http://gamua.com/sparrow The Open Source Game Engine for iOS en Fri, 02 Jan 2026 18:28:31 +0100 Fri, 02 Jan 2026 18:28:31 +0100 http://gamua.com/blog/2014/07/giveaway-sparrow-beginners-guide/ http://gamua.com/blog/2014/07/giveaway-sparrow-beginners-guide/ Tue, 22 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel While Starling was already granted the honor of being the topic of two books, it took a little longer for our first-born framework, Sparrow. But the wait is over: Packt Publishing recently launched a wonderful guide to Sparrow, written by the experienced Sparrow developer Johannes Stein! The book is called... http://gamua.com/blog/2014/07/sparrow-21/ http://gamua.com/blog/2014/07/sparrow-21/ Mon, 07 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel I’ll jump right to the most important message of this blog post: this Sparrow update is huge. In fact, I considered calling this “3.0” because it’s lightyears ahead of any previous Sparrow version! But one thing after the other. The last year hasn’t been easy on our little bird. Sparrow... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/09/games-round-up/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/09/games-round-up/ Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel During the last months, developers all over the world created stunning games with Starling and Sparrow. From one-man shows to huge companies; from garage game to Triple-A; from card game to action platformer - it seems that everything is possible with Starling & Sparrow, especially in combination with Flox, Feathers,... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/06/sparrow-20/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/06/sparrow-20/ Sat, 01 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel A few weeks ago, I presented to you the release candidate of an all-new version of Sparrow, containing lots of new features and a completely revised architecture. I’m really excited to tell you that the release candidate is now followed by the official release! During the last weeks, I gathered... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/05/a-bird-for-the-modern-web/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/05/a-bird-for-the-modern-web/ Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Starling has become extremely popular since its launch – much more so than we could ever imagine! It is regarded as one of the best solutions for cross platform game development. Deploying games to iOS, Android and the web has never been easier! We know, however, that the web is... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/04/gamua-at-the-adobe-max/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/04/gamua-at-the-adobe-max/ Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Adobe’s “Creativity Conference”, MAX, is just a few weeks ahead: it takes place from May 4th to 8th in Los Angeles. For the first time, Holger and myself will attend the conference. We’re very excited about this! I hope we’ll meet many users of Starling and Flox there, and maybe... http://gamua.com/blog/2013/04/sparrow-20-rc/ http://gamua.com/blog/2013/04/sparrow-20-rc/ Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel That I can finally write this blog post takes a huge load off my mind. Today is a very exciting day for Sparrow! After a long delay, I can finally give you the update so many of you have waited for. The iOS platform is constantly evolving; things like OpenGL... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/10/sparrow-14/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/10/sparrow-14/ Mon, 15 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel It has been several months since the last update to Sparrow. I’m sure that many loyal Sparrow users have noticed the lack of changes and are worrying that it doesn’t get the development time it needs to compete with other frameworks. Indeed, I must admit that I totally underestimated the... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/05/gapless-mp3-audio-on-ios/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/05/gapless-mp3-audio-on-ios/ Wed, 23 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Kostya Teterin, the developer who brought us Caribbean Treasures, joins us this time with an article about a cool audio library he has developed for his latest game. Gapless MP3 Audio As every game developer knows, background music is an important part of any game. You can use it to... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/04/users-corner-ghost-catcher/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/04/users-corner-ghost-catcher/ Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Paul Malolepsy It has been a while since our last post in the “Users’s Corner” series! This time, Paul Malolepsy did us the favor of describing his experiences with Sparrow in Alki Lab’s latest game. Who Are You? I am Paul Malolepsy, co-founder of Alki Labs. I’ve been playing and building video... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/the-big-sparrow-tutorial-for-beginners/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/the-big-sparrow-tutorial-for-beginners/ Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0200 Holger This tutorial is for everyone who wants to create a Sparrow game. It is a comprehensive introduction for beginners and sheds a light on best practices using the example of a small game. Read this 101 and you are up and running in no time! In this article we will... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/sparrows-new-scaffold-project/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/sparrows-new-scaffold-project/ Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel I already mentioned it in the release article: Sparrow 1.3 contains a powerful new Scaffold Project. Take this project as the starting point of your game, and many tasks suddenly become super-simple. To make sure everybody can work with that scaffold, I have now created a very extensive series of... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/how-to-deploy-ios-apps-to-the-iphone-via-the-command-line/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/how-to-deploy-ios-apps-to-the-iphone-via-the-command-line/ Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Holger In a productive development environment it’s usually a good idea to think about the automation of recurring processes like compiling, testing and deploying development code to test devices. For iOS apps this becomes a pain as soon as you develop outside Xcode: That’s why this article explains how to deploy... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/sparrow-1-3/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/sparrow-1-3/ Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel With all the buzz about Starling, our first-born bird has felt somewhat neglected during the last months. Actually, I think he was starting to get a little jealous of his new sister bird! I must say I agree with him: Sparrow’s last update was in the middle of last year,... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/powered-by-logos/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/03/powered-by-logos/ Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Holger Good news everyone, I just finished the official “Powered By” badges for the birds! They are available in the standard bright side colors and in a dark side fashion for those who like to paint it black. Click on a badge to follow the direct link to the image: Bright... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/new-website-launched/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/new-website-launched/ Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Holger Good news everyone: It’s done! The new website is online and it went live in almost perfect sync with the Adobe AIR 3.2 RC release. Is this a coincidence? ;-) Well … it’s not! Daniel and I have been working on the new website for several weeks now and had... http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/the-future-of-sparrow-and-starling/ http://gamua.com/blog/2012/02/the-future-of-sparrow-and-starling/ Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Wow, it’s been quite a while since I wrote the last blog post! I think it’s time that I give all of you an update of what has been going on and, more importantly, what will be happening in the coming weeks and months. Gamua The most important news first:... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/12/istencyl/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/12/istencyl/ Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0100 Holger Hi folks, today I have another announcement for you: Some of you will already know Stencyl and their no-code-instant-release game creation suite called Stencylworks. I am happy to inform you that they have a new product available that may very well be of interest to you: iStencyl. iStencyl makes you... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/11/lilbirds/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/11/lilbirds/ Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0100 Holger Hi folks, today we are very happy to brief you on something a bit aside from this blog’s default candy: We just got word from Villain that their newest game Lil’ Birds landed in the AppStore today. Lil’ Birds allows you to breed, pet, feed, collect and share birds to... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/09/say-hello-to-the-starling-framework/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/09/say-hello-to-the-starling-framework/ Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Hi folks, I’ve got some busy weeks behind me, working hard on Sparrow’s new sibling, the Starling Framework. I already hinted that a new project is in the works in the Cocos2D Podcast, and some forum members might have read some mysterious remarks on that topic, too. Well, I’m excited... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/09/kabaam-is-available/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/09/kabaam-is-available/ Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Holger Hi everyone, Daniel has already teased this in the recent podcast about Sparrow ;-) but now it is official: Our fun little project Kabaam has hit the App Store today. Naturally it’s a single malt Sparrow App seasoned with just a little bit of UIKit. As if that wasn’t enough... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/08/sparrow-framework-org-hacked-solved/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/08/sparrow-framework-org-hacked-solved/ Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Hi folks, some of you might have had an unpleasant surprise on their last visit of the Sparrow-Framework pages. They were welcomed not with a cute, innocent, little bird - but with this serious looking security guy: You can imagine how thrilled I was at his appearance! Well, the fact... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/08/sparrow-on-the-cocos2d-podcast/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/08/sparrow-on-the-cocos2d-podcast/ Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Yes, you’ve read the title correctly! April 1st is long gone, so this is no joke! :-) (I considered adding a few pink and red hearts between the two logos - but perhaps this would have been a little too cheesy *g*.) Mohammad Azam and Steffen Itterheim, the creators of... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/08/new-tutorials-textures-pvrtc-auto-rotation/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/08/new-tutorials-textures-pvrtc-auto-rotation/ Sat, 13 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel There are some topics that pop up regularly in the forum. Instead of answering them over and over again in the forum, I thought it would be a good idea to take the time to write extensive tutorials on those issues! The place for those tutorials is, of course, the... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/07/users-corner-caribbean-treasures/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/07/users-corner-caribbean-treasures/ Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel After Go Usagi!, I’m proud to present another post in the “user’s corner” series! Today, the Ukrainian developer Kostya Teterin writes about his experiences when developing the puzzle game “Caribbean Treasures” for the iPhone. Thanks for taking the time to write that article, Kostya! Who are you? My name is... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/07/sparrow-in-the-cocoa-magazine/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/07/sparrow-in-the-cocoa-magazine/ Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel I just found out that there is a new online magazine for Cocoa developers, and it released its very first issue just a few days ago: Cocoa Magazine. Cocoa Magazine is a monthly periodical dedicated to the iOS and Mac development community, available as PDF download. I just read through... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/06/find-it-2/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/06/find-it-2/ Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Holger We are very happy to inform you that Find it! 2 hit the AppStore today! Find it! 2 is our latest game and is a full-blown 100% single-malt Sparrow App that makes use of all the cool Sparrow features. It is built as an universal App and works on iPhones... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/06/finally-the-particle-system/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/06/finally-the-particle-system/ Sat, 04 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Hi folks, I know it has been a long time coming, but I finally took the time and created a particle system for Sparrow. W00t! This is a feature that has been requested since day one, but there were always more pressing things on my TODO-list, delaying this more and... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/05/escaping-the-egg-sparrow-1-2/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/05/escaping-the-egg-sparrow-1-2/ Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Summer is coming up in its natural habitat - thus, our little bird has prepared itself for its favorite season. It grew lots of shiny new feathers, brushed some dirt off its coat, and is launching into a high and joyful flight: in other words, Sparrow 1.2 is here! A... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/05/sparrow-at-hagenberg/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/05/sparrow-at-hagenberg/ Thu, 19 May 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Yesterday, Holger and me visited the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg (Austria), where we had the honor of introducing Sparrow to the students of the “Mobile Computing” Master’s degree program. For us, it felt a little like a trip back in time, as we both studied “Media Technology and... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/04/documentation-updated-for-xcode-4/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/04/documentation-updated-for-xcode-4/ Fri, 08 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel A few weeks ago, Apple released Xcode 4. It brought a lot of enhancements, like integrating the interface builder directly into the main application, cleaning up the interface and enhancing code completion. All in all, it’s a great update to the development environment, and I can recommend it to anyone... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/03/introducing-the-sparrow-wiki/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/03/introducing-the-sparrow-wiki/ Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Wow, it’s been a while since I wrote the last blog post. Sorry for the long silence! There was, of course, a reason for the delay: I was busy creating the brand new headquarters for the Sparrow community - The Sparrow Wiki! After many hours of hard work, the wiki... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/01/quickhelp-working-new-sparrow-powered-games/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/01/quickhelp-working-new-sparrow-powered-games/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Xcode QuickHelp I just wanted to inform you that the Xcode integration of the Sparrow API reference is now working properly. You just need to update the documentation from its public feed in Xcode. To do so, open up the Xcode preferences and enter the “Documentation”-tab. If you have not... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/01/sparrow-moves-to-github/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/01/sparrow-moves-to-github/ Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel To this date, you could get the Sparrow source code by accessing a subversion repository on our own server. Subversion is great, and I enjoyed working with it. (BTW, I recommend using a version control system to everyone, even if you are working alone. It’s just like having an “Unlimited... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/01/sparrow-1-1-hatched/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/01/sparrow-1-1-hatched/ Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel The new year is just a few days old, but it has already been extremely busy for our bold little bird. It harnessed the holidays to gather new feathers, no: features and exercised in the gym to stay lightweight and agile. And here it is, better than ever: Sparrow 1.1!... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/01/sparrow-in-the-mac-developer-magazine-012011/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/01/sparrow-in-the-mac-developer-magazine-012011/ Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel For all German readers: I had the honor of writing an article about game development on the iOS platform for the German Magazine “Mac Developer”. It contains an overview about what you have to consider when you want to create a game for the App Store, ranging from the gameplay... http://gamua.com/blog/2011/01/tutorial-sparrow-add-ons/ http://gamua.com/blog/2011/01/tutorial-sparrow-add-ons/ Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel The Sparrow user Shilo has created a great tutorial that shows you how to extend Sparrow. It currently contains the following topics: Sound Pitch Text Drop-shadow Quad Border Quad Fill Quad Scew Quad Gradient Set/Get FrameRate on Initialization Stage Color Show Framerate on Screen Find the tutorial itself here and... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/12/diverse-tips-tricks/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/12/diverse-tips-tricks/ Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel This post will show you several simple tricks about how to do certain things with Sparrow. I hope that it contains some interesting facts for anyone! Flipping an image Sometimes, you need to flip an image horizontally or vertically. Sparrow’s display objects do not contain a property that allow you... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-create-a-sparrow-project-from-scratch/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-create-a-sparrow-project-from-scratch/ Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Sometimes, you want to use Sparrow without having the option to use the app scaffold or the Xcode template. This can happen e.g. when you want to integrate Sparrow into an existing project. This is a topic that pops up regularly in the forum. That’s why I wrote this tutorial.... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/11/users-corner-go-usagi/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/11/users-corner-go-usagi/ Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel This blog post is from Daniele Zannotti, one of the creators of “Go Usagi!”, an innovative puzzle game for iOS. A few days ago, I asked him if he had time to write a few words about his experience with Sparrow and iOS in general. Thankfully, he agreed and wrote... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/11/new-sparrow-faq/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/11/new-sparrow-faq/ Sat, 06 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Hi folks, I just wanted to inform you that there’s a new information source about Sparrow available! We just added the Frequently Asked Questions section, available via the Help menu of this page. It’s an easy to browse list of information snippets, with many links to blog articles and forum... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/10/new-options-for-creating-a-texture-atlas/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/10/new-options-for-creating-a-texture-atlas/ Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Thankfully, with Sparrow becoming more widely recognized, third party tools begin to pop up! This time, I want to point you to 2 great pieces of software that can help you create your texture atlases. As you know, Sparrow has its own texture atlas generator. You find it in the... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/10/sparrow-1-0-released/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/10/sparrow-1-0-released/ Sun, 24 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel If you have been worrying because there was no new blog entry for more than 3 weeks - then worry no more: we’ve just been busy finishing the latest Sparrow version. You read the title correctly: in a step so bold that it took even ourselves by surprise, we stamped... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/10/tweens-jugglers-unleashed/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/10/tweens-jugglers-unleashed/ Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel You think you know all about Sparrow’s animation system after the last two parts of this series? But we have merely scratched the surface! Get ready for the last part of the series to find uses of the juggler you have probably never thought of! Tween events First, we’ll discuss... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/09/tweens-jugglers-an-in-depth-look-at-the-juggler/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/09/tweens-jugglers-an-in-depth-look-at-the-juggler/ Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel This time, I want you to show how the juggler works and how you can use this simple tool to be the master of your animations. This topic comes up quite often in the forum, so I thought a detailed explanation might help a lot of you. In reality, tweens... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/08/tweens-jugglers-animating-your-stage/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/08/tweens-jugglers-animating-your-stage/ Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Holger A little late, but hey! better than never ;-), we will have a look at the linchpin of Sparrow’s animating powers: Tweening. What’s a Tween, you ask? Let’s have a look at Wikipedia: It tells us that tweening is “the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/08/multitasking/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/08/multitasking/ Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel As you all know, one of the most important new features of iOS 4 is multitasking. I just found out that the scaffold and demo projects I provided with Sparrow 0.9 had problems with multitasking - and this might be similar in your existing Sparrow projects. Fortunately, the fix is... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/08/how-to-make-hd-games-with-sparrow/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/08/how-to-make-hd-games-with-sparrow/ Sat, 07 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Before the release of the iPhone 4, developers were in the comforting situation that all iPhones had the same screen resolution (unlike Android developers, which have to support many kinds of displays). Now, with the arrival of the iPhone 4, there are two screen resolutions that can be targeted: 480x320... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/08/sparrow-game-programming-tutorial/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/08/sparrow-game-programming-tutorial/ Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel ManiacDev.com has just posted a great tutorial that might be interesting for those of you who are just starting to develop their first game with Sparrow, or who want to get an introduction on game development with Sparrow. The extensive tutorial shows you how to create a simple action game... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/07/no-chicken-sparrow-0-9-is-out/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/07/no-chicken-sparrow-0-9-is-out/ Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Hello everybody! I am happy to announce that Sparrow 0.9 has just cracked its eggshell and found its way to the download section. Without further ado, I’ll describe the most important changes in the following sections. The detailed change list is, as always, part of the download package. Beware: Interface... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/07/twins/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/07/twins/ Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Holger In 2009 we decided to develop three iPhone games (namely Find it!, PenguFlip and Twins) with our Austria-based partner Funworld. During the development of our first iPhone game Find it! we saw that there was a need (at this time at least for us) to create a gaming framework that... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/06/sound-on-ios-best-practices/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/06/sound-on-ios-best-practices/ Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel The latest Sparrow version finally brought support for audio playback. We designed the classes in a way that you don’t have to care about the file format; no matter what kind of sound you play, you use the same code. However, because of the hardware limitations of the iPhone family,... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/06/xcode-templates/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/06/xcode-templates/ Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel It has already been announced in the forum, but I wanted to add that information here, too. Our friend Ronald from sodeso.nl has spared no efforts and has created great Xcode templates for project and file creation. The templates can be found here along with the explanation on how to... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/06/sparrow-0-8-has-landed/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/06/sparrow-0-8-has-landed/ Sat, 05 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Finally, the download to Sparrow v0.8 is available. Thanks for your patience, everybody! I will use this post to describe the most important changes since the last release. However, I also recommend that you have a look at the updated demo project (which is part of the download) to see... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/05/upcoming-sparrow-0-8/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/05/upcoming-sparrow-0-8/ Sun, 30 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel It’s been a while since the first official Sparrow version came out, and many of you are eagerly waiting for the next version. Heck, the features page says that audio support will be added in the next few weeks - since months! Guys, we are really sorry for the delay.... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/05/a-simple-movie-class/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/05/a-simple-movie-class/ Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Update:_ Since version 0.8, Sparrow contains a movie clip class, so you don’t need to create one yourself, as it is shown in this tutorial. However, reading this post is worthwhile nevertheless, because you can use this technique for your custom classes, too._ One thing that many Flash developers will... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/05/creating-a-game-menu/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/05/creating-a-game-menu/ Sun, 02 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel Since the release of Sparrow, we have received quite a lot of positive feedback - thanks a lot for that, guys! There are already a number of people working on games that are powered by Sparrow. If you are a little bit like me, you will put most of your... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/04/collision-detection/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/04/collision-detection/ Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Holger Collision detection is a substantial part of almost all games. Unfortunately it is also a part where lots of CPU cycles can get lost, resulting in choppy game-play and short battery life. In order to keep calculation costs down, it helps to exit collision detection code as soon as possible.... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/04/a-simple-way-to-let-xcode-stop-on-an-error/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/04/a-simple-way-to-let-xcode-stop-on-an-error/ Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0200 Daniel This post is not Sparrow-specific, but I thought this could come in handy for any Xcode developer. Developing an application is always more or less trial and error. You write some code. You test it. You write more code. You test it. This goes on for a long while. During... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/03/how-to-use-landscape-mode/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/03/how-to-use-landscape-mode/ Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel When you create a new game in Sparrow, it uses portrait mode by default. Theoretically, you could rotate the Cocoa view object that Sparrow renders into - but that’s not recommended, as it slows down rendering quite a bit. OpenGL contents should always be rendered in portrait mode on the... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/02/using-bitmap-fonts/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/02/using-bitmap-fonts/ Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Almost any game will have to display some text sooner or later. Sparrow makes it easy to do so: SPTextField *textField = [SPTextField textFieldWithWidth:300 height:100 text:@"This is some text."]; textField.fontName = @"Georgia-Bold"; textField.fontSize = 18; textField.hAlign = SPHAlignCenter; // horizontal alignment textField.vAlign = SPVAlignCenter; // vertical alignment There are quite... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/02/using-a-texture-atlas/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/02/using-a-texture-atlas/ Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel When using OpenGL on the iPhone (you do when you use Sparrow), you can speed up rendering quite a bit when you group your textures in one big texture atlas. The reasons: In OpenGL, there’s always one texture active at a given moment. Whenever you change the active texture, a... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/02/sparrow-forum-online/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/02/sparrow-forum-online/ Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Holger Hello everyone, my name is Holger and I am, amongst other things, responsible for the Sparrow website. In order to have a place where we can have discussions and answer your Sparrow questions, I would like to draw your attention to the new Sparrow Forum, which went online just a... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/just-added-an-introduction-to-sparrow/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/just-added-an-introduction-to-sparrow/ Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel I just wanted to inform you that we added a documentation section that teaches you all you need to know to get started with Sparrow. You will learn all about the most important features of Sparrow: Display Objects Events Displaying Text Animations Extending Sparrow Dive into it here. If any... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/another-game-framework-for-the-iphone-part-3/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/another-game-framework-for-the-iphone-part-3/ Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel As I wrote in the last post, we decided to write our next games in Objective C, with a framework that was designed with games in mind. This, of course, limited the choice of suitable game libraries. There are several C++ frameworks and even one that uses C# (Unity). I... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/another-game-framework-for-the-iphone-part-2/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/another-game-framework-for-the-iphone-part-2/ Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Last time, I described our first iPhone game, Find it!. As I said, that’s a game that was relatively straight forward to implement, as there’s not too much movement involved. For that reason, we created the game directly with Cocoa (and learned Cocoa by doing so). But some things are... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/another-game-framework-for-the-iphone-part-1/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/another-game-framework-for-the-iphone-part-1/ Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Hi folks! I’m Daniel, and I am responsible for most of the source code that makes up the Sparrow framework. Some of you might be interested in how the sparrow came to life, so I thought I drop a few words at this place. We started development of Sparrow quite... http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/sparrow-download-available/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/sparrow-download-available/ Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Hello again, as you probably already know: the Sparrow website went online yesterday. Today we added the Sparrow framework download in version 0.7. Give it a try! To the download! http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/the-sparrow-has-landed/ http://gamua.com/blog/2010/01/the-sparrow-has-landed/ Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 Daniel Good day everyone! the Sparrow has landed and is finally online. Hooray! PenguFlip, the first Sparrow App just made it back from Apple QA successfully and is ready to go to the AppStore. Sparrow is final and the website just went online. Please enjoy the new website!