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

I’m looking forward to next week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (Mar 25-29).  With the global launches of BlackBerry 10, there’s never been a more exciting time to be a game developer on BlackBerry.

I’ve lived and breathed gaming for a very long time. Prior to joining BlackBerry, I was the founder and CEO of game development company SouthEnd Interactive between 1998-2010 and was Lead Game Designer and Senior Producer on games such as Deathrow (Xbox), R-Type Dimensions (XBLA), Lode Runner (XBLA) and Ilomilo (XBLA/WP7) on Xbox/360, PlayStation 3, Android, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7 and other platforms.

For the last three years, BlackBerry has been building the most accessible and most developer friendly platform for game developers -and here it is – BlackBerry 10!  Blackberry has also partnered will all the major game engine and middle ware companies such as Unity, Marmalade, Shiva to ensure that the tools you use today are available for you with BlackBerry 10 gaming.

Kick start your move to BlackBerry 10 by visiting www.github.com/blackberry where we have over 70 of the most used open source projects including cocos2d-x, box2D, bullit physics and Ogre3D.

Join many of the top gaming titles from top developers such as EA, Gameloft, Disney, Rovio, Halfbrick, AMA, SEGA, 10tons, Hexage, funkoi, PawPrint Games, Madfinger Games, zeptolab, … and the list just goes on and on!

Be sure to catch my session at Game Developers Conference and learn how BlackBerry 10 can be one of your primary profitable platforms that adds significant value to your game franchise.  The session is “Building your gaming strategy for BlackBerry 10” on Thursday March 28 at 5:30–6:30 pm West 3022.

I’d love to talk gaming with you! Please stop by the BlackBerry Booth 1216 at Game Developers Conference.

In my last blog post, you got Up and Running with Cocos2d-x library on BlackBerry 10. Assuming you are well ahead in porting your game, may I suggest a wonderful idea to make your game go viral? Make use of Scoreloop and the power of our Social Gaming hub.

BlackBerry 10 comes with a lot of surprises for gamers including the introduction of the BlackBerry Social Gaming Hub via the Games app. Gamers can now meet new friends, discover popular games and share their experience through the Games app.

It doesn’t stop there. The Games app enables Scoreloop-integrated games to automatically post activities such as achievements, challenge results and high scores to a gamer’s timeline. With over 250 Million users already playing Scoreloop-powered games across platforms, this gives any game a great chance make a viral impact. There are also some good featuring opportunities in the “Games” section of the games app.

In this post, I will walk you through the process of integrating Scoreloop into the cocos2d-x BBTemplate project we setup in my last blog post. The instructions are generic enough and can applied to any other open library with minor modifications.

Set up Scoreloop account

First, create a Scoreloop developer account at
https://developer.Scoreloop.com
. If you already are a BlackBerry user and have a BlackBerry ID, there is no need to create a new account. Simply choose “Login with BlackBerry ID” and enter your BlackBerry ID credentials.

After logging in, you will see three options. You can skip the first option as the BlackBerry 10 Native SDK comes preloaded with the Scoreloop SDK and there is no need to download any external libraries. Now create a game title and choose “BlackBerry” option. If the game’s name is not already taken, a profile will be created.

Once the game account is created, you will see various options to customize your game’s social gaming options. If you already have an account and have already published titles using Scoreloop, you can choose the newly created game from the drop down menu.

Getting started

Follow the instructions below to include the Scoreloop library to the BBTemplateProject.

1. Right click the game project settings
2. Select C/C++ Build -> Settings -> Tool Settings -> QCC Linker
3. Add “scoreloopcore” library to the list of Libraries

To be able to make use of Scoreloop’s features, the infrastructure need to be setup and it all starts with creating an instance of Scoreloop client. Add Scoreloop’s main header file in HelloWorldScene.h and add the below mentioned Scoreloop variables in the “HelloWorld” class.

#include <Scoreloop/Scoreloopcore.h>

In your Scoreloop account, fetch the application data corresponding to your game title from the “Game Overview” section. It should look something like this:

Platforms	BlackBerry
Game ID	xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx
Game Secret	Xxxxxxxxxx
Game Currency Code	IBI

Add this information to your code along with the game version and language:

static const char SCORELOOP_GAME_ID[] = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx";
static const char SCORELOOP_GAME_SECRET[] = "xxxxxxxxxx";
static const char SCORELOOP_GAME_VERSION[] = "1.0";
static const char SCORELOOP_GAME_CURRENCY[] = "IBI";
static const char SCORELOOP_GAME_LANGUAGE[] = "en";

In the init() method, initialize the Scoreloop client and its data components as shown below:

SC_InitData_Init(&scData);
SC_Error_t errCode = SC_Client_New(&client, &scData, SCORELOOP_GAME_ID, SCORELOOP_GAME_SECRET, 
SCORELOOP_GAME_VERSION, SCORELOOP_GAME_CURRENCY, SCORELOOP_GAME_LANGUAGE);

Note: If the user had not already setup his Social Gaming Hub account, he may be prompted to sign in with his BlackBerry ID and credentials.

Fetching information from the Scoreloop server

To fetch user information from the Scoreloop server, a Scoreloop user controller needs to be created. Queries receive asynchronous response and needs a callback function to be registered. In the snippet below, fetchUserComplete will be called upon a response from the server.

SC_Client_CreateUserController(client, &userController, fetchUserComplete, this);

For example: if the game needs to query the current session user’s information call

SC_UserController_LoadUser(userController);

Once a user controller is successfully created, it can be used to query information. There are two approaches to get the desired information from the server.

1. Via BlackBerry Platform Services (BPS) events.
2. Using a custom events

Approach 1: Via BlackBerry Platform Services (BPS) events

Cocos2d-x absorbs all the BPS events in its implementation and you can modify the cocos2d-x source code directly and have it call back whenever a BPS event arrives. CCEGLView::handleEvents() is where the event handling takes place and it calls the callback function that was registered through the “setEventCallback()”. The advantage of this approach is that it does not have event-polling overhead. The code snippets below show the changes made to the cocos2d-x library and the BBTemplate project to accomplish Scoreloop event handling via BPS events.

CCEGLView.h

void * m_eventCookie;
CEGLViewEventCallback m_eventCallback;
void setEventCallback(CCEGLViewEventCallback callback, void *cookie);

CCEGLView.cpp

void CCEGLView::setEventCallback(CCEGLViewEventCallback callback, void *cookie) {
	m_eventCookie = cookie;
	m_eventCallback = callback;
}
bool CCEGLView::handleEvents() {
	...

	for (;;) {

		if (m_eventCallback != NULL)
		m_eventCallback(m_eventCookie, event);
...
    }
}

HelloWorldScene.h

void fetchUserComplete(SC_Error_t result);
static void fetchUserComplete(void* userData, SC_Error_t result) {
 (reinterpret_cast(userData))->fetchUserComplete(result);
}

HelloWorldScene.cpp

bool HelloWorld::init() {
...
scData.runLoopType = SC_RUN_LOOP_TYPE_BPS;
SC_Error_t errCode = SC_Client_New(&client, &scData, SCORELOOP_GAME_ID, SCORELOOP_GAME_SECRET, SCORELOOP_GAME_VERSION, SCORELOOP_GAME_CURRENCY, SCORELOOP_GAME_LANGUAGE);

CCEGLView::sharedOpenGLView()->setEventCallback(StaticOnScoreloopUIEvent, (&_scInitData);
...
}

static void OnScoreloopUIEvent(void *cookie, void *event) {
SC_HandleBPSEvent((SC_InitData_t  *)cookie, (bps_event_t *)event);
}
void HelloWorld::fetchUserComplete(SC_Error_t result) {
...
}

Approach 2: Via custom events

An alternative approach to handle Scoreloop events is to use the Scoreloop custom event queue. The difference here is that incoming Scoreloop responses are processed by periodic polling. The good news is that cocos2d-x already has an infrastructure to support scheduling and the disadvantage of this approach is that polling takes place periodically and sometimes even when no Scoreloop event is expected.

The custom event handler can be called in game’s update() function or scheduled via cocos2d-x schedule() function.

HelloWorldScene.h

void OnScoreloopCustomEvent(float o);
void fetchUserComplete(SC_Error_t result);
static void fetchUserComplete(void* userData, SC_Error_t result) {
 (reinterpret_cast(userData))->fetchUserComplete(result);
}

HelloWorldScene.cpp

bool HelloWorld::init() {
...
scData.runLoopType = SC_RUN_LOOP_TYPE_CUSTOM;
SC_Error_t errCode = SC_Client_New(&client, &scData, SCORELOOP_GAME_ID, SCORELOOP_GAME_SECRET, SCORELOOP_GAME_VERSION, SCORELOOP_GAME_CURRENCY, SCORELOOP_GAME_LANGUAGE);

// schedule to call this method with every frame
this->schedule(schedule_selector(HelloWorld::OnScoreloopCustomEvent));
...
}

void HelloWorld::OnScoreloopCustomEvent(float o) {
SC_HandleCustomEvent(&scData, SC_FALSE);
}

void HelloWorld::fetchUserComplete(SC_Error_t result) {
...
}

Well, there you have it – you are up and running with cocos2d-x and Scoreloop. Here are some great resources available to you to get more out of Scoreloop SDK:

Scoreloop SDK Guide

Scoreloop Integration Sample -101 Scoreloop Integration sample

Belligerent Blocks – A Sample 1 level game that showcases great use cases of Scoreloop

Having taken part in numerous game developer events, conferences and port-a-thons, I’ve been asked the following question a lot: Is there a way to bring my cocos2d based iOS game to BlackBerry 10? The answer is simple – absolutely! Use cocos2d-x.

Cocos2d-x is an open-source and cross-platform 2D gaming framework and a direct C++ port of the popular Objective-C based cocos2d framework. Except for the programming language, the two frameworks APIs are very similar. If you have experience with cocos2d framework, it should be a fairly straightforward porting process. Cocos2d-x is also supported on multiple platforms including BlackBerry 10, iOS, and Android. Migrating your game from cocos2d to cocos2d-x opens up your game to bigger audience and monetization opportunities on various application markets with minimal development and maintenance efforts. As an active contributor to the open source gaming community, the Gaming R&D team here at Research In Motion have made sure to provide out-of the-box BlackBerry 10 support for the latest and greatest cocos2d-x library releases.

In this post, I am going walk you through the steps of getting set up with cocos2d-x for game development with the BlackBerry 10 Native SDK.

Get your signing keys!

You need signing keys for device testing and publishing your game to the BlackBerry World. Fill out the form and you will receive the signing keys via email. Make sure to note down the information you filled in the form along with the keys you receive; this may come in handy if you ever lose the signing key password or have issues with the signing process itself.

Set up the BlackBerry 10 Native SDK

Download and install the latest version of the Native SDK from the BlackBerry Developer site. If you do not currently have a device in hand, download our BlackBerry 10 Simulator that can be run with VMWare Player on Windows and Linux or VMWare Fusion on Mac. While you’re at it, be sure to check out our blog post on boosting the simulator performance by 1130%!

Set up the cocos2d-x library

Download the latest cocos2d-x source code from www.cocos2d-x.org and extract it to your workspace location. Since we have already added the BlackBerry 10 project support to it, you can directly import it to the project workspace through following steps:

1. File -> import -> Existing Projects into Workspace -> cocos2dx source directory
2. Import the relevant proj.blackberry eclipse projects. For example, there is no need to select proj.android, project.linux etc.
3. Build the cocos2d-x project
a) Select the imported folders, then right-click and choose the appropriate Build Configuration. For simulator development, choose appropriate simulator build configurations. For device development, choose the appropriate device build configurations; for example, Device-Debug for testing/debugging and Device-Release for release.
b) Select the imported folders. Right click and Build.

Note: On the recent cocos2dx build cocos2d-2.0-x-2.0.4 you may see this:

undefined reference symbol ‘FT_New_Face’ undefined error.

This is because the freetype library is missing in the project dependencies — let’s see how to fix that:

1. Right click the erroneous project
2. Select Properties -> C/C++ General -> Paths and Symbols
3. Select [All Configurations] from the configuration dropdown menu
4. Choose Libraries tab and Add freetype library
5. Build again.

Rest assured, the fix is coming

Running a cocos2dx Sample

The imported project comes with a sample template project called BBTemplateProject. Let’s try and deploy it onto a simulator first and then a BlackBerry 10 device.

1. Make sure the Simulator/Device Development mode is turned on
2. Check Settings->Security and Privacy-> Development mode
(Note: On a device, you may be asked to set a password the first time.)
3. If no Device or Simulator targets are defined, Add a new target
4. Right-click project
a) Use Run-as BlackBerry C++ Application for deploy and launch the application.
b) Use Debug-as BlackBerry C++ Application for deploy and debug the application.
5. If you have never set up the signing keys and you are trying to run the game on a device for the first time, a BlackBerry Deployment Setup Wizard will pop up that helps you register the signing keys and create debug tokens for on device testing and debugging.

If you made it through to this state, you are now officially ready for the fun part of this project: porting your cocos2d code to cocos2d-x code.

Releasing the game

Fast-forward 24 hours; with the help of lots of caffeine and energy drinks, you have done it! Now you want to publish your game to the BlackBerry World. First, you need to become a BlackBerry vendor to be able to publish game in BlackBerry World. Once approved, you have to build a release version of the game that can be published, and here is how you do it:

1. Change the Build Configurations of the Game project and its dependent libraries to Device-Release and Build
2. Sign and export the project: File -> export -> BlackBerry -> release build
3. Test and publish the release version of the game through the vendor portal.

Useful links

All you need to know about BlackBerry world
Scoreloop SDK: cross platform mobile social gaming framework
BlackBerry 10 Native SDK Documentation

If you visit our Cocos2D-X repository today you will find just a README.md file. Where’s the code? Well, we removed it two weeks ago, in a Go Upstream! commit.

This sequence exemplifies a class of our repositories at GitHub: we created the repository to produce a port of the upstream project, which then was incorporated into an official release: cocos2d-1.0.1-x-0.11.0. All official Cocos2d-X releases since then, including the latest, cocos2d-2.0-rc0a-x-2.0, support our platform. Removing our code and pointing upstream removes confusions (and saves us time).

Cocos2d-X is the first instance where we have removed the code, but upstreaming is a principle we are following in many other cases. In some cases we contribute directly to the upstream community, in others we go through an intermediate public repository.

Direct Contributions

Some examples of direct contributions include:

• LibCurl - In this case Joe added a new authentication callback to libcurl and Daniel has indicated it will be included in the release after 7.26.0
• Webkit - We contribute upstream continuously.  See for example the BlackBerry® ChangeLog, or do a search on blackberry on trac, or read about them at Surfin’ Safari
• Other notable examples include Apache Cordova, jQuery and Qt

Staged Contributions

Some examples of staged contributions include:

• jQuery-Mobile Cookbook - In this case we contribute first to our jQuery-Mobile-Samples repo and then the code is incorporated into jQuery Mobile Cookbook
• OpenGL ES Samples - This is a similar situation: we ported the samples from the OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide into our OpenGLES-Samples repo, and then they were incorporated the Google Code upstream project