My name is Adrián Ruiz Tierno and I created Marspixels, this website and these apps and games. I consider all this work as a hobby, not as a professional job.

How it all started?

I started programming Java at my first year of career (Sound and Image Engineering). Soon I started programming in my free time for fun rather than to study it and in a few months I started making simple 2D games with Canvas Java, then I began with 3D graphics with Java3D, but I realised about its bad performance so I leaved it.

At my second year of career we learned C and I loved its high performance. I decided to start learning Android for my own, because I wanted to make a game in Android. The reasons were:

• It requires less work and it is easier to make a game for a smartphone than in computer due to its lower computational power
• I could take my game anywhere and show it to my friends
• I chose Android over iOS because I had an Android for two years and for iOS's apps development a Mac and an iPhone is needed

So I started learning the basics of Android. And in a month I published my first simple game: Shoot the baddies

Later I was searching how to make 3D games in Android and I founded OpenGL ES. I read about it and I discovered its high performance and its use in all game engines. OpenGL ES is a cross-platform (Android, Linux, Windows) application programming interface for rendering 3D graphics using hardware acceleration (Vital for a videogame) I started learning OpenGL ES 2.0 but it was too dificult for me so I learned OpenGL ES first, because it has a fixed pipeline. Then I were able to learn OpenGL ES 2.0 and I did it. OpenGL ES 2.0 is harder to learn than OpenGL ES 1.0 because it has a programmable pipeline, it makes you to write more code but you have more control over the graphics, that means you can make interesting special effects.

I used (well, actually I am still using) these websites to learn OpenGL ES 2.0:

• Learn OpenGL ES. I recommend starting with this website first and complete the eight Android tutorials
• opengl-tutorial
• Learn OpenGL
• ThinMatrix (YouTube channel)

3D Functions Plotter, Dross Run and Plane the Mountains 3D have been made using OpenGL ES 2.0 as an graphic API.

Other knowledges that are helpful for building these games (Especially Plane the Mountains 3D) and I learned in the career are 1D and 2D Fourier Transform, discrete derivative, interpolation, gaussian blur... Making games is not only programming and art, it is also maths and physics.

Plane the Mountains 3D

The last game, Plane the Mountains 3D, is the game that I have been developing the longest time.

My purpose of developing this game is to build beautiful and unlimited 3D landscapes that they can run on low-end and high-end devices, so everyone could play it. The landscapes have to be detailed in low, medium and far distances, that is the reason why I chose an aircraft to move into the landscapes.

I have not used any game engine to make this game, I have made it from scratch and I have not used any other libray than the Android SDK and the Android NDK. These are the programming languages and the tools that I have used to make this game:

• C/C++ for graphics (OpenGL ES 2.0) and the logic part of the game
• Java for the Graphic User Interface in Android
• MATLAB/Octave for building the procedural mountains and some sound effects
• Blender for building and editing 3D models
• Paint.NET and Gimp for making and editing textures

The purpose of the game is to relax, enjoy the views and feel the freedom. Fly through the mountains, through the sea, through the city, through the clouds... The game will be updating with more content, because at the moment it is pretty short.