We are looking to expand considerably in the near future and therefore we are now offering career opportunities. Our focus is on recruiting people who can demonstrate their understanding and their passion in creating games. This job will be a challenge and inspire you, whatever your level of experience in this industry is – so do not hesitate and send us your application.

Please e-mail us your professional and/or educational background and give us a reason, why you are the perfect fit for our team to create stunning high-quality games. Creativity and the ability to work in close collaboration are our key values.

We take you seriously and we will always consider your application no matter if your area of expertise is listed below:

Programmer: Generalist

There are so many different challenges in different areas when programming a game. So there will certainly be a perfect place for you if you are already familiar with:

• Object Orientated Programming: C++, C# or Objective-C
• Mobile Devices: iOS or Android

You also should have experience with

• OpenGL, DirectX
• a modern 3D graphics engine

We make heavy use of middle-ware such as Unity3D and UE3 in our projects. If you are familiar with this kind of work, that is definitely a plus.

Designer & Artist

When creating a game we focus strongly on maximum visual quality. Help us push mobile games to the next level. We are looking for generalists but also for specialists in the following areas of expertise:

• Interface Design – Highly interactive and dynamic
• Digital Paintings  – for concepts as well as final work

If you also have 3D and/or animation skills, this is absolutely a plus.

If you think you could be a great addition to the ANIMA team, please send your application to jobs@anima-entertainment.de. We are looking forward to receiving your application!

I have prepared three files for you in this package: Download.zip
This package contains three files:

• Entitlements.plist
• index.html
• ProgramName.plist

These files will be used later. The first step would be to create a proper project, which is able to hold configurations for your adhoc compilation. If your project does not have an “adhoc” configuration yet (default is “debug” and “release”), you should create an adhoc configuration first. You must have selected the project file and activate the info pannel before you can create a new configuration.

Now you can select Editor->Add Configuration->Duplicate(Release) to create a new configration with the same settings as release.

Enter a proper name like “AdHoc” for this new configuration

Its always recommendend to edit just the project settings if you dont want to have special settings for you targets. So try to enter all new configuration settings just in the project build settings. The first change ist that you need to include the Entitlement.plist file which just holds one key “GetTaskAllow=NO”. Nowerdays apple dont need this anymore – but to avoid errors I still would recommend to use it. Enter the Entitlements.plist in the adhoc line at code signing area. To get there open up the codesigning entitlements first:

Now you can add the entitlement file for the adhoc configration only

Now setup the code signing provision for this configuration

Since XCode4 there are schemes which you can select to change between diffrent compiler settings. So its recommendend to create a scheme for adhoc creation. Like the configuration settings you can start by duplicating a scheme.

To setup the scheme properly for adhoc compilation you should set at least the “archive” build to use “adhoc” settings. To avoid errors I would recommend to use just “ahdoc” settings for all these builds.

The final result should look something like that:

Before you can build your adhoc we have to copy the Entitlements.plist into the projects root path. To get it properly to the root path you have to copy it manually there and then add it to the project without copying it again:

and then add it to the project (dont copy again)

If not yet done you should enter a vaild bundle identifier for your adhoc provision file.

Now you can build the archive. First make sure the adhoc scheme is active with a real device (not simulator). Then select Product->Archive in Xcode and the archive process starts. Normaly archive should clean up the project first, but if you want to get sure you could clean up the project first.

The organizer should open after the archive process was completed ( if not – open it manually ).

Select share : and select “IPA file”. Now you have to sign it again with the same provisioning profile:

The ipa creating process sometimes could take a while if your project ressources are containing a lot of files. Just wait some minutes – but it shouldn’t take more time than half an hour. If done a window pops up forcing you to enter a filename.

Now the IPA file should be properly created – and here comes the magic. Rename the ProgramName.plist file from Download.zip so the name matches the one you entered for the ipa file:

change it to:

Now open up the index.html and TestApp1_Adhoc_R001.plist ( or what ever the name of your file looks like ) file in a proper text editor (I use Fraise which is a lightweight text editor with syntax highlighting):
Inside the PLIST file you have to rename “ProgramName” to the same name you entered for the ipa file. Its now about where you want to upload the IPA files. How ever the path should point to it.

And make sure to enter the correct bundle identifier

finally for the plist file – make sure to enter the correct app name.

Inside the INDEX.HTML you have to rename “ProgramName” to the same name you entered for the ipa file. Like in the PLIST file the URL in the link should point to the proper location – but this time it points to the plist file. Allthough the PLIST and IPA file can be placed on two diffrent locations it should be placed at the same location to avoid errors.

change it to:

You should enter some useful informations like a changelog for this adhoc and a date, so the user has more control in which adhoc he should download – and also if its a tester – which version number to enter for bug-tracking.

I hope this little arcticle was helpful. I am open for suggestions and feedback. Have a nice day!

But this will just export the repository. All not uncommitted changes will be lost. The other (in my opinion better) way is just to delete all SVN folders. If you are using a linux or mac system and you want to do so, you could just open up a terminal and type in:

Allways make a backup before you use this script

if you are unshure what this script does and if it will remove any sensitive data you could echo it before :

The good news is: EARTH DEFENDER will be back soon with new high resolution graphics using the full size of the Retina and iPad screens and new levels. So stay tuned…

The result is you can move your mousepointer over the whole screen even if you just have a 1cm x 1cm mousepad. But on the other hand, people like me who sometimes playing shooters and who wants to click on a button very quick, will loose the pointer out of view – and then seeking some seconds on which display the pointer actually landed.

So if you want to disable this feature you can open a terminal (console) and just type in:

Thanks to David Leinhäuser:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1

Therefore we worked together with CODA Entertainment – the writers of the German “You don’t know Jack” games –for Ravensburger Interactive to push your knowledge to the limit. While the ingenious minds of CODA took care of the concept and writing, ANIMA Entertainment created the visual design and programmed the game.

Ravensburger Spieleverlag GmbH is a German game company. It is a leader in the European puzzle market.

Check out the game here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/earth-defender/id381290013?mt=8

Pocketgamer says it all: “Slick, intense and completely at home on the iPhone, Earth Defender is one of the finest shooters of the year!”

Get it for free on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/app/earth-defender-free/id411631942?mt=8#

Also check the full Earth Defender with seven unique level bosses and six more levels, masses of different enemies, an epic end boss, more special weapons online high score and achievements.

Before start talking about alpha pixel issues we should take a look on PowerVR technology and find out why this GPU is often plugged in mobile devices (The iPhone4 GPU : PowerVR SGX535). PowerVR GPUs are very fast while there powerusage is very low. How freaky is that and why dont all GPUs work like PowerVRs ? Its all about reducing the overdraw. Right – what the hell is overdraw?

Overdraw

The common way a GPU renders one pixel would be to go step by step through all polygons and find the color of that pixel. Since the GPU yet dont really know which polygon is in front (and defining the color of the pixel) it has to calculate the pixel for each polygon to check the z-value (and maybe store it in a so called z-buffer)

possible overdraw when rendering three planes

This is called overdraw which simply means one pixels gets rendered more than one time. A z-buffer doesn’t really optimize overdraw since the pixel has to be calculated first to see if the z-Value is less or greater than the one in the z-buffer. PC or console GPUs are getting rid of that lack by increasing the frequency. But increasing the frequency will also use a lot of power and furthermore the GPU will get hot. No problem for consoles and PCs, since you could just increase the power supply and add some fancy ventilators. On mobile devices you are lost that way.
PowerVR GPUs use another technology to reduce the overdraw which indeed needs some crazy setup before rendering, but the advantages prevail.

PowerVR tile based rendering

Well first, if you found it freaky that the PowerVR is fast and runs on low power, what about that: The GPU renders in tiles instead of scanlines (pixel by pixel from the upper left to the lower right). Each tile is very small (about some pixels in width and height). But before these tiles get rendered the GPU stores all polygons from the complete scene in a buffer. Then it will check out which polygon touches which tile. After that it will sort each polygon for each tile, so the tile knows which polygon is in front and which is in back. Now the time has come to render the tile. This technology was once implemented to make z-sorting without a zbuffer – so the zbuffer will not be used to render the polygons. And even more we reduced the overdraw. Each pixel will get rendered only once. This reduces the bandwidth so much, that even on lower power the GPU will be able to render fast enougth.

The alpha pixel

Now we return to the beginning – what was it about? Ah, yeah.. I remember, it was about alpha issues on iPhones. The problem is that if we use alpha pixels the GPU will lose the benefit of the tilebased rendering. If you render alpha pixels all visible polygons have to be rendered. So the GPU cannot reduce overdraw on alpha pixels, since that is what you want – with alpha pixels you want overdraw. Once the GPU has lost the biggest advantage you will feel the limited bandwidth due to the low power consumption.

Resumé

In other words the GPU is not bad in alpha blending or calculatong alpha pixels or something. I would say the GPU is not better or worse in these points than other ones. But since the GPU runs on very low power and frequency the bandwidth is very small. In most situations you will not feel that because the GPU has an intelligent method to reduce the needed bandwidth by avoiding overdraw (this actually reduces the fillrate). Unfortunately if you use alpha pixels this benefit disapears and the fillrate is the chokepoint you have. So if your openGL rendering uses a lot of bandwidth it will end in low frame rates. You can reduce the bandwidth by avoiding alpha pixels. Keep always in mind that not the calculation it self is the problem but the amount of pixels beeing processed.

Following icon resolutions are required to support all yet known icon sizes ( november 2010 ). I think, when the new iPad is comming in april 2011 we will experience new resolutions, too.

To make these files to be used automatically you have to change your info.plist file in your application. Add a dictionary key called “CFBundleIconFiles” (although there is a key called CFBundleIconFile withouth the missing “s” at the end) and add the six icon file names to it.

To support retina splash screen you should add this one to your ressources:

• Default.png (320×480) = Default
• Default@2x.png (640×960) = iPhone 4

If you want to support diffrent layouts for your splash screen you should add these files to your ressources :

Hints:
The generic Landscape/Portrait will take effect when no specific was found.
Apple recomments for iPads not to use Default~ipad.png for usability issues. I think its because the iPad does not really have a native down axis like iPhones. So a user doesn’t care if the iPad is upside down and expects the application to fit the current orientation.