The developers over at Google have announced PlayN release 1.3! Ok, I’m a bit late to the party, as they actually announced it two days ago, but hey… it was a holiday here in Canada, so I was allowed to be asleep at the wheel on this one!
So, what have we got to look forward to in the 1.3 release?
– The Java backend has been rewritten to use LWJGL instead of Java2D.
This makes the Java backend behave more like the other OpenGL
backends, and allows one to write and test code that uses the GL20
(direct-to-OpenGL) abstraction on the desktop, just as one does for
the 2D PlayN APIs.– HiDPI (aka Retina) support is implemented for the Java, iOS and
Android backends. Eventually we can probably make it work in the HTML
backend as well for games that wish to use HiDPI images for their web
incarnation. I will write an article explaining HiDPI support and how
to use it in the not wildly distant future.Note that the Java backend now requires LWJGL’s native libraries. The
new archetype contains the necessary changes to the POM to cause Maven
to automatically unpack and use the native libraries. I’ll also update
the samples with the same changes. Please make these same changes to
your project’s java/pom.xml when you upgrade to PlayN 1.3. Eclipse
users will probably need additional machinations, which can hopefully
be detailed by someone who has been using Eclipse with 1.3-SNAPSHOT
for the last month or so.
You can get the full details in the release notes.
To go along with PlayN’s 1.3 release, TriplePlay also has announced a 1.3 release. TriplePlay is, in their own words:
Triple Play is a collection of game-related utility classes that can be used with the PlayN library on all of its myriad platform targets.
Basically it adds a heap of great functionality on top of PlayN, likes GUIs, animation controllers, etc… The lead developer of TriplePlay, Michael Bayne, is probably the most unsung hero of the PlayN development, and is easily the most active developer outside of Google ( or perhaps, over all? ) and deserves kudos for his efforts.
TriplePlay 1.3 details are in the release notes.
To get up and running, follow these instructions. Note, you need to set the version to 1.3 instead of the values mentioned in the tutorial.
EDIT: Big warning however! The current build requires LWJGL native libraries or it will break. They are in the process of making this part less… broken, but for now it simply won’t work unless you handle this dependency manually.
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