If you use view controllers in your iOS apps, here’s a doozie: The behavior of viewWillAppear/viewDidApear/viewWillDisappear/viewDidDisappear silently changed on iOS5. Depending how your app is organized, this might range from not mattering to being a total disaster. Continue reading
My Next Game
No, this is not an announcement of my next game (I wish). Rather, it’s a brain dump of my struggle with the process. It seems that in the game development community we often share the process of making a game and how it did afterwards. But it’s rare having some insight into what goes on before the project gets started. Where do ideas come from? Why do we pick one and not another? These are semi-coherent notes about the things I’m struggling with right now. Continue reading
Designing Good Free-To-Play Games
It’s pretty clear that free-to-play games are the way to go if you care about making money from your games. And don’t give me that line about being indie and not caring about the money. On the contrary, being able to make money from the games we love to make, allows us to keep doing what we’re passionate about.
I was having a discussion today about free games with other developers and I thought I would post here some random thoughts and open it up for discussion. Continue reading
Duplicating Launchboard Wobble
One of the most requested features for Flower Garden is to be able to move pots around. Not only do players want to group similar flowers or colors together, but they also want to be able to take advantage of the properties of the different gardens. I figured the best thing to do this is by mimicking the wobble on the iPhone launchboard icons when you enter edit mode. Continue reading
Xcode 4 Trials and Tribulations
Wether you want it or not, Xcode 4 is around to stay when it comes to iOS development. I’ve been happily comfortable with Xcode 3 for quite a while, and my first impressions of Xcode 4 left me completely cold. However, support for Xcode 3 will soon go away, so I need to get ready for the inevitable transition. Maybe I was just having a bad day when I looked at Xcode 4 for the first day. Or maybe my nightmares finally came true and I’ll be forced to look for an alternative IDE. Which one is it? Read on to find out. Continue reading