE5 and I also cannot seem to get the aeMoveTo method to work on the iOS simulator. It works as expected on the MAC (following the example in the manual) but not doesn't move the graphic at all on the iOS simulator. I have also tried changing the layerMode to dynamic as suggested and tried changing the compositorType to opengl with no success.

Alan

malte
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by malte » Mon Oct 31, 2011 5:02 pm

Hi Alan,
this should work.

First thing to check: Is animationEngine in use on the iOs simulator? (Do an answer the stacksInUse to check). AnimationEngine does not get in use automatically when deployed. You will need to do that by script. If animationEngine is in use and it still does not work, I would like to see your stack.

All the best,

Malte

jiml
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by jiml » Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:19 am

Hi Maltem

Is there a version of AnimationEngineDocs covering your excellent AE 5?

Thanks,
Jim Lambert

malte
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by malte » Mon Apr 02, 2012 8:04 am

Hi Jim,

we have moved the whole documentation to the PDF (we had many requests for that).
The stack that came with AE up to version 4 is still valid though. What would you like to see in a new tutorial stack?

Alll the best,

Malte

jiml
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by jiml » Mon Apr 02, 2012 5:17 pm

Hi Monte,

Thanks for the prompt reply.
The PDF is great. And the AE Doc stack is still valid, as you say.
I like that stack because it shows the engine 'in action'.
The stack didn't ship with the upgrade to 5, I was glad to have previous versions handy.
Just thought it would be good for newbies to get it also.

Thanks,
Jim Lambert

jiml
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Re: AnimationEngine 5

Post by jiml » Mon Apr 02, 2012 6:55 pm

Duh!
I meant Malte not Monte!!!

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