Inside BlackBerry » Native Development Kit

Gaming on the BlackBerry PlayBook

Luke Reimer — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:54:11 +0000

(Originally posted on the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog)

Since the launch of the Native SDK for BlackBerry® Tablet OS closed beta, game developers have been able to leverage rich tools to take advantage of the power within the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. With the general availability launch of the NDK, along with the Scoreloop NDK beta availability, leveraging the full capabilities of the BlackBerry PlayBook is now easier than ever.

The video above highlights some great examples of gaming experiences on the BlackBerry PlayBook, including apps like Dead Space for BlackBerry PlayBook, Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD, and N.O.V.A. 2 HD (full list below).

Spacelings by HotGen Limited
BattleBallz Chaos by Pocketeers Limited
Raging Thunder by Polarbit
Bejeweled 2 for BlackBerry PlayBook by Electronic Arts Inc.
THE GAME OF LIFE for BlackBerry PlayBook by Electronic Arts Inc.
Dead Space for BlackBerry PlayBook by Electronic Arts Inc.
Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD by Gameloft Inc.
N.O.V.A. 2 HD by Gameloft Inc.
Let’s Golf 2 HD by Gameloft Inc.
ToFu by HotGen Limited

Cascades: Rich UI Development for BlackBerry Apps

Douglas Soltys — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:00:29 +0000

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Here’s a guest post from our friend Anders at RIM TAT! – Ed.

Cascades is the user interface (“UI”) framework that TAT has been using for many years to create numerous advanced UIs and applications, such as Scrapbook for BlackBerry PlayBook. I’m happy to announce that it will soon be part of the BlackBerry Native SDK for Tablet OS.

Here’s a short list of Cascades features:

Great performance, including amazing transitions and animations
Flexible UI layouts including free form lists.
3D support
Support for mixing pre-packaged UI components with custom components
Core UI feature support

Cascades was originally developed to enable development of really innovative and unique applications. This put hard requirements on the flexibility and extendibility of the UI framework. The need for designer/developer collaboration was also one of stronger driving factors when developing the framework. Let’s dig deeper into how Cascades will aid the development of rich and compelling UI.