Here’s a small code snippet of what I’m now doing in my texture code.

struct PVR_Texture_Header
{
unsigned int dwHeaderSize;            /*!< size of the structure */
unsigned int dwHeight;                /*!< height of surface to be created */
unsigned int dwWidth;                /*!< width of input surface */
unsigned int dwMipMapCount;            /*!< number of mip-map levels requested */
unsigned int dwpfFlags;                /*!< pixel format flags */
unsigned int dwTextureDataSize;        /*!< Total size in bytes */
unsigned int dwBitCount;            /*!< number of bits per pixel  */
unsigned int dwRBitMask;            /*!< mask for red bit */
unsigned int dwGBitMask;            /*!< mask for green bits */
unsigned int dwBBitMask;            /*!< mask for blue bits */
unsigned int dwAlphaBitMask;        /*!< mask for alpha channel */
unsigned int dwPVR;                    /*!< magic number identifying pvr file */
unsigned int dwNumSurfs;            /*!< the number of surfaces present in the pvr */
} ;

NSData *fileContents = [[NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:[NSString stringWithUTF8String:filename]] retain];
if (fileContents == nil)
{
return false;
}

// pointer to the actual pvr image data, skip the header
char *pvrData = (char*)[fileContents bytes] + sizeof(PVR_Texture_Header);

// create the header and copy in the data from the file
memcpy(&textureInfo, [fileContents bytes], sizeof(PVR_Texture_Header));

The definition for the PVR_Texture_Header was found in the PowerVR SDK.

Sprites with Cocos2D rely on the Texture2D class created by Apple to do their drawing as does the “game” code that Apple released at WWDC. It didn’t register at first that this would be a problem until I looked through the code to see how textures are handled. Non-compressed textures, like pngs, are first expanded to an equal power of two and dropped into a newly created texture in the correct swizzled format. Coming from a game development background, I knew that swizzling textures or doing any sort of conversion work at load or runtime is a waste so I turned my direction to the PVRCT format. This is the native texture format that can be essentially load and go. Using the new compressed texture format eliminated the conversion step but still required the power of two texture. Fine, not a problem, many sprites or frames are commonly dropped into a single texture anyway. Most video hardware require a power of two texture so this in itself didn’t surprise me, the requirement that it be an “equal” power of two though did. Meaning, a texture of 256×128 just isn’t possible. Turns out this is a limitation of the PowerVR MBX chipset (you can get the docs and SDK at the Imgtec.com website). Alright, I can work around this. Just drop multiple sprites into a single texture and move around the U,V coordinates to access the invididual images I need. This will eliminate the texture state change and speed up rendering anyway. Wait a second, Cocos2D doesn’t support this. They have a strict one texture to one sprite set up. This is the easiest way to get someone up and running quickly but is horribly inefficient when writing game code. The iPhone is very restrictive on the amount of memory available for an application.

So, In my haste to try and use existing technology I’ve discovered that I’m pretty much back at the beginning. I tossed out the Cocos2D library (it would have been more trouble than it was worth to change their code) and tossed out Apple’s Texture2D class and Apple’s version of the texture compression tool and started writing my own code. I wasted about three days exploring other options but it did give the opportunity to learn more about the hardware that I’m working on.

So far I now have the underlying texure handling and resource manager complete and am about halfway through the sprite code, all written in C++. Most of the code is platform agnostic with only bits and pieces requiring porting when converting to other platforms.

I’ll post more info as I continue my iPhone exploration.

More info can be found at http://www.globalgamejam.org/index.html