Blog | Blurrr SDK

Android 64-bit & macOS Catalina release

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 21:02:50 -0700

It’s finally public. As described in the previous Status Update, a new maintanence release is out. Among the most important enhancements

• Android 64-bit support (arm64-v8a & x86_64)

• macOS 10.15 Catalina, iOS 13 & Xcode 11 support

• Native Xcode Archive support for submitting apps to the App Store or for macOS Notarization

There are also a lot of smaller fixes and changes under the hood to support these things. However, an aggressive attempt was made to NOT change too many things because for those wanting to add 64-bit Android builds, the better thing is to simply recompile and not worry about other things breaking. So the next release will look at updating more things. In addition, because this release was already long overdue, Raspberry Pi and Swift compilers are untouched this released and planned for the next.

So without further adieu, hit Purge, then Generate, and then build your project. Hopefully all will just work, just as before.

Android 64-bit

It should be easy to use, and is pretty much just a recompile and ship new version on your part. It contains 64-bit binaries for both arm64-v8a and x86_64. The latter is useful for Android Emulator testing, though as always, it is best testing on a real device. 32-bit armeabi-v7a and x86 are still included. (Contrary to my expectations, I learned the hard way that brand new 32-bit Android devices are still sold in major stores.)

Status Update

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 21:02:50 -0700

My apologies for the lack of public updates. The short story is that my father has late stage lung cancer. He was diagnosed over 6 years ago with stage 4 lung cancer. Despite that, he has beat the odds and out-lived the average life expectancy for his diagnosis. However, starting in back in December, he started having a lot more complications and required a lot more care assistance from me. His condition in the last two months has deterioriated rapidly, and he has landed in the ER twice. His current prognosis is grim, but not immediately imminent. He continues to surprise his doctors and nurses, so it is wait and see. But this is why things have been quiet on the public front.

Emotion
https://xkcd.com/1048/

But, there is some good news to share concerning Blurrr.

Android 64-bit (for Google Play Store)

I hope I’ve directly corresponded with all of you who are currently shipping apps on the Google Play Store. If not, please contact me directly. I have made a beta that has 64-bit Android support accessible to all those people that have reached out to me or that I knew about that have shipped apps on the Google Play Store. It should be easy to use, and is pretty much just a recompile and ship new version on your part. It contains 64-bit binaries for both arm64-v8a and x86_64. (The latter is useful for Android Emulator testing.)

Blurrr SDK Spring '18 Release

Mon, 14 May 2018 03:20:48 -0700

Good news! A new release of Blurrr SDK is out. This release addresses all the recent Android Studio and NDK changes. This release also introduces a whole bunch of new user friendly features. Grab it on the login/download page.

New Android Studio Generator & Auto-Configuration

First, and most importantly, the Blurrr SDK Android Studio project generator has been completely rewritten. Originally when Blurrr first got started, Google had just started the transition to Android Studio. Blurrr was among the earliest to adopt Android Studio, but this predated official support for the NDK and CMake. So Blurrr SDK had to reinvent all these things on the side.

Now that Android Studio officially supports the NDK and CMake, it was time to rewrite Blurrr’s generator to use the native built-in support. So this rewrite is now complete and things work better than ever.

One of the benefits of this, is that you can finally use the visual native debugger directly in Android Studio for your apps.

Android Studio toolbar: The debug button is the rightmost button

And as an additional bonus, BlurrrGenProj (and its command-line tool counterparts) can now automatically locate the locations of Android Studio, SDK, & NDK. So for most people, Android configuration is now completely automatic and you don’t have to deal with it.

Fall 2017 Update

Sat, 14 Oct 2017 16:44:06 -0700

I will be speaking at the 2017 Lua Workshop this coming week. I will be unveiling the work I have been doing furiously behind the scenes on IUP, the cross-platform native GUI library.

Now in addition to native games, you can start building traditional native applications too. For example, the BlurrrGenProj tool is now written with IUP. This has been a long time coming. The trySwift! Tokyo release shipped with an IUP version on all platforms except Mac. The Mac has now switched to IUP and is much faster and feels native. Blurrr now includes a “Sneak Preview” of the IUP library in progress. Please give it a try. I will post more about this soon.

This release also contains some new APIs and libraries. Most notably, a cross-platform In-App Purchase module, BLRInAppPurchase, is included with Blurrr. It supports the Mac and iOS App Stores as well as a bunch of Android stores. There is now a Documentation link at the top-right of this web site so you can more easily find the documentation to all the libraries Blurrr SDK ships with.

Update for Xcode 8.3 & Workshop Examples

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 23:50:11 -0700

A new version of the Apple SDK is available on the Downloads page. The latest Xcode 8.3.x release broke the project generation for Swift based projects. The new version of the Apple SDK fixes this. There are no other changes, so the non-Apple platform SDKs are not affected and you will not need to download new versions of those.

Also, the example code from the try! Swift Intro to Game Programming Workshop with SDL is available for download.

It covers: the event loop, event handling, audio (ALmixer), textures (SDL_gpu), and shaders (GLSL).

The idea behind the projects is there is a natural progression of code. There is a baseline project, and each lesson builds a little more from the prior. (They are numbered.) The projects with ‘b’ in the name are the completed solutions to each lesson. I was going to to have an ‘a’ which was supposed to be the starting point, but for various reasons, I don’t always have an ‘a’ and the immediate ‘b’ project preceding it in the category serves as the next project’s ‘a’.

Blurrr SDK beta is now open to all

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 02:51:11 -0700

In thanks and celebration of my Swift on Android talk at try! Swift Tokyo, Blurrr SDK is now in open beta. Follow this link to get access.

Learn more about the talk and watch it by following this link.

I also spoke about my friend, mentor, and former co-founder Carlos Icaza. As a tribute, I created this demo, “Dance of the Fairies”, which I showed at the end of my talk.

"Dance of the Fairies” (Shown at try! Swift: In memory of Carlos Icaza)

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 02:16:37 -0700

(cross-post from playcontrol.net)

What does a fairy dance look like when there are no clumsy, smelly humans around?

For Sierra fans everywhere: This is inspired from the Quest for Glory series. It is also in memory to my friend, mentor, and former co-founder, Carlos Icaza who passed away unexpectedly this summer.

Please make sure to watch it at 60fps. (Direct YouTube link here.)

Dance of the Fairies was first presented during Swift on Android at try! Swift Tokyo 2017.
v1.1

Credits:

Designed & Programmed by Eric Wing
playcontrol.net

Background Art by Judy Rosenwaig
www.behance.net/judyrosenwaig

Music: "Late Snows of Winter" by Jeffrey Roberts (jmr)
(remix of "The Magic Meadow" by Mark Seibert)
ocremix.org/remix/OCR02393

Made with Blurrr SDK
blurrrsdk.com

Backstory:

The origins of this “demo” (as in demoscene, for the lack of a better term) are the combination of loose ends I had from “Why We Loved Sierra Games”, and trying to find a way to honor and remember my friend Carlos Icaza. I have more to say about each below.

Swift on Android At try! Swift Tokyo

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 01:51:18 -0700

(cross-post from playcontrol.net)

I was invited to speak at the try! Swift Tokyo conference about Swift on Android. Since I’m something like only 1 of 4 people in the world who know anything about this, I eventually got asked.

The talk went extremely well. Even though it was by far the longest talk of the conference (slotted for 45 minutes instead of the usual 20), attendees told me it went by fast. It also provoked a lot of strong responses such as “unforgettable” and “intense”.

Swift on Android covers a lot of ground including:

The Android NDK
C++ issues
Dependency issues
The Android SDK & Java JNI
Build systems / CMake
Cross-platform app development & libraries
- SDL (games)
- Nuklear (non-native GUI)
- IUP (native GUI)
Blurrr SDK
Carlos Icaza tribute / Dance of the Fairies

I also used this opportunity to introduce Blurrr SDK, which is what I’ve been working on to make cross-platform Swift development a reality. And this is the reason why I know about this topic.

And I used this opportunity to remember my friend, mentor, and former co-founder, Carlos Icaza, who unexpectedly passed away this summer. He was known as @CodingInSwift with over 18,000 Twitter followers. So with over 700 Swift developers attending try! Swift and probably not aware of why his channel went silent, this was the moment I needed to do this. My speech ends with my Dance of the Fairies “demo” tribute, obviously made with Blurrr.

A Performance look at the new Android Emulator 2.0

Tue, 12 Apr 2016 13:26:22 -0700

Now for something a little different: There has been a lot of hype around how much faster the new Android Studio 2.0 Emulator for x86 is. I was interested in what this performance boost really means in the real world, so I decided to do some performance comparisons using a couple of Blurrr examples. And I thought I would share my results with everybody so I did some screen recordings (at 1080p 60 fps).

“Workflow” in Swift: The Android Addendum

Wed, 09 Mar 2016 00:37:05 -0800

Swift on Android wasn’t available at the time of the previous video, but now it is.

“Workflow” with Swift

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 10:49:38 -0800

A time-lapse workflow showing developing a cross-platform app in Swift using Blurrr SDK.

This starts in SteamOS, then goes to OS X, then iOS, and finally Raspberry Pi 2.

Also shows building a native (Pi) feature.

Swift support is still technically experimental (but it’s working as shown in the video).

Experimental: Swift on Raspberry Pi 2

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 23:08:58 -0800

Experimental: Swift on SteamOS Linux

Mon, 18 Jan 2016 23:06:07 -0800