Roku Developer Program

[Komag]

I understand it's time to move on and no longer support old Rokus limited to the old firmware 3.1 - what I'd like is a brief overview of the most useful or important functions and abilities that 3.1 COULDN'T do, which I can now start to use in my 2D API game. Here are a few I know of:

- roAssociativeArray - Count()
- roAudioResource - "On Roku "Classic" models, roAudioResource does not support mixing of sounds." So now I don't have to worry about that.
- roString - ifStringOps - Replace()

What about roTextureManager?

My problem is that since I was planning to release for classic models too, I pretty much always ignored newer abilities if they weren't compatible, so now I'd like to "catch up"!

So what else are key things?

[TheEndless]

To name a few, based on what I have explicit legacy checks for in my code...

• roAppInfo


• SetTimedMetaDataForKeys for roAudioPlayer and roVideoPlayer


• roCaptionRenderer for roVideoPlayer


• roChannelStore


• Numerous additions to roDeviceInfo


• Opacity in ifDraw2D.DrawObject


• Loading and Error posters on roGridScreen


• Cookie support in ifHttpAgent (though I have my own cookie parser that I just more)


• RetainBodyOnError on roUrlTransfer


• Breadcrumb text on roListScreen


• SmallIconUrl on roListScreen


• Localization support


• roTextScreen


• roTextureManager


• FormatJSON()


• Button separators on roMessageDialog

[NewManLiving]

A lot less remote controls and little boxes all over the place

[TheEndless]

"NewManLiving" wrote:
A lot less remote controls and little boxes all over the place

Hehe.. remember when all you had was a Roku 3? 😛

[NewManLiving]

Yes I remember. Now I have everything except the ROKU TV. Maybe you can give me some insight. I believe it has a 1G processor but no open GL. If I'm correct how is the performance compared to the new stick which I have come to appreciate
It is great to take with you as you mentioned on another post. I find that with 1,2 and LTE I have to make some adjustments with the 2D to keep things flowing. Been able to get good results especially with a redesign that uses less drawtext and employs region offsetting whenever possible as opposed to coordinate offsetting. Those two things gave me a 85-90 comparable look and feel to the higher models. I have a carousel in one app that fades in and out and to do this I was using an offset and a fade at the same time. Was a real dog. But when I changed it to region offsetting and region fading there was a huge difference just a slight jerk from time to time. Even my grid works good since it was mostly region offsetting to begin with. But I had to remove some of the open gl region tricks that I learned

[TheEndless]

"NewManLiving" wrote:
Yes I remember. Now I have everything except the ROKU TV. Maybe you can give me some insight. I believe it has a 1G processor but no open GL. If I'm correct how is the performance compared to the new stick which I have come to appreciate

It's a good bit faster than the stick. I'd probably put it about halfway between the stick and the Roku 3, performance wise.

[Komag]

"NewManLiving" wrote:
...Been able to get good results especially with a redesign that uses less drawtext and employs region offsetting whenever possible as opposed to coordinate offsetting. Those two things gave me a 85-90 comparable look and feel to the higher models. I have a carousel in one app that fades in and out and to do this I was using an offset and a fade at the same time. Was a real dog. But when I changed it to region offsetting and region fading there was a huge difference just a slight jerk from time to time...

This sounds promising to me 8-) Can you explain a bit more what you mean by region offsetting/fading vs coordinate offsetting and fading? How were you doing the fading before and after, and what is the offsetting you're talking about? :?:

[MatroxRT]

"TheEndless" wrote:

"NewManLiving" wrote:
A lot less remote controls and little boxes all over the place

Hehe.. remember when all you had was a Roku 3? 😛

This must be why they refreshed the Roku 2/3 this week. Well... the Devs will have more room on their desks now, so we need them to buy a few more new Roku's. 🙂

Speaking of which, how do either of you organize your Roku's on your desk?

[NewManLiving]

NewManLiving wrote:
...Been able to get good results especially with a redesign that uses less drawtext and employs region offsetting whenever possible as opposed to coordinate offsetting. Those two things gave me a 85-90 comparable look and feel to the higher models. I have a carousel in one app that fades in and out and to do this I was using an offset and a fade at the same time. Was a real dog. But when I changed it to region offsetting and region fading there was a huge difference just a slight jerk from time to time...


This sounds promising to me 8-) Can you explain a bit more what you mean by region offsetting/fading vs coordinate offsetting and fading? How were you doing the fading before and after, and what is the offsetting you're talking about? :?:

Region offsetting involves using a bitmap as a buffer for a row of posters, or in the case of a menu, a page of text lines. Or in animation a buffer of frames. The concept involves pretty much the same as I described in my m pointer post. The grid example uses region offsetting as opposed to coordinate offsetting to move the grid as the user scrolls. In a more complex form you can make the buffer virtual and keep adding to it while keeping the virtual portion hidden with the size of the region. So if you have a five poster row say 100x100 you would create a bitmap buffer 100x5 + 100 for the virtual portion. The region size would be 100x100 thus hiding the virtual portion. As the user scrolls the new poster is written to the buffer and then goes into a easing loop to move or offset only the region. So what happens is that since the region is now moving the poster at the left is scrolled out of the region and the new poster is exposed. This involves only one drawobject. On the other hand if you went through a loop of poster bitmaps and drew them each time the user scrolls then you would have a great deal of drawing going on as you recalculated each x coordinate in your easing loop and had to redraw each poster as the coordinates changed. This slows things down substantially on the slower boxes

[NewManLiving]

Sorry had to go. In the example I described the carousel has three such buffers each holding different perspectives of the carousel. So that was really choppy. Scrolling by coordinate offsetting would probably not be so bad with just one row at a time. But the more you add and anything else you add into the easing loop such as fades takes a toll on the low end boxes. So for me region offsetting proved to be a great deal smoother and faster.