Happy new year!

2013 is already there, and we’re pretty sure this will be a good year for the Citrus Engine!

The Global Game Jam is in one week, and we’re happy to share that Aymeric and Gsynuh will meet for the first time and make a game (with some other great guys!) using our beloved game engine. Before the game jam, it’s important for us to let you know on what we’re working and what we will be improved during the next week. As usual, we always love your feedback!

This update provides performances improvement using physics engine and a good scalability with some cool new features : CitrusGroup and outsourced camera stuff.

Changelog:
• improved physics performance removing the update call to the debug view if it isn’t visible.
• outsourced camera stuff into a ACitrusCamera class and one camera by view : BlittingCamera, SpriteCamera, StarlingCamera and Away3DCamera2D.
• renamed CitrusView into ACitrusView class.
• addSound method has now two arguments : the id (String) and the sound (*, String or Class).
• added CitrusGroup class to group different kind of objects.
• added createAABB method in MathUtils package.
• added CollisionGetObjectByType into Box2DUtils and NapeUtils.
• added getObjectsByName method.
• added a fla with Citrus objects components to create quickly objects using Flash Pro as a level editor.
• you can change physics step thanks to their public var.
• updated on Starling 1.3.
• fixed a bug where the group property wasn’t updated using Away3DView, SpriteView and StarlingView.
• fixed on StarlingArt, the object’s view changed but animation doesn’t update on the new view.

For more details on CitrusGroup, please follow this discussion and feel free to say what you need!
Concerning camera, take a look on the work in progress of StarlingCamera, most of its content will be moved to other camera too. It gives great options for developers : zooming and rotation. Combine this with your favorite tween engine and you will have easily an awesome scripted camera!

Happy coding!