Marmalade - Bittersweet experience

Reflections on experience of two years of development with Marmalade SDK.

Transcript

1. Marmalade Bittersweet experience
2. Max Klyga @neku42 max.klyga@gmail.com
4. Mad Hat Games •  We develop mobile free2play games
5. Mad Hat Games •  We develop mobile free2play games •  Programmers have strong C++ background
6. Mad Hat Games •  We develop mobile free2play games •  Programmers have strong C++ background •  Artists have strong Flash background
7. Asset Pipeline •  Everything is done in Adobe Flash
8. Asset Pipeline •  Everything is done in Adobe Flash •  Flash files are used as bundles
9. Asset Pipeline •  Everything is done in Adobe Flash •  Flash files are used as bundles •  Images are extracted from flash, packed into atlases and compressed
10. Engine
11. Engine Framework
12. Engine Framework •  Written in C++
14. Engine Framework •  Written in C++ •  Built on top of Marmalade SDK
16. Write once Debug everywhere
17. Sweet •  Develop on Windows (Visual Studio) or Mac (XCode)
18. Sweet •  Develop on Windows (Visual Studio) or Mac (XCode) •  One click deploy to iOS, Android, BADA, Blackberry, Simbian, Win Phone 8, LG TV, Desktop (Mac, Windows)
19. Sweet •  Develop on Windows (Visual Studio) or Mac (XCode) •  One click deploy to iOS, Android, BADA, Blackberry, Simbian, Win Phone 8, LG TV, Desktop (Mac, Windows) •  Simulator (!)
20. Bitter TOO MANY THINGS TO FIT ONE SLIDE
21. Bitter TOO MANY THINGS TO FIT ONE SLIDE
22. Bitter Build system doesn’t play well with JDK 7 (Android SDK issue)
23. Bitter Build system doesn’t play well with JDK 7 (Android SDK issue) Can be sort of fixed though decompiling build system and manual patching
24. Bitter Bundles OLD stlport No Visual Studio debug visualizers support
25. Bitter Multithreading problems: Memory can be freed only from thread it was allocated in. Enjoy!
26. Bitter Network problems: One failed request can hang your application
27. Bitter Network problems: One failed request can hang your application Workaround: Have no more then one request at a time
28. Bitter Network problems: One failed request can hang your application Workaround: Turn off some optimisations for Marmalade internal multitasking features
29. Bitter Extensions problems: (missing features, bugs)
30. Bitter Dependencies: You need IwUtil for tracing and it depends on a whole lot of stuff (libjpg, libpng, zlib, etc.)
31. Bitter Sometimes updates randomly break stuff: •  Problems with ATI cards on Simulator •  Appending ‘\n’ to HTTP request body •  Regressions •  etc.
32. Bitter Virtually no support Bugs can be ignored for months
33. Bitter •  Video playback problems •  Native UI and Input problems •  Things I don’t remember
34. Sour Memory management: Marmalade allocates one continuous chunk of memory from system. Replaces malloc/new. Have to write your own memory allocator on top of one provided by marmalade.
36. Sour No debugging on device Logging is your friend
37. Conclusion Was it worth it?
38. Conclusion Be ready to reimplement stuff (we reimplemented facebook, music, sound and filesystem extensions, heavily modified others)
39. Max Klyga @neku42 max.klyga@gmail.com QUESTIONS?