A technical blog from Daniel Rákos (aka aqnuep)
AdMob extension for cocos2d-x (Android)
Mar 24th
Lately I switched from Java based Android development to native C++ code and started using the famous cocos2d-x framework for implementing my second Android game Henhouse Trouble, that I released almost a year ago. At that time I had quite some trouble with interfacing third party Android libraries like the AdMob SDK. Finally, I managed to get a working solution based on this article. While the article was extremely helpful for me in getting my own solution up and running, considering that I have minimal experience with JNI, I thought that AdMob SDK integration is quite a common task to deserve its own easy to integrate cocos2d-x extension. In this article I’ll present a step by step guide on how to integrate AdMob advertisements into your cocos2d-x 2.x.x application using the extension.
OpenGL vs DirectX: The War Is Far From Over
Oct 7th
The War Is Far From Over
I’ve chosen the title based on the popular article that tries to prove that OpenGL lost the war against Direct3D. To be honest, I didn’t really like the article at all. First, because it compared OpenGL 3 which targeted Shader Model 4.0 hardware and DirectX 11 which targeted Shader Model 5.0 hardware. Besides that, as we will see, the war is really far from over… This article aims to list the most important features introduced by OpenGL 3.x, OpenGL 4.x, Direct3D 10, Direct3D 11 and we will also talk about the promised features of the upcoming Direct3D 11.1 to be fair with DirectX 
An introduction to OpenGL 4.2
Aug 28th
After the release of the OpenGL 4.1 specification the Khronos Group slowed down the pace a little bit but they didn’t left OpenGL developers without a new specification version for too long as a few weeks ago they’ve released OpenGL 4.2. The new version of the specification brings several API improvements as well as exposes some important pieces of hardware functionality that makes OpenGL 4.x class hardware a great step forward in GPU history. This article aims to present the newly introduced features in the latest version of the OpenGL specification and, as a few months ago I wrote an article about Suggestions for OpenGL 4.2 and beyond, I will write a few words about how does the new specification reflect my forecast.
Pocket Soccer’s story so far…
Jul 6th
Almost four months passed since I’ve released my first Android game called Pocket Soccer. Game was very well received and even though its popularity showed some decline lately. In this post I would like to present some data about the lifecycle of Pocket Soccer so far, including my experience with alternative markets. Also, I will present some of the achievements it got. Finally, I would like to talk about the future development of Pocket Soccer that many people were interested in.
More >
Multi-Draw-Indirect is here
Jun 19th
You might remember that I wrote an article about my suggestions for OpenGL 4.2 and beyond. One of the features that I recommended to be added to OpenGL was a yet non-existent extension called GL_ARB_draw_indirect2 which suggested the addition of new draw commands that are similar in fashion to the ancient MultiDraw* commands but they are meant to build on top of the indirect drawing mechanism introduced by the GL_ARB_draw_indirect extension and OpenGL 4.0. I contacted both AMD and NVIDIA with my idea with different levels of success, but AMD saw the potential in the functionality and they actually implemented it in the form of GL_AMD_multi_draw_indirect, well at least partially…
Just released my first Android game
Mar 14th
I am happy to announce that I’ve just published my first mobile game on the Android Market. I have experimented with creating games earlier, especially targeting the PC platform, however I never accomplished to release such one due to lack of resources, especially in the domain of artwork. Hence I turned to mobile platforms as there even a one-man-show game can bring loads of fun time to the players. So here we are now: after loads of abandoned PC projects, here I have my first published game called “Pocket Soccer”.
The blog reached 100.000 visitors!
Mar 6th
I am happy to announce that today, little more than a year after the start, the blog reached 100.000 visitors. I would like to thank you for all the people who visited, commented and helped the evolution of the site!
Frei-Chen edge detector
Jan 30th
Frei-Chen edge detector
In this article, I would like to present you an edge detection algorithm that shares similar performance characteristics like the well-known Sobel operator but provides slightly better edge detection and can be seamlessly extended with little to no performance overhead to also detect corners alongside with edges. The algorithm works on a 3×3 texel footprint similarly like the Sobel filter but applies a total of nine convolution masks over the image that can be used for either edge or corner detection. The article presents the mathematical background that is needed to implement the edge detector and provides a reference implementation written in C/C++ using OpenGL that showcases both the Frei-Chen and the Sobel edge detection filter applied to the same image.
Happy New Year!
Jan 17th
Happy Birthday !!
After a quite long, about two months intermission, let me celebrate for a moment the birthday of the blog. It was roughly a year ago that I started the RasterGrid Blogosphere with the wish to have a forum where I can share my experience and ideas with others. Meanwhile, I posted several programming related articles about graphics, multiprocessing and published a few demo applications. However, this is not the best part of it… The thing that I’m most proud of is that the blog now has many returning visitors whom I was somehow able to help and that I’ve received a lot of feedback and ideas from you. I’m especially pleased because the list of people who contacted me via the comments section or via e-mail contains several great personalities of the industry with who I wouldn’t be able to meet if I would not start this project. Thank you all for this!
Suggestions for OpenGL 4.2 and beyond
Nov 14th
The Khronos Group did a great job in the last few years to once again prove that OpenGL is still in game and that it can become the ultimate graphics API of choice, if it is not that already. However, we must note that it is not quite yet true that OpenGL 4.1 is a superset of its competitor, DirectX 11. We still have some holes that still have to be filled and I think the ARB should not stop just there as there is much more potential in the current hardware architectures than that is currently exposed by any graphics API so establishing the future of OpenGL should start by going one step further than DX11. In this article I would like to present my vision of items of importance that should be included in the next revision of the specification and how I see the future of OpenGL.