A complete PlayStation Vita game from scratch: Part One

 

In this series we are going to create a complete Pong clone using the PlayStation Mobile SDK.  The main purpose is to show how all the various pieces ( GameEngine2D, Physics2D, Scenes, Audio, etc… ), fit together to create a full game, something the current documentation doesn’t really

The end results of this tutorial series ( minus sound… it has sound too )

cover.  This tutorial series is going to assume you have already gone through the other PlayStation Mobile tutorials on this site, so I may not be going in to detail on areas that have already been covered.

 

 

I am going to present in the following format.  I will specify the filename, then give the complete source code, followed by a nearly line by line explanation of what the source is doing.

 

 

To complete this tutorial, you are going to need to add references to the libraries Sce.PlayStation.HighLevel.GameEngine2D, Sce.PlayStation.HighLevel.Physics2D and Sce.PlayStation.HighLevel.UI. There is a bug in the PlayStation Mobile Studio that causes auto completion of newly added libraries to not work unless a) you reload the project b) you add ( then remove ) another library c) you exit and restart Studio.

 

Let’s jump right in.

 

AppMain.cs

 

using System;  using Sce.PlayStation.HighLevel.UI;   using Sce.PlayStation.HighLevel.GameEngine2D;    namespace Pong  {      public class AppMain      {          public static void Main (string[] args)          {              Director.Initialize();              UISystem.Initialize(Director.Instance.GL.Context);              Director.Instance.RunWithScene(new TitleScene());                          }      }  }

 

Every C# application has a Main, and as you can see, ours does remarkably little.  Thanks to the Scene based organization of GameEngine2D, it is fairly easy to divide out your application into logical chunks.  Here we initialize the Director and UISystem singletons, create and run a TitleScene scene, to predictably enough, display a title screen.  Let’s look at that now.

 

TitleScene.cs

 

using System;  using Sce.PlayStation.Core;  using Sce.PlayStation.Core.Graphics;  using Sce.PlayStation.Core.Audio;  using Sce.PlayStation.HighLevel.GameEngine2D;  using Sce.PlayStation.HighLevel.GameEngine2D.Base;  using Sce.PlayStation.Core.Input;     namespace Pong  {      public class TitleScene : Scene      {          private TextureInfo _ti;          private Texture2D _texture;                    private Bgm _titleSong;          private BgmPlayer _songPlayer;                    public TitleScene ()          {              this.Camera.SetViewFromViewport();              _texture = new Texture2D("Application/images/title.png",false);              _ti = new TextureInfo(_texture);              SpriteUV titleScreen = new SpriteUV(_ti);              titleScreen.Scale = _ti.TextureSizef;              titleScreen.Pivot = new Vector2(0.5f,0.5f);              titleScreen.Position = new Vector2(Director.Instance.GL.Context.GetViewport().Width/2,                                                Director.Instance.GL.Context.GetViewport().Height/2);              this.AddChild(titleScreen);                            Vector4 origColor = titleScreen.Color;              titleScreen.Color = new Vector4(0,0,0,0);              var tintAction = new TintTo(origColor,10.0f);              ActionManager.Instance.AddAction(tintAction,titleScreen);              tintAction.Run();                            _titleSong = new Bgm("/Application/audio/titlesong.mp3");                            if(_songPlayer != null)              _songPlayer.Dispose();              _songPlayer = _titleSong.CreatePlayer();                            Scheduler.Instance.ScheduleUpdateForTarget(this,0,false);                // Clear any queued clicks so we dont immediately exit if coming in from the menu              Touch.GetData(0).Clear();          }                    public override void OnEnter ()          {              _songPlayer.Loop = true;              _songPlayer.Play();          }          public override void OnExit ()          {              base.OnExit ();              _songPlayer.Stop();              _songPlayer.Dispose();              _songPlayer = null;          }                    public override void Update (float dt)          {              base.Update (dt);              var touches = Touch.GetData(0).ToArray();              if((touches.Length >0 && touches[0].Status == TouchStatus.Down) || Input2.GamePad0.Cross.Press)              {                  Director.Instance.ReplaceScene(new MenuScene());              }          }                ~TitleScene()          {              _texture.Dispose();              _ti.Dispose ();          }      }  }   

 

This code creates a title screen, loops the background music and waits for the user to touch the screen, at which point it displays the main menu scene.  Let’s take a closer look.

 

private TextureInfo _ti;  private Texture2D _texture;            private Bgm _titleSong;  private BgmPlayer _songPlayer;

 

First we declare our member variables.  A TextureInfo holds a texture, and important UV information about it, especially if that texture contains multiple sprites.  Texture2D is the texture itself and holds the image pixel data.  Bgm is a class for holding a music file ( Bgm == background music ), while a BgmPlayer is predictably enough, for playing a Bgm file.  It is important to note, all 4 of these classes implement IDisposable, so you need to release them when you are done, or you will leak memory.

 

public TitleScene ()      {          this.Camera.SetViewFromViewport();          _texture = new Texture2D("Application/images/title.png",false);          _ti = new TextureInfo(_texture);          SpriteUV titleScreen = new SpriteUV(_ti);          titleScreen.Scale = _ti.TextureSizef;          titleScreen.Pivot = new Vector2(0.5f,0.5f);          titleScreen.Position = new Vector2(Director.Instance.GL.Context.GetViewport().Width/2,                                         Director.Instance.GL.Context.GetViewport().Height/2);          this.AddChild(titleScreen);

 

This code is the first half of our constructor, called when the class is created.  First thing we do is calibrate the scene camera ( TitleScene inherited from Scene which has a camera property ) to set it’s dimensions to match the full viewport.  Next we load the texture title.png from the images folder.  By default, all folders and files added to a project will be under the /Application folder when you run.  Note, these files are all read only!  If you need write access, you need to put them in special folders, described elsewhere in the tutorials.  The false in Texture2D’s constructor is to indicate we do not want to generate a mipmap.  ( A mip map is a special multi resolution version of a texture, used for variable levels of detail, and is not applicable to this application ).

 

One we have loaded our texture, we pass it to the constructor TextureInfo.  Again, TextureInfo simply holds a texture and UV information to go with that texture.  We then use the TextureInfo in our constructor to SpriteUV, which is the actual graphic we are going to display on screen.  All of the graphics in our game are going to be SpriteUVs, and our title screen is no exception.  Now that we have created our title screen graphic, we set it’s size equal to the pixel size of the source image, set it’s pivot to it’s middle point, and it’s position to the center of the screen. 

 

Two important concepts here are the Pivot point and Positioning. The pivot is the location your sprite is going to be transformed relative to, by setting it to the middle of the sprite, this makes rotating a heck of a lot easier, but you now have to remember, when your objet is at say (0,0), only a quarter of it will be visible on screen.  So when checking boundaries, you will have to add half the width and/or height to the equation.  Pivot is represented as a pair of x,y coordinates going from 0 to 1.  (0,0) is the bottom left corner of the sprite, while (1,1) would be the top right.  Obviously then, (0.5,0.5) is the middle.

 

The positioning in GameEngine2D starts at the bottom left corner of the screen.  This is taken from Cocos2D, which GameEngine2D is modeled on, which in turn takes it from OpenGL.  If you are used to the origin being at the top left, this can take a bit of getting used to. Director.Instance.GL.Context allows you some access to the underlying OpenGL context, and will be used quite often throughout the application.  The Director singleton does take care of most of the gritty rendering details, so we wont have to get too low level.  Finally AddChild() adds the child to the scene for displaying and updating.

 

 

    Vector4 origColor = titleScreen.Color;      titleScreen.Color = new Vector4(0,0,0,0);      var tintAction = new TintTo(origColor,10.0f);      ActionManager.Instance.AddAction(tintAction,titleScreen);      tintAction.Run();                _titleSong = new Bgm("/Application/audio/titlesong.mp3");        if(_songPlayer != null)          _songPlayer.Dispose();      _songPlayer = _titleSong.CreatePlayer();                    Scheduler.Instance.ScheduleUpdateForTarget(this,0,false);                    // Clear any queued clicks so we dont immediately exit if coming in from the menu      Touch.GetData(0).Clear();      }

 

This is the second half of our constructor and most of it revolves around an easy special effect.  First we are caching a copy of the titleScreen’s current color value.  We then set the color to black and completely transparent ( color is made up of four numbers, the Red, Green, Blue as well as Alpha ( transparency ) values, ranging from 0 (none) to 255(full)).  Next we create an Action of type TintTo and over a period of 10 seconds, revert our color back to normal.  Finally we register our action using the ActionManager singleton’s AddAction() method, passing in the action to run, as well as the target node to perform the action on.  Think of actions as reusable “threads” of activity to perform various tasks on Nodes.  If you look at the class hierarchy of GameEngine2D, you will discover most of the class are inherited from Node and can thus have actions performed on them.  ( Scene and SpriteUV are both derived from Node ).  Now that our action is created and registered, we simply run it.  The end result of all of this is the title screen graphic will fade from black to full color over a period of 10 seconds.

 

Next up we load our title song from disk in the folder audioAgain, all folders by default are added under the Application folder and are read only.  Bgm files only support the mp3 format.  The only method of importance for a Bgm file is CreatePlayer() which creates a BgmPlayer instance.  A warning up front, the lifecycle of BgmPlayer is extremely odd, there is something going on behind the scenes with these classes that makes dealing with them extremely irritating, which is why you see a Dispose() call on a class that shouldn’t possibly exist.  Next we register our Scene class with the Scheduler singleton.  This singleton is responsible for calling Update each frame.  The end result is that our Update() method will get called each frame ( ideally 60 times a second ).  The second parameter ( 0 ) is used to set the priority that Scheduler should give your classes Update() calls, but it is currently ignored.  The final parameter to ScheduleUpdateForTarget is simply telling Scheduler if we want to start with our updating paused, which we don’t.  The last line is a bit of a hack, but a required one.  Later on, we will return to the TitleScreen from a different direction, and it is possible that if the user double tapped the screen that a tap is queued up to be processed, which would result in the title screen immediately going away.  This line simply clears out all outstanding touch events to prevent this possibility.

 

public override void OnEnter ()      {          _songPlayer.Loop = true;          _songPlayer.Play();       }      public override void OnExit ()      {          base.OnExit ();          _songPlayer.Stop();          _songPlayer.Dispose();          _songPlayer = null;      }

OnEnter() is called when your Scene is actually displayed.  It is called after the constructor and it is possible for your Scene to potentially be shown and hidden multiple times.  OnExit() is called when your scene is replaced.  We our scene is first displayed, we start our background music playing and we want it to loop.  On exit, we stop and dispose of the sound and _songPlayer.  Again, managing the memory on these classes is tricky, there is something odd behind the scenes.

 

public override void Update (float dt)  {      base.Update (dt);      var touches = Touch.GetData(0).ToArray();      if((touches.Length >0 && touches[0].Status == TouchStatus.Down) || Input2.GamePad0.Cross.Press)      {          Director.Instance.ReplaceScene(new MenuScene());      }  }

 

This is the method that the Scheduler will call every frame.  It is called before rendering occurs.  Dt represents the elapsed time, in seconds, since Update was last called.  All we are doing here is checking to see if any touches have occurred, or if the user pressed the Cross ( X ) gamepad button, in which case we replace the scene with our MenuScene, which we will create shortly.  Basically, update sits around waiting for the user to tap the screen or hit X, in which case it loads and displays the menu.

 

 

~TitleScene()      {          _texture.Dispose();          _ti.Dispose ();      }

 

Finally out destructor that, which simply disposes of the title screen Texture2D and TextureInfo objects.  We dispose of the BGMPlayer when the scene changes.  The Bgm file is apparently leaked, but really isn’t.  As I said, something odd is going on.  Play around with the lifecycle of BgmPlayer and Bgm and you will see what I mean!

 

 

 

The resources

 

Our game requires a number of media files, the following is a description of each.  You can use mine or create your own, I release all files ( I own ) to the public domain free of constraints.  You need to create a pair of folders in your project ( within PlayStation Mobile Studio ), audio and images.  For each file, be sure to add it the the appropriate sub folder, then right click it in the Solution panel, and set it’s build action to content!  This step is very important, or you may receive errors when you try to run your application.

 

In the end, your project should look like this:

 

image

 

Now the files.  In the final part of this tutorial, I will make the entire project available as a zip file, but you can grab individual resources below.

ball.png

ball

paddle.png

Paddle

 

title.png

title

 

winner.png

winner

 

loser.png

loser

 

 

In the next part we will create the menu scene, making use of the UI library.

 

Programming PSSDK PlayStation Mobile


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