iPad scaling and simulator performance

cocos2d for iPhone » Programming » cocos2d support (graphics engine)

iPad scaling and simulator performance

(9 posts) (3 voices)

Started 1 year ago by NRaf
Latest reply from dell

Tags:

NRaf
Member

Howdy,

I'm having a bit of trouble getting the high-res textures working properly. We've (we being a friend and I) almost finished a small game (first real project) using 0.99.3 however it's been decided that we should support high-res textures for the iPhone 4 and the iPad.

We updated to 0.99.4 and had a bit of trouble getting things going but we got there in the end. All I have to do now is fix up the positioning as the old positions don't work properly on the newer screens (although I had thought that these would've been taking care of my the system).

With that said, the framerate with the content scaled to 2 seems to be rather slow in the iPhone Simulator (about 20 frames in-game iirc). We don't have the new model to test on but setting the content scale to 2 and testing on an older model iPhone, it seems to run at a considerably higher framerate (i.e. 60fps) than the simulator. Any idea why that may be the case?

Also, another issue is the scale button on the iPad. It would seem that when playing at 1x, clicking 2x will simply cause the current graphics to be scaled up as opposed to loading the high res images. By the same token, it would seem that if a graphic was first loaded in 2x mode, the low res version won't be loaded when scaled back down. Any idea how to approach this issue?

Posted 1 year ago #
dell
Member

Its normal to have a slow framerate in the simulator and higher on the device. So don't let that worry you. There is an issue with 0.99.4... I thinks it a bug where the @2x is not recognized. On the forum it is talked about alot.

Posted 1 year ago #
NRaf
Member

Thanks for the response.

Regarding the @2x, I have managed to get it working rather well (a bit of quirks regarding bitmap fonts which I'll have to work around). The iPhone 4 simulator uses the high-res images, the normal iPhone simulator uses the low-res images. I had to double all the static positioning to get everything in the right spot on the iPhone 4. Basically, if the content scale is set to 2, every static coordinate is doubled (given the 640x960 Retina display resolution). I worked on this after creating the original post.

Now the issue I'm having is that it doesn't play nicely with the iPad. The project isn't a native iPad app, it runs in 'windowed mode', so to speak. When the iPad scale is as 1x (i.e. default resolution) everything shows up nicely and I have no issues. However when I scale it to 2x on the iPad simulator, all the positions get doubled and everything goes crazy.

I'm assuming that I shouldn't be doubling positions when in iPad 2x mode. With that aside, the high-res images that get loaded in this mode aren't being scaled down to the screen. So it would seem I have some issues with the iPad.

Hoping the above made sense, I would like to know how I should approach getting it working for the iPad. If I was to try and 'natively' support the iPad (so target the iPad as well) what would I have to change in terms of resolutions and high-res images? Is it safe to assume that if it's working well with the iPhone 4 it will work nicely on the iPad? But then again, the iPad has a different screen resolution as well a different aspect ratio, so will I also have to change positioning depending on whether the application is running on an iPad?

Posted 1 year ago #
dell
Member

Well... lets use a full background screen for example

on the iPad it would be 1024x768
on iPhone 4 it would be 960x640
on iPhone 2/3/3S it would be 480x320

So if it were me... I would use programatic device detection at the beginning to determine which to call then.... there are other issues too. We are talking different CPUs memory etc.... I'm still not sold on one app fits all approach.

For example on our app we have different resources based on the device... not only images but audio files etc. Some are at different sample rates... some code is at different frame rates for spritesheets etc... so its totally device driven.

How did you solve it... Please feel free to share as I am sure it will spark discussion or help someone else solve it.

Posted 1 year ago #
dell
Member

and yes you don't double for iPad... just iPhone 4. When I make an app I want it full screen not running in a window on the device... For the sake of the user interface as well.

Posted 1 year ago #
NRaf
Member
Basically I upgraded my code to 0.99.4 from 0.99.3.

- In my AppDelagate applicationDidFinishLaunching method, I added the following before the call to runWithScene.
```
// Enables High Res mode on iPhone 4 and maintains low res on all other devices
if ([UIScreen instancesRespondToSelector:@selector(scale)]) {
    [[CCDirector sharedDirector] setContentScaleFactor:[[UIScreen mainScreen] scale]];
}
```
- In the CCTextureCache.m we added to AddImage method:
```
UIImage *image;

if([UIScreen instancesRespondToSelector:@selector(scale)] && [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale] == 2.0) {
    NSString *fullpath2x = [fullpath stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:NSMakeRange([fullpath length] - 4, 0) withString:@"@2x"];

    if ([[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:fullpath2x]) {
        image = [[UIImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:fullpath2x];
    }
    else {
        image = [[UIImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:fullpath];
    }
}
else {

    image = [[UIImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:fullpath];
}
```
This was added after these lines:
```
#if 0
UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:path];
tex = [ [CCTexture2D alloc] initWithImage: image ];
#else
//ADDED HERE
```
(btw, you need to comment out UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:path]; in the original method.

The images were loading correctly on the iPhone 4 at this point, however I had to double all the static dimensions to get everything in it's correct position.

If you have any resources that discuss getting a cocos2d to meet the iPad requirements, that will be appreciated. I just want to ascertain one thing, when you say you don't double for the iPad, I'm assuming you're still wanting to set positions within the bounds of 1024x768 (as opposed to letting the iPad upscale the iPhone dimesions)? Is this correct?

*EDIT* Fixed up formatting (was in a rush to get to a doctor's appointment). I also forgot to mention, the fix mentioned above is based on the comments for issue #910 (http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/issues/detail?id=910)
Posted 1 year ago #
NRaf
Member

Okay, I've started work on getting it working on iPad. I've mostly got the positioning worked out. The issue I'm having at the moment is with the Resources-iPad folder XCode created when I made my application universal. I resized a graphic and placed it in that folder to see if cocos2d would pick it up and run with it on the iPad. When I first tested it, it seemed it was working fine.

However I've since come to realize that the choice of graphic is seemingly random. Regardless of whether I'm running on the iPhone or iPad, sometimes the application will load the graphic from the Resources folder, sometimes it will load it from the Resources-iPad.

Given that you mentioned having different for each platform, I was wondering how you went about handling it. Is there a simple way to tell either cocos or XCode, "I want you to first look for the resources in this directory. If you can't find it there look here"?

Posted 1 year ago #
letmeknow
Member

Has rumor about 7" iPad. The size for this product is not stable yet - depend on the market.

Posted 1 year ago #
dell
Member

@NRaf..... What you have works fine for the iPhone platform for high res and regular. The trick is with the iPad... which is 1024x768 so it is a third file size and device. So I am still investigating what is the best way to address all 3 devices with one code base and 3 different sizes of graphics. CoCos 99.05 just came out so I may play with that first before I provide an answer. But the direction you are going with the iPhone works for me. Apple does have a naming convention for images BTW.... it looks something like this...

myimage~ipad.png
myimage~iphone.png
myimage@2x~iphone.png

I will be working with CoCos 99.5 this weekend and let you know what I find out. This thread is getting really informative!

@letmeknow Rumors, Rumors and more Rumors! I am developing for current devices until I get an official announcement from Apple!

Posted 1 year ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.