My feature requests

keszegh

As I started to work with Gideros more thoroughly a week ago, i collected some features i miss the most, see them below in order of importance (most of them asked by others as well, some already on the roadmap in some way). I try to do a kind of drawing app, which i understand Gideros may not be made for primarily but i wanted to do something cross-platform and also i like lua as previously i worked with as3 (and processing) and gideros seems to be the best choice for me given these assumptions. (also it was important to have a free solution to work with until i manage to make some profit)
I would be happy if the developers could tell something about their plans about these features (i understand that putting anything on the roadmap is too strong a promise, so i'm satisfied if you say anything approximate schedule, which you do not need to achieve of course).
so the features:

1. rendertotexture ,i.e., bake a sprite onto another sprite (its parent, e.g.), so that they become one sprite/bitmap
2. antialiasing (for shapes is enough for me for now, but smoothing of all sprites was asked by others also and would be helpful)
for partial solutions see these helpful comments: http://www.giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/1556/antialiased-lines-in-a-shape#Item_4
3. pressure sensitivity plugin or whatever solution to get pressure info for android devices
3a. perhaps i would be happy with an example in the documentation about how to write a most simple android plugin that calls some java function (and not c))
3b. perhaps writing a java plugin should be made simpler, now it seems that it works only through c somehow, which i don' get so far
for help about these see these nice comments: http://www.giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/1557/get-stylus-pressure-information#Item_1
4. deploy app to windows pc

thanks for listening, overall i like gideros a lot and hope that it will be able to expand in a way that these features also get included at some point.

hgvyas123

for number 3 see this link

http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile/Creating-plugins-for-Android-in-Gideros

keszegh

for number 3 see this link

http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile/Creating-plugins-for-Android-in-Gideros

Thanks, now this seems detailed enough so that even i can follow it through. Still i wonder if it would make sense to add the possibility to make java plugins straight, just to simplify this process. Maybe it makes sense in longer term, it would be a time saviour for the people who need only some java functionality.
In any case with this documentation 3a is probably answered. Thanks again.

ar2rsawseen

@keszegh well since Lua works with C and Android with Java, then JNI through C is basically the only option that is available.

But theoretically there is a solution, it would be to create generic plugin, that would simply allow to call any method of any Java Class from Lua. But again that would be pretty difficult (because all the code changes based on what arguments you are passing and receiving, you actually need to know the type of arguments beforehand),
or solution would be not very usable (where from lua you need to not only specify java class and method, but also all types of all arguments, that would basically generate needed C code).

Both approaches are not perfect and are quite complex, that at least for now does not seem to be worth it.

But don't worry, at least your plugin seems to be quite easy, and if you stuck anywhere just post here, and we'll help you

keszegh

Thanks to the detailed tutorial, after a day of tinkering i managed to make the plugin, of course only a few lines had to be changed, yet some in the other java file as well, which made it a little harder for myself as a beginner.
In any case i uploaded the pressure sensitivity plugin example: http://www.giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/1557/get-stylus-pressure-information#Item_6

If you can tell something about the other 3 feature requests, i would appreciate that.

atilim

@keszegh we're planning to implement rendertotexture and desktop apps by the end of this year. But antialiasing is not on our roadmap currently.

techdojo

@Atilim - be careful what you way say, you KNOW we'll hold you to that!

Scouser

@techdojo: Shouldn't that be

@Atilim - be careful what you say, you KNOW we'll hold you to that!

)

techdojo

*awkward*
Maybe I was hoping that he wouldn't eat too many boxes of Turkish Delight and then feel too sick to code, or err... maybe I'm just crap at spolling this early in the morning...

Actually I was going to amend my above post to add a sneaky feature for desktop apps.

It would be great if you could find a way for any exported windows apps to be contained within a single .exe file, I think it makes a big difference to the look and feel of an app if all the resources are packaged into a single file - the same way as it looks with the .app folders on a Mac.

atilim

*gulp* :-\" yes, this is the real plan.

atilim

hahahah
I'm not sure for a single .exe file but a single .exe file + a single assets file is possible.

keszegh

thanks for all these infos, i'm now waiting the end of the year. or hopefully sooner. antialiasing is the least important anyway (among these three), for my purpose i can fake it with multiple opacity lines - although it is not that effective. the other features cannot be faked, so those are really waited.