If we were in a chess match, UAT would be our Queen…
…Because it allows publishing on all devices on the market. The core of the ShiVa 3D workflow is the Unified Authoriting Tool, ShiVa Editor generates the ressources that UAT gathers to build valid 3d real time applications for :
- Windows, Mac, Linux applications
- Web Browsers
- iPhone / iPad
- Androïd
- HP WebOS
- Nokia Symbian
- Marmalade
- BlackBerry
UAT give you access to all profitable market place and all entertainment devices. The engine is developed in the best way for every platform, it means that we use the best algorithm and the most optimization approach for every hardware, every OS on every API/SDK. This is why we are the most cross platform engine.
We don’t say it enough : UAT is free, no additional fees apply at any stages, you pay only for the editor, not for publishing.
UAT move to 1.2
We already made a lot of work for iOS publishing since the release 3 years ago of our first “technical” demo. On 1.2 we mainly focused on the ShiVa Engine optimizations and Android publishing.
Download
If you are :
- A ShiVa user : you can directly download UAT 1.2
- Not yet a ShiVa user : download ShiVa 3D Suite, it’s free and contains ShiVa Editor + UAT 1.2.
Release notes : Unified Authoring Tool 1.2
ShiVa Engine
Dynamic PCF Shadows on iPhone / Andoid
- New S3DClient_FlushEvents C++ Client SDK function
- Open GL ES 2.0 shaders optimizations.
- Open GL ES 2.0 dynamic shadows now support PCF (though not recommended on current gen devices)
- Ocean is now updated in a separate thread/core
- Sounds are now loaded asynchronously
- Optimized animation engine
- Faster soft shadows rendering
- Better particles systems sorting
- Lot of scene graph management optimizations
- Better keyboard events management, avoiding to miss some events on low frame rates
- New system for native AI registering (all targets, including webOS)
- Scene.setPaused now backups pending object events on pause, and restore them on resume.
- scene.getFirstHitXXX functions now forces direction vector normalization, avoiding weird results when passing non-unit length vector. Please review your applications, ensuring that you did pass normalized vectors as expected, else just multiply the distance limit by the length of the direction vector.
New Features & Improvements for Android (How to build for Android target with the ShiVa Authoring Tool ?)
- Tags added in the generated files, so it will be easy to create post-generation patching tools (in order to add features such as AdMob or OpenFeint support).
- OpenSSL is now supported
- OpenAL backend properly suspended while the app is in paused.
- Handling of Xperia Play device keys
- Force the Android application life-cycle to be respected
- Modified the startup sequence reducing the ‘black screen’ between splash screen and first engine fame (if game startup is lightweight)
- When the user presses the home button, the application is just paused (you will receive an onApplicationWillPause event), and properly resumed when the application becomes active again (you will receive a onApplicationHasResumed event). The EGL context is automatically restored by the engine.
- Display the splash screen on application resume (while resources are being restored)
- Faster application startup
- Audio Backend :
- Music playback is now supported making it possible to have low-latency sounds using an Android SoundPool, and a background music using an Android MediaPlayer.
- The “Default” and “Android” backends have been merged.
- Improved and fixed lot of things in the ‘Default’ audio back-end
- Consistent handling of accelerometer axises across all devices types
- Compiling for both armeabi and armeabi-v7a
- Drivers workarounds to :
- Make dynamic shadows look good on SGX hardware
- Fix some RenderMap problems on Tegra 2 and some OMAP 3 chipsets
Features & Improvements for iOS (How to build for iPhone ? How to build for iPad ? )
- It is now possible to deactivate engine audio sub system (using S3DClient_SetAudioDisabled)
- iOS minimum target is now set to 3.0, as required by Apple
- Improved Mac AppStore compatibility (automatic user working directory management and option to create a x86 only binary)
- Exposed MSAA support in the UI for iPad
Misc
- Rendering performance improvement on Nokia N8 (Symbian)
- armv7 support on webOS (for Pre and TouchPad, not for Pixi)
Bugfix
For the full bugfix list, you can read this post on the forum.
Unified Authoriting Tool 1.3 beta program
The next version is on the rails, and if you are a licensed user you can join the beta program.
Great!!
Waiting in the hope the next blog post will be “Shiva 2.0 Available”
It would mean no post until early 2012
We have things to say before !
I was kidding (but i’m sure a lot of developers are waiting the 2.0 release to buy Shiva):D , the blog is a must have…what stonetrip lacked (so far, i hope no more) was communication
Keep the good work
I know I am for 2.0 to come out and see what it’s made off. for now I keep my Unity3D license close, since it was quite expensive.
Hi CoCoKool,
Yes, Unity3D is quite expensive, we should provide a comparison chart
!
1.9.1 will be release in the next few days and each new ShiVa licence will include a 2.0 upgrade…And it’s Christmas promotion soon…
New post about that before the end of this week !
Week is ending
Is there any plan to release new post ?
Keep going fellas! This is a damn good bit of kit.
[...] ShiVa you don’t pay by device, you pay once and then profit from all the UAT upgrades (see : UAT 1.2 is available). For example we will release the next UAT version (1.3) just after ShiVa Editor 1.9.1, so you [...]