Basically if you have characters that are distorted, you need to resize them slightly. For example, we have a portrait game with round characters. So we do width=width*.9
That makes them closer to their iphone dimensions. We do a flag for iPad. So they only resize if it's iPad, and then you only have one file. Very good stuff. Hope it helps.
We actually have a camera action at the beginning of every scene, so we got lucky and didnt even have to do the camera trick.
Thanks to tenrdrmr and holderness, they really helped us all on this!
I have no idea how a scrolling game would do, but our game is one-screen levels and it took 30 MIN to get running.
tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
I've played around with a scrolling scene and the thing to remember is you need to reset your tracking areas along with the camera Size. It seems when you resize to iPad it change the tracking area to the default ipad size so when you change the camera the tracking area is actually larger that an camera in essence killing the scroll. But it can quickly be fixed by either in the scene attributes or adding change attributes to go with the camera changes for the tracking area. Although I have not tested changing it at Run time. So no that I think of it you may have to adjust it in the scene attributes them selves.
@hotmagic Thanks for your response. I don't understand the term flag, I have never heard that. I do understand width=width*.9 but i am going from iPad to iPhone so that doesn't work for me. I don't think this technique is going to work for me anyway because my images are all full screen size. They are book pages essentially. I ended up manually making new pages for the iPhone, I think it was the only way.
tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
KeweWorkshop,
You may have to recreate images Etc… You would have had to now matter what method you used to resize. Like I said at the beginning This is not a cure all method so its possible it will not work every time.
And he means attribute when he says flag. Prob just a
when game.iPad is true --width=width*0.9
Type thing. That way within the same project the can check their attribute to true and publish the iPad version and then uncheck it to publish the iPhone version
Ok thanks, I have never heard an attribute called a flag. I was hoping for a quick conversion, seems like it is working for many others But I will get there one way or another!
yeah kewe, sorry for the delay.It will be pretty quick if you just do these basic things.
At the start of every scene, make a dummy actor, do the big unlock click (on the right). That allows you to get at the SCENE level attributes. On this thing, make a rule that says if iPad=1 and self.time=0, make the camera width 320 and the height 480. (or reverse for landscape).
Any time you want to do ipad, change the ipad flag to 1 and the game properties on the Home screen to say iPad. And it should work.
I recommend getting that running first, then fixing weird looking assets one by one. So if you have a character that is stretched width-wize, just go to him and say if self.time=0 and ipad=1, make width = width *.9
Hope this helps. That is the simplified non scrolling game version. We did this with our game and actually only had to resize a few characters. The screens are not THAT much different in ratios. Its less than what a TV does for regular vs widescreen, for example. Good luck!
Thanks for the thorough explanation! I am going from iPad to iPhone though so my characters are not stretched width wise, but are elongated. I just gave in and used the resizer tool from DBA and am fixing everything manually.
tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
If the streched was a different way you should have been able to adjust it all based on the height then.
Either way glad you got it working.ay have just been the case of this is one of the projects this method is no good for as well. Like a said at the begining not every project will work every time.
Running into problems...again. So I started over...again. I used tendrmer's camera trick like before but of course my backgrounds and actors are stretched. So this time I imported a background image that was 960x640 and replaced my iPad background. It stretched it out to the size of iPad but when I hit play it does not look stretched at all and there is no black border like someone was saying. It looks great, if it is stretched I can't tell. I think I finally have it this time!!
Thank you all for your wonderful ideas. My problem now is that everything works fine in preview mode but when i run it in web preview mode I can see the actors just fine but the position of the mouse still acts like I have the old settings (it doesn't match the image I see). Any ideas?...
tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
tenrdrmer said: Why are you running in Web Preview?
Maybe he is going form iPad to iPhone and also wants to have an HTML5 version
tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
Ah Well That might not work. I know there are several little things with the current HTML5 publishing that just don't seem to act the same. This may be one of them
After all the help I have gotten from tshirtbooth's tutorials, guides, and videos it's cool to know he is going to be using a technique I came up with.
And if you have a lot of scenes and you are not scared of using an xml editor you can do it in a few seconds.
1. Back up your project 2. Right click on it and click on "Show package contents" 3. Open all the files in the "scenes" folder with an xml or text editor (I use Text Wrangler) 4. Using the find and replace option for all open documents copy `id="camera">001024768` in the find field and `id="camera">00480320` in the replace field 5. Hit replace all 6. Save
Obviously this will work if all your scenes have 0 for the X and Y origins, but with a little customization it can work for almost all projects.
ok so basically i will use the same project i open. say i chose iPod portrait and use that one to convert to iPad? or can i choose a iPad project, do the game, and then just change actor size to fit the iPhone? right now what i want is to keep the actor will all the rules, i don't care about position, or if image is bad, because if when i get to chose from ,iPod portrait, landscape ,iPad portray, landscape all the difference is the size of the scene then i think i can do all my coding on the iPad one and then move, resize, my actor and the camera to set it for iPhone?
This is an amazing find - close to instant resizing on my iPad game down to iPhone. I just multiplied width by 0.8888 on all actors. Some will need making larger and positioning better for iPhone.
bradherman said: After all the help I have gotten from tshirtbooth's tutorials, guides, and videos it's cool to know he is going to be using a technique I came up with.
please can someone tell me that i will use the same iPhone project and just change the camera and thats how this thing is done?
tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
guilleface said: please can someone tell me that i will use the same iPhone project and just change the camera and thats how this thing is done?
Yes if you read this thread I Published an iPad app using the iPhone version and just adjusted the camera Size of the scenes. Be mindful if you run into bug the Camera Tracking and Origins both reset when you change the Platform Setting. So that has been a place people have run into issues
hey thanks, so what about like right now i have a iPhone portrait game, i have all my images twice the size. without resizing the camera when i preview this game on the iPad everything gets bigger but i guess since my images are bigger everything looks good on the iPad, so should i release a game like that? but i also think like how the actors are registering the position? if in the iPhone let say is x=20 in the iPad will looks like the actor is way more far, but as long i can use the same project with all my actors with rules and just change pictures sizes and position i am happy with that.
tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
Have you done a build and tested it. As I said in my first post> Its not gonna work for every single one but it will work for most. And What I did was just resize the camera. No are change not placement change nothing. It all works perfectly. But….I also thoroughly tested it after using this method. As should you.
JohnPapiomitis said: you mean tenrdrmer and someone else came up with
John, Tenrdrmer was the first to post it, I had an iphone and ipad game in the app store using this method for several months before this thread post. I just didn't know every one didn't do this.
bradherman said: John, Tenrdrmer was the first to post it, I had an iphone and ipad game in the app store using this method for several months before this thread post. I just didn't know every one didn't do this.
Bullshit. If you had come up with it, you would have posted it along time ago. Being around this forum, you learn that if anyone ever has a good idea or technique, it will be posted soon after it is tested to work. Taking credit for something someone else did isn't cool.
That's not very polite DreamLab. In fact I did post about it 5 months ago, It just didn't get any traction since it was a reply to my thread on announcing the game. I believe that if you look in detail at this thread you can see that Tenrdrmer's method and mine are similar but do have differences. Tenrdrmer came up with his method separately of me.
My Game Cancer Zapper & Cancer Zapper HD use this method. It's a game where you fight cancer, I made the game from the hospital at my 3 year old son's bedside to keep up his spirits.
Here is a post from me from 5 months ago talking about how I convert between platforms:
I would love support for universal apps, I wrote the game so that all I have to do to change from iPad to iPhone is set 3 game attributes and set gamesalad to the other platform. It makes it easy to update but universal would be better. I know it's on the roadmap, just wanted to put it out there again.
Had I realized this was a breakthrough I would have made it it's own thread. I am sorry for not posting it. It was my first game, I looked into those programs that reformat projects, I looked into editing the xml, then I realized I may be able to just do it inside the engine. I pulled from my decade of experience in scripting languages and found a way.
Next time I will post things in separate threads, you have my apology for that.
My bad, sorry for being a hot head. Lots of BS happens around the forums now-a-days though, so it's a bit frustrating. Hard to tell who is and isn't telling the truth. I'll just keep my mouth shut next time and wait for someone else to say something
Comments
That makes them closer to their iphone dimensions. We do a flag for iPad. So they only resize if it's iPad, and then you only have one file. Very good stuff. Hope it helps.
We actually have a camera action at the beginning of every scene, so we got lucky and didnt even have to do the camera trick.
Thanks to tenrdrmr and holderness, they really helped us all on this!
I have no idea how a scrolling game would do, but our game is one-screen levels and it took 30 MIN to get running.
You may have to recreate images Etc… You would have had to now matter what method you used to resize. Like I said at the beginning This is not a cure all method so its possible it will not work every time.
And he means attribute when he says flag. Prob just a
when game.iPad is true
--width=width*0.9
Type thing. That way within the same project the can check their attribute to true and publish the iPad version and then uncheck it to publish the iPhone version
At the start of every scene, make a dummy actor, do the big unlock click (on the right). That allows you to get at the SCENE level attributes. On this thing, make a rule that says if iPad=1 and self.time=0, make the camera width 320 and the height 480. (or reverse for landscape).
Any time you want to do ipad, change the ipad flag to 1 and the game properties on the Home screen to say iPad. And it should work.
I recommend getting that running first, then fixing weird looking assets one by one. So if you have a character that is stretched width-wize, just go to him and say if self.time=0 and ipad=1, make width = width *.9
Hope this helps. That is the simplified non scrolling game version. We did this with our game and actually only had to resize a few characters. The screens are not THAT much different in ratios. Its less than what a TV does for regular vs widescreen, for example. Good luck!
Thanks for the thorough explanation! I am going from iPad to iPhone though so my characters are not stretched width wise, but are elongated. I just gave in and used the resizer tool from DBA and am fixing everything manually.
Either way glad you got it working.ay have just been the case of this is one of the projects this method is no good for as well. Like a said at the begining not every project will work every time.
All my scenes (including the main menu) are 1024x1024 and scroll
what i did:
from iphone game to ipad game:
unlocked actor in each level
change attribute
scene.camera.size.width to 480
scene.camera.size.height to 360
resized ipad camera tracking box in each level
everything has kept its proportions perfectly.
i just now have a small amount of extra space at the top and bottom of my menus (not a big deal at all)
i will also have to adjust the top portion of my hud in each level. just move it up.
this works really well in my game and may be helpful for others too.
whats nice about using an actor in each scene to control the resizing is that you can pick and choose the meathod that fits each scenes requirements.
by the way, where i got the number 360 instead of 320
480/1024 is ratio of screen size width between iphone and ipad (respectively), multiply by ipad screen size height (768) and you get 360.
you can do that a different way if you need to. so instead of 480/1024*768 for new cam height
320/768*1024= new cam width = 436.66 (i would probably just put 437)
hope that solution is viable for some
1. Back up your project
2. Right click on it and click on "Show package contents"
3. Open all the files in the "scenes" folder with an xml or text editor (I use Text Wrangler)
4. Using the find and replace option for all open documents copy `id="camera">001024768` in the find field and `id="camera">00480320` in the replace field
5. Hit replace all
6. Save
Obviously this will work if all your scenes have 0 for the X and Y origins, but with a little customization it can work for almost all projects.
________________________________
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But wow! Thanks whoever came up with this.
Thanks Tenrdrmer, Bradherman, and Holderness!
-Thomas
Tenrdrmer was the first to post it, I had an iphone and ipad game in the app store using this method for several months before this thread post. I just didn't know every one didn't do this.
My Game Cancer Zapper & Cancer Zapper HD use this method. It's a game where you fight cancer, I made the game from the hospital at my 3 year old son's bedside to keep up his spirits.
Here is a post from me from 5 months ago talking about how I convert between platforms: Had I realized this was a breakthrough I would have made it it's own thread. I am sorry for not posting it. It was my first game, I looked into those programs that reformat projects, I looked into editing the xml, then I realized I may be able to just do it inside the engine. I pulled from my decade of experience in scripting languages and found a way.
Next time I will post things in separate threads, you have my apology for that.