Guides & Forums/Developer and Game Designer Forums/Developing for Sifteo Cubes
SDK Release Date
PR
posted this on June 03, 2011 02:41 pm
We will be releasing a Software Development Kit (SDK) for people to create their own games and applications for the cubes. Our SDK won't be ready for general use for a while, but we're working on it! In the meantime, we'll be holding hackathon events - stay tuned to our blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, etc. to stay in the loop.
Comments
I saw on your blog that the SDK will be released in September. I can't wait! Any idea when in September? I'm itching to write something for the Sifteo's I pre-ordered. :)
Jake
Looking forward to it!
Love to have the SDK to start game development
We are running out of September... got cubes... want SDK... :-)
I have to say, I'm disappointed. I ordered my sifteo cubes the first week of the year. I thought the concept was fresh, but from the start I was more interested as a developer than a consumer. It's been a *long* wait for the SDK. I signed up on the *developer* page to get notices specifically about the SDK. I've only received two e-mails to date, about their consumer-facing progress, with no mention of the SDK. Today, at random, I checked the forums again and found the September release announcement from last month. This is actually related to the SDK, and I didn't get an e-mail. Frustrating. Adding insult to injury, September is almost over with no SDK.
I spent the $100+ during early release because I wanted to be on the ground floor of development. Instead, I sat by for almost a year while Sifteo developed the games where it wanted the first-to-market edge. I feel I was misled to believe the SDK was just around the corner. At this point, it doesn't really matter whether Sifteo made a conscious choice to delay SDK release for their own benefit, or the SDK truly did take this long to reach a stable version (which is troubling in itself).
I'm a big fan of the rapid dev movement - release early, release often, be transparent about the progress. I think Sifteo has done a good job of this for consumers, but not for developers. There have been countless requests over the year for an approximate SDK release date, with responses amounting to "we want it to be good, it'll be ready when it's ready". Now, after nine months of "someday", the first real timeline given is being blown.
Hi everybody! Glad you are eager for the SDK. We've been working hard to get the Alpha version ready to share, and will be releasing it later this week. We're excited to see what you do with it. :)
Jaime I am sorry about the long wait, and appreciate that you've stuck with us. We are certainly not trying to keep developers out of the loop--rather, we very much want to build an open platform and get the developer community engaged. We will work to communicate more frequently moving forward.
Warmest regards,
Laurie Peterson
Sifteo Marketing Director
Hi everyone,
We really *are* excited to get the SDK into your hands (and it's very close), but a couple factors have pushed our release by just a bit. The main thing is that we're a startup with a small team, and we have a very "go to the action" mentality. This means we jump on issues that need to be addressed immediately, pushing back other priorities if needed. We just started shipping cubes (!), and we've been rolling a new release of Siftrunner -- there was a lot work to do in order to put the new version of Siftrunner through its paces and fix any bugs that popped up. Now that it's live, we have a few moments to catch our collective breath, and the SDK is getting full attention. The other (related) thing is that we wanted to make sure we had presentable documentation and sample projects, to get everyone started on the right foot. Thanks for your patience, we know you all are ready to get started!
Best,
-David Merrill (co-founder+president)
Hey guys! Looks like the SDK is live. https://www.sifteo.com/account/developer Just have to log in and accept the license agreement. w00t!
Jake
Hmmm, I may have jumped the gun a little. The download is there and the project generator works, but I can't find the actual Sifteo.dll that contains the APIs to link to. Perhaps they're working on a new downloadable...?
Jake
Hi all,
As Jake pointed out, the SDK is now live at www.sifteo.com/developers!
Jake, thank you for pointing out that we've hidden Sifteo.dll. We'll release a new package with it much more visible! For now, you can can find it in 'bin/runtimes/mono/Current/sifteo' within the SDK installation on Windows, and at a corresponding path within the Siftdev bundle on OS X.
Have a great time with the Sifteo SDK!
Thanks Sarah! Found it.
Just to make it a bit more clear on Mac OS X, the Sifteo.dll is located with the Siftdev.app's app bundle. You can find it at this path: <SIFTEO_SDK>/Siftdev.app/Contents/Resources/Runtimes/Mono/Current/sifteo/Sifteo.dll
Jake
NICE. I'm looking forward to perusing!
Yay finally. Now to get cracking on things (like getting the sdk setup).
Minor question. Is there ever the chance in the future we will be able to get the Sifteo SDK stuff building in a Visual Studio environment? I'm sure I'll adjust fine to Monodevelop, i'm just more at home in VS (along with having access to plug-ins I commonly use).
B Faber,
I can't speak for official support, but you may want to check out http://mono-tools.com/. It's supposed to allow you to build via mono within VS. I don't use Windows anymore so I can't test it out, but it seems like it could work.
Jake
Thanks, will go check out. =)
B Faber - You should be able to set up a dev environment with the current SDK in Visual Studio - this is not officially supported, but should work. Good luck!
Just downloaded the API, getting started right now. Thanks for the info about the Sifteo.dll location :)
B Faber - I've got the sample working in Visual Studio 2010 with no problems. Even working with VB.Net samples too.
I got the sample code to compile in VS2010 but i'm having a problem with the output though. I just get a exe, and two dll (ignoring the manifest & pdb). =/
Can anybody tell me what I should be getting out?
B Faber,
MonoDevelop's output is an exe, mdb (I assume these are the debug symbols), JsonFx.dll, and Sifteo.dll.
Hope that helps.
Jake
Never mind. got it working (what I had was right, I just didn't understand what siftdev wanted). ^_^
Hmmm, I can download the windows version of the SDK but it ends up being a plain data file named Sifteo_SDK_win_1_1_2 with no extension. If I try to open it I get the usual "what application should be used to open this type of file" question. How do I install the SDK on Win 7?
Hi...the Mac SDK quickstart says:
sadly, there is NO Mac / mono executable called "project_gen"
munchkin:Sifteo_SDK_mac_1_1_2 sieler$ cd tools/proje*
/Users/sieler/Sifteo_SDK_mac_1_1_2/tools/project_gen
munchkin:project_gen sieler$ mono project_gen fibber
Cannot open assembly 'project_gen': No such file or directory.
There is, however, one called project_gen.exe, and the following gets further:
munchkin:project_gen sieler$ mono project_gen.exe fibber
success! Created /Users/sieler/Sifteo_SDK_mac_1_1_2/tools/project_gen/fibber
Don't forget to update the project references to point to your Sifteo SDK installation.
You'll want to update the quickstarter doc (api-docs/quickstart.html)
After looking thru as much as I can late on a Friday, I'm getting the idea that the SDK is a single file and you just put it where you wish? Seems odd for the website to say "Install Mono and the Sifteo SDK" if no installation of the SDK is actually needed though so correct me if I'm wrong!
Todd..the Win version should download as a .exe file, of about 36v MB. If your suffix-less file is that big, try
renaming it to foo.exe and then running it ... should unpack your SDK.
Ok, on my Mac... got the SDK installed, mono, mono develop ... managed to get mono to find and rebuild a demo (01HelloSifteo),
got into siftdev, found the "developer" tab: hint, it's *NOT* on the main window that's staring the user in the face, it's on the command bar in the upper left.
But...siftdev / Developer / Load Apps refuses to load any files I can find under the 01helloworld directory ... including the dll files built a minute ago :(
Thanks Stan! I had tried it as a .zip and .msi with no luck, but didn't think of trying .exe! Installing now!
And, the siftdev console reports a missing file:
<!--StartFragment-->Could not find or open /Users/sieler/Sifteo_SDK_mac_1_1_2/console-init.js.
(Yes, I checked...it's not anywhere in the SDK)
Stan,
To load a project into Siftdev, you choose the top level of whatever project you want to load, as opposed a specific file within that project's build output.
Ah...the key in siftdev / developer / load apps is to double click on the directory (folder) called 01_HelloWorld ...
going *into* the folder is useless/wrong.
I've now got an app running! Too bad output sent to Log.Debug seems to go down the bit bucket (not visible
in mono, nor in sifdev console)
Thanks, Brian ... I''d typed my "discovery" then forgot to click save-comment :)
sieler@me.com
Log.Debug requires compile with mono Active Configuration of "Debug"! Then after running,
you can view it via mono toolbar: View / Debug.
Flocker: attempts to rebuild get:
Error CS2001: Source file `/Users/sieler/Sifteo_SDK_mac_1_1_2/demos/04_Flocker/Shape.cs' could not be found (CS2001) (04_Flocker)
Error CS2001: Source file `/Users/sieler/Sifteo_SDK_mac_1_1_2/demos/04_Flocker/CubeSimulation.cs' could not be found (CS2001) (04_Flocker)
...neither file is in the Mac zip file of the SDK ... although 04_Flocker does have a FlockerShape.cs file
That's all for me tonight!
"Ah...the key in siftdev / developer / load apps is to double click on the directory (folder) called 01_HelloWorld ...
going *into* the folder is useless/wrong."
Stan, thanks for this tip, I was trying all sorts of things to try and figure out how to load the app in Siftdev. I was trying to reference the bin and build folders inside the 01_HellowWorld and things were not working. That was the tip I needed to clearify how to get Siftdev to load the application. I hadn't tried pointing Siftdev to the actual solution directory thinking the build output directory was what I was needing.
I was able to get all the demo apps to build and run on my Mac after following a few tips... but the slideshow was just getting black cubes inside siftulator... I was too lazy to go break out the actual cubes and connect them to see if that was any different.
Regarding the missing files in the 04_Flocker demo project, you need to remove the references to SHapes.cs and CubeSimulation.cs.
As stated in the demo-docs, the source code for 04_Flocker are FlockerApp.cs, FlockerWrapper.cs and FlockerShape.cs in the same folder.
Add the missing files into the project.