This blog post will walk you through the Add-on from start-to-finish.

Get your BlackBerry Signing Keys

Before you begin you need to register for BlackBerry Signing Keys, which lets you develop your Unity games and publish to BlackBerry World. After signing up, you should receive 2 .csj files that will be used to generate the Signing Keys. If you already have your Signing Keys setup, move on to the next section.

Setup your Signing Keys

Once you have the Unity Beta SDK installed, make sure you register your computer for BlackBerry development. This can be done through Unity’s Build Settings at File->Build Settings. You will find the BlackBerry option among other platforms.

Note: if BlackBerry is not among other platforms, it is probably because you do not have a Pro license or it is not unlocked for the BlackBerry 10 Add-on. You can find more information on activating your Trial Pro license in the Unity Beta forums.

1. Register

   Clicking on the “Player Settings” will open up the BlackBerry Platform settings tab.

   Note: If you already have setup the BlackBerry Signing Keys with other BlackBerry Developer tools, the BlackBerry Add-on should detect and show you as Registered.

   

If you have not already registered your computer, click the Register Button and that will pop-up a screen where you can specify the appropriate .csj files that you received in your email. The CSJ Pin corresponds to the pin that you entered when filling out the Signing Key form. The CSK Password that you enter will be your actual Signing Key password that you should make sure to remember.



2. Backup and Restore

   Once you have registered, make sure to backup the generated Signing Keys. It is very important that you backup the Signing Keys as this will allow you to develop, publish, and upgrade your game from different computers. Once backed up, you can simply use the Restore button to register a different computer for development.

   Keeping your Signing Keys safe and remembering your password saves you a lot of potential hassle!

3. Unregister

   The Unregister button removes any Signing Key information from your computer. It is highly recommended to backup your keys in order to be able to publish or upgrade your games in the future. Unregistering your Signing Keys without a backup will make it impossible to retrieve them.

Debug Tokens

To securely develop, debug, and test your Unity Games, you’ll need DebugTokens.

If you already have a BlackBerry 10 Development environment setup, you can simply import your existing debug token from the following default folders:

• Windows XP: %HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Application Data\Research In Motion
• Windows Vista and Windows 7: %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Research In Motion
• Mac OS: ~/Library/Research In Motion
• UNIX or Linux: ~/.rim

To create a new debug token, click Create and the following window will pop-up to let you specify where to create a DebugToken and for which device based on the device PIN. The PIN of a BlackBerry 10 device can be accessed from the Settings screen in your device.

Before uploading the Debug Token, make sure that:

1. The device is in the development mode.
   It can be done at Settings Screen-> Security and Privacy -> Development Mode
2. Device IP Address and device password are entered

If you have a USB cable then enter the Development IP Address starting 169.254.x.x in the Device Address text box. If you prefer deploying wirelessly, make sure your device is connected to the same Wi-Fi network and enter the Network IP address that can be found under Settings Screen -> About -> Network ->IP. In both cases, development mode has to be turned on.

To verify that the Debug Token was successfully uploaded, check the development mode screen for the Debug Token details.

For security reasons, the generated Debug Tokens are only valid for a month. For example, if you have a debug version of a Unity game installed on your BlackBerry with an expired token, the game will not launch unless it is renewed. You can renew any existing or expired Debug Tokens within the settings. You may also edit a Debug Token to add or remove BlackBerry Device PINs for development.

Build and Deploy

Assuming you were able to import your game and upload the debug token, here’s how to enable optimizations and deploy to a BlackBerry 10 Device.

1. Texture Compression

   Depending on the Device’s GPU, you can compress your textures to a GPU-specific texture compression format to improve performance, loading time, and of course, reduce the texture memory size. The following options are available in the Build settings:



• PVRTC – To optimize your existing textures to Power VR GPU.
  Note: among the current Z10 and Q10 Devices lineup, Model Name STL100-1 indicates a PowerVR SGX544 GPU.
• ATC – To optimize your existing textures to Adreno GPU, which is present in majority of BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 devices.
• ETC1 or RGBA16 – To optimize your textures to the standard texture compression format included with OpenGL ES 2.0 extensions. Note: ETC1 is used to compress only opaque textures.
2. Build Type

   If your project is in development phase, use the Local Build Type with the development option turned on. This enables the Unity Script Debugging and Profiling feature. If you wish to test your game in release mode or submit it to BlackBerry World, choose the Signed Build Type.

   Note: To deploy a Signed Build, you do not need a Debug Token to be uploaded to a device. This allows you to distribute you game for Beta testing without having to distribute a Debug Token.

   

   Before submitting your game to BlackBerry World, explore the options under the BlackBerry platform settings to choose your game’s Resolution and Presentation options, Icon, Splash Screen, rendering optimizations etc.

   Now that you are up and running, lets see those amazing titles on BlackBerry World!

   And of course, for any questions, comments, concerns, or kudos feel free to reach out to me directly at rmadhavan@blackberry.com or connect directly on Twitter at @rmadhavan7.

The first step is to register at http://www.madewithmarmalade.com/blackberry. Then create your BlackBerry 10 application using the Marmalade SDK and submit it within 30 days in “Draft” to BlackBerry World. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be 100% ready for this first step!

The first 300 qualifying vendors will receive a free BlackBerry Dev Alpha testing device on loan. Once apps are completed, submitted for final review, and approved, you’ll receive your free Marmalade Indie License (value of $499 USD) and you’ll get to keep your testing device to create more apps!

Our Marmalade License offer last year was extremely popular with over 1,000 apps created! Be sure to register quickly to secure your free Marmalade Indie License and be one of the first 300 to get a free BlackBerry Dev Alpha device.

If you already received a BlackBerry Dev Alpha device, you won’t qualify for an additional one. However, you are still eligible for the free license. Previous recipients of a free Marmalade License through a BlackBerry offer are not eligible to enter this promotion

For those that don’t know about Marmalade, it’s a powerful cross-platform SDK for the creation of richer apps and games on BlackBerry, iOS, Android and other platforms.

Marmalade makes it easier than ever to create BlackBerry 10 apps. Why not try developing your app with the new Marmalade RAD tool, which you’ll get for free when you sign up? Marmalade Quick is a fast, flexible and open RAD programming environment for the creation of 2D games and apps. It’s based upon best-in-class open source components including Cocos2d-x/Box2D, and the entire engine is made available in source code.

www.madewithmarmalade.com/BlackBerry

With the upcoming release of BlackBerry Q10, there’s never been a better time to bring over your BlackBerry Z10 game and start monetizing on the new form factor. In this post, I will be talking about various porting considerations and best practices to help you get started and ensure that your game runs the best on Q10.

Let’s start off with the hardware differences:

The BlackBerry Q10 uses the same chipset and GPU as BlackBerry Z10 variant B with Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 and Adreno 225. The main differences that you need to consider are aspect ratio, screen size, orientation and physical keyboard.

Aspect Ratio

If you have designed your game around the 16:9 or 15:9 aspect ratio, you will need to evaluate how to layout your game content to adapt to the 1:1 aspect ratio. There are various approaches you can take to accomplish this. You might be tempted to take the easy approach of simply scaling your game screen to 1:1 aspect ratio by using letter boxing. This approach is not recommend as it could negatively impact user experience of your game.  Since The BlackBerry Q10 has a smaller screen compared to the BlackBerry Z10, you will significantly reduce the game interaction area and waste precious screen space that could otherwise be utilized for game content such as HUD or controls. For a landscape game, one approach you could take to solve this is to use a comprise aspect ratio such as 16:11.  For the BlackBerry Z10, display more content on the sides and for the BlackBerry Q10 display more content at the top and bottom.

Similarly for a portrait game (9:15 or 9:16), you can display more content at top and bottom on the BlackBerry Z10 and more content at the sides on the BlackBerry Q10. In the below example, Bejeweled 2 displays the time progress bar at the bottom on the BlackBerry Z10 and on the side on the BlackBerry Q10.

If you are using any aspect ratio specific static assets such as backgrounds, images and splash screen, they will need to be scaled accordingly. For the standard splash screen, the BlackBerry Native SDK allows you to manage multiple device specific splash screens in the same bar-descriptor. For the BlackBerry Q10 you can add a 720×720 splash screen by editing the bar-descriptor using the IDE or a text editor. Here’s an example:

<splashScreens>
        <image>splash_1280_768.png</image>
        <image>splash_720_720.png</image>
</splashScreens>
      <asset path="assets">assets</asset>
      <asset path="icon.png">icon.png</asset>
      <asset path="/Users/pratiksapra/assets/splash_1280_768.png">splash_1280_768.png</asset>
      <asset path="/Users/pratiksapra/assets/splash_720_720.png">splash_720_720.png</asset>

Once you do this, correct splash screen will be automatically chosen depending on the device your game is launched on.

Next, if your game uses overlay controls such as virtual joysticks, UI elements and menus, you will need to reposition them as needed. The best approach is to lay them out relative to screen width and height thus making them aspect ratio independent. Below is an example of a flexible UI layout used in Bard’s Tale that works on both aspect ratios.

Screen Size

The BlackBerry Q10 features a 3.1” screen surrounded by a gesture sensitive bezel. If your game uses on-screen controls, it’s important to place them away from the bottom edge of the screen to prevent accidental swipes. An accidental swipe-up gesture during game play will thumbnail your game and cause unnecessary interruption for the user.

Optimizing your game controls is also really important. For example, If your game uses dual virtual joystick control scheme, I would recommend reducing this to just one on-screen joystick.  Due to smaller screen size, the user might end up covering most of the screen when controlling both joysticks using two fingers. We will talk about a solution to this in the later part of this post.

Orientation

The BlackBerry Z10 supports portrait as the default orientation. If you are setting the orientation in the bar-descriptor for your game, you might be wondering whether this would work on the BlackBerry Q10 without the overhead of creating a separate binary with a different bar-descriptor. To make your life easy, we have made sure that both portrait and landscape orientation settings map to portrait orientation on the BlackBerry Q10. The below example shows how your game would be oriented on the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry Q10 based on the bar-descriptor orientation setting.

Input

The BlackBerry Q10 features a physical keyboard so your game needs to be aware of this. If your game contains any buttons to activate the virtual keyboard, you should make sure they are removed or disabled when the game is running on the BlackBerry Q10. Unlike the virtual keyboard, the physical keyboard is always there and can be utilized as an input mechanism.    You can combine keyboard input with touch screen to offer an intuitive and robust input scheme for your game. For example if you want to optimize the dual virtual joystick input mechanism for the BlackBerry Q10, you can substitute one of the joysticks with keyboard input. Or if your game only requires gamepad style input you can use the keyboard as a gamepad.

Integrating keyboard input in your game is super easy. To accomplish this, in your main event loop simply handle the SCREEN_EVENT_KEYBOARD event and check for the keydown value. Here’s a code snippet on how to do this:

if (screen_get_domain() == domain) {

        screen_event_t screen_event = screen_event_get_event(event);

        int screen_val;
        screen_get_event_property_iv(screen_event, SCREEN_PROPERTY_TYPE, &screen_val);

        switch (screen_val) {
        case SCREEN_EVENT_MTOUCH_TOUCH:
//handle touch events

        case SCREEN_EVENT_KEYBOARD:
            screen_get_event_property_iv(screen_event, SCREEN_PROPERTY_KEY_FLAGS, &screen_val);

            if (screen_val & KEY_DOWN) {
                screen_get_event_property_iv(screen_event, SCREEN_PROPERTY_KEY_SYM,&screen_val);

                fprintf(stderr, "The '%c' key was pressed\n", (char)screen_val);

                switch (screen_val) {
                case KEYCODE_W:
                    // Handle Up
                    break;
                case KEYCODE_A:
                    // Handle Left
                    break;
                case KEYCODE_Z:
                    // Handle Down
                    break;
                case KEYCODE_D:
                    // Handle Right 
                    break;
                case KEYCODE_L:
                    //Button A
                    break;
                case KEYCODE_P:
                    //Button B
                    break;
                case KEYCODE_K: 
                    //Button X
                    break;
                case KEYCODE_O:
                    // Button Y
                    break;
                default:
                    break;
                }
            }
            break;
        }

Tools & Deployment

To get started, you will need the latest BlackBerry Native SDK 10.1, which includes BlackBerry Q10 support. If you are running an older version please upgrade by visiting http://developer.blackberry.com/native.

To deploy your game on BlackBerry World, follow the regular process for creating a new release in the Vendor Portal. In the supported devices screen, make sure you select BlackBerry Q10.

Known Issues

There are two known issues with earlier versions of 10.1 device software that you need to be aware of.

• Audio – In-game audio playback results in complete loss of device audio and a reboot is required to restore audio.
• Orientation – If the orientation is set to landscape in the bar-descriptor, the app splash screen and system dialogs such as volume are incorrectly oriented.

Both of these issues have been fixed in the latest 10.1 device software posted at the below link so if you are running an older build please upgrade.

https://developer.blackberry.com/blackberry10devalpha/devalpha_update.html

I hope you found the information included in this post useful.  If you have any questions or feedback please leave a comment below or reach out to me directly on Twitter @pratiksapra.

Looking for a *simple* #html5 PLATFORMER engine (mario, sonic, metroidvania)? GUI, particles, 60fps, sfx+ mcfunkypants.com/ludus/ #LD48 #1gam

— Christer Kaitila (@McFunkypants) April 23, 2013

A few days ago, Christer Kaitila (better known as @McFunkypants to some) dropped news regarding the HTML5 based platformer engine called Ludus. Initially, I was a little disheartened as it appeared the engine was targeted solely towards the Windows 8 platform, a peculiar thing for an engine that leverages cross platform technology. I was delighted to find this was not actually the case and that Ludus is in fact crafted in the true open spirit of the web.

Armed with this knowledge, I wanted to get a sense of how the engine performed on BlackBerry 10, and proceeded to build both of the sample applications, Rubba Rabbit and Gwendolynn, with our BlackBerry 10 WebWorks SDK.

Rubba Rabbit running on a BlackBerry Z10. Not Pictured: The funkiest of sound tracks.

As the engine revolves around HTML5 technologies, the sample projects were already 90% of the way to being BlackBerry 10 applications. One missing component was the config.xml file which is leveraged during packaging to specify various components (application name, author, icon images, etc.) To simplify the process, I leveraged the BlackBerry WebWorks config.xml generator by Nuno Donato (@nunodonato). I was even able to set an appropriate icon and splash screen thanks to the image resources included with each project.

In fact, that’s another thing that’s pretty awesome about Ludus. If you visit the Woot Studio landing page, you’ll get a lot of good information, a behind the scenes look at the two samples, and something many game developers treasure: Free Game Art. Currently there are three themes (Outer Space, Steam Punk, and Zombie) ranging across a number of categories (characters, weapons, effects, etc.)

Gwendolynn running on a BlackBerry Z10; satisfying my passion for looting and jumping.

With my config.xml files in hand and making no changes to the actual sample project files, the next step was to leverage the Ripple tools in packaging the HTML5 resources into a BlackBerry 10 application. Once packaged, I had a signed BlackBerry 10 application (BAR file) that I then deployed to both a BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10.

Overall the process took maybe ten minutes download-to-deployment. For developers that don’t have a BlackBerry 10 WebWorks environment set up, there are a few things you will need for an initial setup:

1)      Download and install the BlackBerry 10 WebWorks SDK.

2)      Request and install BlackBerry 10 Code Signing keys.

3)      Leverage the command line or Ripple to package your HTML5 project.

Following this, creating BlackBerry 10 applications from your existing (or new) HTML5 projects down the line will take no time at all.

Some Things That Made Me Smile

One of the things that I was really happy to see was that I was able to deploy the same packaged application (BAR file) to both the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 without modification. The game resources scaled well and both applications were playable on both devices.

In fact, on the BlackBerry Q10, I was very pleased to see that the WASD and space bar controls worked right out of the box! This left me with both touch screen and keyboard control options on the BlackBerry Q10 where screen real estate is more limited than the full touch BlackBerry Z10.

Aside from a few hiccups, performance was great, averaging approximately 55 frames per second. The fact that I didn’t need to change any code for my initial deployment was just icing on the cake.

Some Things to Look Out For

On a whole I’m very pleased with my initial look at the Ludus engine, but there were a few things that came up that developers may want to keep in mind. The first thing I noticed was that pinch to zoom was permitted, meaning if I was interacting with the touch screen, two controls at a time, occasionally the screen would rescale instead of processing my touch events. Luckily, we’re able to set the <meta> viewport element to disable user-scaling and there is a Knowledge Base article on how to accomplish this for BlackBerry 10.

Related to the above, there were a few instances where the screen resized which forced the application into a paused state. This appeared related to how the screen coordinates were being interpreted following the scaling and the pause button located in the center of the screen was inadvertently being “interacted with”. With the above viewport modification though, this issue went away.

Finally, I did notice a slight stutter on occasion if I was collecting multiple items at once. As best as I could tell, this was related to 3-4 sounds playing simultaneously on top of the background music. Once the Web Audio API lands in BlackBerry 10, we’ll be able to do a whole lot more.

That being said, the good far outweighs the above, and we have gameplay videos to prove it. Here we have a BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 playing both Rubba Rabbit and Gwendolynn.

All in all Ludus is looking to be a very promising platformer engine and I’m excited to see what the HTML5 community does with it. The next steps are to dive into a project of my own to get a sense for the actual development process; I’m looking forward to it already. If you’re doing any development yourself, or have any questions about the BlackBerry 10 aspect, I want to your feedback and insight! Don’t hesitate to reach out via Twitter (@WaterlooErik) or email (eoros@blackberry.com).

Lastly, a big thank you to Woot Studio, McFunkypants and PlexiPixel for their contribution to the HTML5 community with this project.

The things I like to look for at these events are the technologies that have the potential to disrupt the apple cart. These revolutionary movements do more than simply evolve last year’s technology. They beg the question whether whole companies or industries will radically change and shift to address this new force, and whether or not new players will emerge as drivers in this movement. At GDC this year, I could see that such a shift is starting to take place and I’m excited that BlackBerry is actively engaged in this movement. What’s the shift? We’re starting to see mobile devices provide a console gaming experience, anywhere, anytime.

We’ve been playing games on phones for many years, why talk about this now? What’s changed?

Technology Advancement

As with many disruptive forces, a number of normal evolutionary changes take place first that, by themselves, are not disruptive. However, when brought together, they can change the game considerably and challenge an entire once-stable industry. The critical technologies all on mobile devices that are beginning to put pressure on the gaming console industry are the following:

• Multitasking Operating Systems
• High Performance GPUs
• High Definition Video (HDMI)
• Wireless Mobile Game Controllers
• Portable Game Software

When all these technology advancement come together in a smartphone, you have something very close to a game console in the palm of your hand. Each of these plays a vital role. Let’s explore the contribution of each.

Multitasking Operating Systems

A true multitasking operating system is critical for providing smooth performance and interactivity for today’s most demanding games. Not only must the OS manage the game itself, but it must also juggle location information, gyro, accelerometer and other sensors, concurrent voice or VOIP for trash-talking your friends during gameplay, and interact with the cloud and social networks for storing and sharing your results. Neither iOS nor Android has a great multitasking solution here. In contrast however, BlackBerry 10, powered by QNX Neutrino (a leading world class RTOS), is very well positioned to provide all the power necessary for managing the ever-increasing demand of concurrent functionality in the next generation of mobile games.

High Performance GPUs

GPUs render the images. Without them, our game visuals would be slow, blocky, and flat. There’s no question how important these processors are. Over the last couple of years, the advancements made by companies like ARM, Imagination, NVidia, and Qualcomm for smartphones have been enormous. It’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between a game rendered by a GPU on a laptop vs. a game rendered by a smartphone GPU. Perhaps the most obvious difference has been the physical screen size. However, when you add a multitasking OS and a high performance GPU to HD Video (the next critical technology), things start to get really interesting.

High Definition Video (HDMI)

One of the things we did in the BlackBerry booth this year at GDC was connect a bunch of our BlackBerry Z10 smartphones (using the standard HDMI port) to large HD monitors. We also did this at our interactive pods in the Unity and Marmalade booths. I can’t tell you how many times people walked up and asked questions like, “Since when did BlackBerry start making game consoles?” When we told them they were looking at a game being rendered and played on the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone they had that mind blown look on their face.

In the picture above, a young gamer is playing “Shadow Gun” on a BlackBerry Z10. This is a great First Person Shooter game built on the Unity3D game engine. You can just see the Z10 on the table in front of him below the monitor. What you can’t see in this picture is the awesome SteelSeries Free game controller he’s using to play the game. That piece of critical technology is next on my list.

Wireless Mobile Game Controllers

To an awesome multitasking OS, killer GPU, and HDMI out, you add a wireless game controller and you’ve just about got the whole package. Using a controller accomplishes two important things: First, it gets your fingers off the valuable screen real estate freeing up more pixes for game play. The other benefit of the controller is that it adds that real, immersive game feeling you get with console controllers. The controllers we used at GDC are the SteelSeries Free Mobile Wireless Controllers (shown below). The last time I checked, the controller will set you back about $80USD and you can find one here. Other controllers, such as the Wii Remote and the Gametel, are also usable and there’s more to come.

For you game developers out there, you can get more information about how to instrument your code to work with these controllers including samples and tutorials by checking out Sean Paul Taylor’s devblog: “Adding Gamepad Support to Your BlackBerry 10 Game”. You can also read about Ramprasad Madhavan’s experience at GDC this year and the Unity BlackBerry 10 Open Beta coming soon on his devblog: “Unity and BlackBerry Gaming at GDC 2013”

Portable Game Engines & Frameworks

The final critical technology contributing to the end of the game console industry as we know it is portable game engines and frameworks. The easier it is to get your game ported from one platform to another, the harder it is for games to be locked to a single console or device. Companies like Marmalade, ShiVa3D, and Unity3D/Union all contribute here. As a developer, you want the highest quality game experience you can get with the largest distribution possible. This is exactly what these frameworks offer and each has been tuned to deliver a killer experience on BlackBerry 10.

Summary

I confess I own an Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and a PlayStation 3. However, I more often find myself connecting my Z10 to my 46” flat screen, the audio-out to my surround system, and kick back on the couch with my SteelSeries Free remote to enjoy a great game of Angry Bots or Critical Wave. There’s no question that smartphones like the BlackBerry Z10 are providing near console game experiences. This is being driven by advancements in 5 areas: real multitasking OS’s, high performance mobile GPUs, HD Video, mobile game controllers, and portable frameworks.

Consoles will need to adapt and add value to remain competitive. Where does that leave game consoles in the future then? Are they becoming extinct? Will smartphones replace game consoles outright? Will consoles evolve into something even better? Or, will they become the mobile extension of their stationary counterparts? As the great Yoda once said, “Always in motion the future is”.

There was one place, however, where 3D made business sense: gaming (well, native gaming). 3D enjoyed, and still enjoys, a happy existence on PC and Console platforms. The question I always wondered was when will 3D in the browser be of high enough performance and quality across all platforms and browsers to support a solid business case for 3D on the Web? I believe the time has finally come. The confluence of mobile gaming, mobile Web app development, and a solid javascript API called WebGL (a biding to the powerful and ubiquitous OpenGL), is fueling its arrival. I’m proud to say that BlackBerry has been very active in providing one of the first complete mobile WebGL implementations on the BlackBerry PlayBook, and has also brought this capability to BlackBerry 10.

WebGL provides developers with the ability to write immersive, high-performance, console-quality, 2D and 3D games accessible directly on your BlackBerry 10 smartphone. This could be done directly though the browser, or even better, directly by a BlackBerry HTML5/WebWorks application. By building and packaging your HTML5 application into a bar file (a BlackBerry app file container), it enjoys the same rights and privileges as a native application. These apps look, feel, and behave as native apps, as they don’t run inside a browser context. They don’t need to be online to work, and they can leverage great BlackBerry services like the Payment Services SDK and the BBM APIs. BlackBerry WebWorks apps can also be certified as Built for BlackBerry affording them additional advantages.

The game shown below is called “Pearl Boy” and is a great example of what a WebGL application can do. It was developed by Goo Technologies, makers of the Goo Engine for GDC this year. It’s a 100% Web application, written using HTML5, Javascript, and of course, WebGL. The graphics and performance on the BlackBerry Z10 look great. Reflections, environment maps, pixel shaders, they’re all there. WebGL is the real deal.

If you want to learn more about programming with WebGL on BlackBerry, check out these additional WebGL resources on the BlackBerry DevBlog. I also recommend you check out the O’Reilly book, “WebGL: Up and Running” by Toni Parisi.

The BlackBerry Gaming team is back from an awesome Game Developer Conference 2013 held last week in San Francisco. The crew was there with the BlackBerry Gaming Booth to show off gaming on BlackBerry to gamers and game developers from around the world.

During BlackBerry Jam Europe 2013, we made a big announcement about Unity support for BlackBerry 10. The big news this time around was the announcement of the Open Beta SDK release that will start in the next few weeks. We have been hard at work to provide a Unity Add On integrated with cool BlackBerry 10 features that game developers have been asking for.

Gamers and game developers got to experience some of the features of the Unity Add On for BlackBerry 10 at Unity’s BlackBerry Pod space. That turned out to be the busiest station we have ever manned. The gamers were stunned at seeing a BlackBerry Z10 turn into a high performance mini console with a simple HDMI cable and a Bluetooth HID Steel Series gamepad controller. They were further excited by the fact that BlackBerry 10 now supports some very popular gamepads out there right out-of-the-box and this feature integrated directly with the Unity SDK. The goal is to have game developers make as little code changes as possible to port their games over along with seamless gamepad support.

Along with the BlackBerry Lead Developer from Unity and CEO of Darkwind media, Scott Flynn, I was co-presented three exciting  Unity Booth sessions and a very well received GDC session on Professional Game Engines for BlackBerry 10. For those who missed the sessions, the GDC Session will be directly made available through the GDC vault.

If you are looking to be the first ones to port your Mobile Unity Games to BlackBerry 10, pre-register here for the Unity BlackBerry 10 Open Beta. As a participant in our open beta for the Unity BlackBerry 10 add-on, you get the chance to see how your content will run on this new global platform, and give feedback for improvements directly to Unity developers.

And of course, for any questions, comments, concerns or kudos on the Professional Game Engines, Middlewares or Gaming frameworks for BlackBerry feel free to reach out to me directly at rmadhavan@blackberry.com or connect to me directly on Twitter at @rmadhavan7.

Happy BlackBerry Gaming!

The BlackBerry presence at GDC wasn’t just to showcase the powerful platform and tools we provide for game developers, it was also to show those developers and designers how they can be successful on BlackBerry 10.

Our booth was a reflection of our message to the game development communities. We played host to evangelists, consultants, platform developers, technical leads, marketing guys, documentation writers, and game developers. We demonstrated that we are here to support developers and entrepreneurs – this is how we relate to developers all around the world and how we want to connect with game developers as well!

At GDC we shared the news of our partnership with Unity- expanding the possibilities that developers have to create and bring titles to BlackBerry 10. We also had special guests join us on stage to share stories on how successful they were with their titles on BlackBerry 10.

We showcased some of the great game titles already available on BlackBerry 10 and gamers took advantage of the opportunity to play on the BlackBerry Z10. The busiest part of the booth was where we showed off gaming on the BlackBerry Z10 with Shadowgun using our Gamepad API and the HDMI output of the BlackBerry Z10 as a true console replacement.

People who came into our booth were mostly looking for opportunities. People that left the booth were thrilled about BlackBerry 10 and the opportunities our platform provides.

For those who don’t me, my name is Pratik Sapra and I work as a Gaming Consultant on the Developer Relations team at BlackBerry. In my role, I work with game developers on the technical side and help them bring awesome gaming titles to the BlackBerry platform. I am really looking forward to this weeks Game Developer Conference along with the rest of the BlackBerry gaming crew.

In that regard, I am very excited to share that we have a great set of in-booth sessions (Booth 1216) lined up at our GDC booth. We will be presenting a wide range of topics covering everything you need to know about game development on BlackBerry 10. You will be hearing directly from BlackBerry gaming experts on topics including Native Development, Cocos2dx, Unity, Scoreloop and many more. We will be kicking off each day with a general overview session followed by a set of how-to sessions focused on specific topics and technologies. Scroll down below for the full session schedule.

Wednesday, March 27^th

10:00 – 10:15AM            Native Game Development on BlackBerry 10

11:00 – 11:15AM            How to set up a native game in under 10 minutes on BlackBerry 10

1:15 – 1:30PM                  How to add gamepad support to BlackBerry 10 games

2:00 – 2:15PM                  How to write an HTML 5/ WebGL game on BlackBerry 10

2:30 – 2:45PM                  How to write an Adobe AIR application on BlackBerry 10

3:00 – 3:15PM                  How to write a multiplatform game on Blackberry 10

Thursday, March 28^th

10:00 – 10:15AM            Social Gaming on BlackBerry 10

11:00 – 11:15AM            How to bring your Unity 4 game to BlackBerry 10

1:15 – 1:30PM                  How to port your iOS game to BlackBerry 10, Tips & Tricks

2:00 – 2:15PM                  How to bring your Cocos2dx game to BlackBerry 10

3:00 – 3:15PM                  How to add Leaderboards and Achievements to BlackBerry 10 games using Scoreloop

Friday, March 29^th

10:00 – 10:15AM            Building your Gaming Strategy for BlackBerry 10

10:30 – 10:45AM            How to add in-game advertising to BlackBerry 10 games

11:00 – 11:15AM            How to add in-app payment services to BlackBerry 10 games.

1:15 – 1:30PM                  How to package, publish and distribute your BlackBerry 10 game on BlackBerry World

2:00 – 2:15PM                  How to save BlackBerry 10 game state in the cloud

2:30 – 2:45PM                  How to convert, build and debug BlackBerry 10 games with Visual Studio

We love working with developers from all around the world and especially if they make cool games that we can play on our new BlackBerry 10 devices! Right after BlackBerry Jam Asia 2012, we had an amazing opportunity to work with incredibly talented game developers from the Asia Pacific Region. To give you an idea on the amount of travelling it took: 16 days, 8 cities, 39800 miles per head!  The best part was we found 260 happy game developers at the end of the trip.  The GotGame Port-a-thon event comprised of locations spanning six Asia Pacific countries including Thailand, Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, India, Hong Kong and China.  During these intense one-day events, we got a chance to work with some amazing talent from the gaming industry.  As a result, almost 800 high quality game titles were submitted over a span of just three weeks!

We would like to give a BIG Thank you to all the game developers who participated in these events and made GotGame Port-a-thon LIVE a huge success!