I just had a chance to check out iSimulate, a tool for iPhone developers created by Vimov. iSimulate is intended to complement the current iPhone simulator by adding most of the features a real iPhone has. In the spirit of full disclosure, Vimov sent me a promo code to try it out for free, but I only accepted it with the condition I could write my unfiltered impressions. So here we go. ...
For those of you still on the fence about attending my iPhone OpenGL class in Denver, you should sign up before this Sunday if you want to get the super-combo deal. Right now you get a total combined discount of over $300 if you sign up both for the OpenGL class and the 360iDev conference. If you’re only interested in the OpenGL class, the early-bird registration ends next Friday, September 4th. Obviously I’m biased when I say the class is going to be awesome (which it is), but I can also say with total honesty that 360iDev is an incredible conference. It’s very different from WWDC, but that’s what makes it so great: It has top-quality content and speakers, but it’s small and intimate, so you get to meet and hang out with all the other speakers and participants. It was at the first 360iDev conference back in March that I met Keith and Owen (among many other cool developers) in person for the first time and that’s how App Treasures was born. ...
I just wrote an article for Mobile Orchard on how to get started with OpenGL ES 2.0 on the iPhone 3GS. It goes over all the steps necessary to set up a barebones project that renders a quad on screen using a vertex and a fragment shader. It’s not the most stunning thing ever visually, but I think it makes for a good starting point for OpenGL ES 2.0 projects.
One of the perks of being part of the App Treasures label is that we get some nice cross-promotion with an in-game view to display other titles in the label. This list is, of course, stored in our server and pulled in through a standard UIWebView. It links to other pages with details for each of our games, and a link to buy it directly from the App Store. Everything is really straightforward, except for the App Store link. ...
I just finished creating a graphics demo for a chapter I’m writing for the book iPhone Advanced Projects edited by Dave Mark. In the chapter I go over a few different lighting techniques and go in detail on how to do masked environment mapping on an iPhone 3G with OpenGL ES 1.1. The demo ended up looking pretty good, so I decided to upload a quick video showing the different lighting modes: ...
As far as Apple goes, OS 2.x doesn’t exist anymore. That much was clear from WWDC when we asked their engineers any questions about it. And as cool as 3.0 is, with all the new nifty features, the reality is that there’s still a good percentage of (mostly iPod Touch) users out there still on 2.2. We can have our cake and eat it too by targeting 2.x and still using a few select 3.0 features. But it’s more complicated than Apple made it out to be. Trouble is looming just under the surface. ...
I feel bad for the designers of games like Civilization or Supreme Commander. And I don’t even want to think about World of Warcraft. I thought it was tricky to balance the different flowers in Flower Garden, so I can only imagine the amount of time and effort than went into tweaking all the properties of the many dozens of units in those games to balance them just right. At first, things sounded simple enough: Create 20 different seeds, with varied looks and properties. I had a really cool tool to tweak the flower DNA in real time (more on that another day), so how hard could it be? ...
I’m excited to announce the intensive, two-day class on OpenGL for the iPhone that I’ll be teaching. The class will be held September 26th-27th, in Denver, right before the 360iDev conference, and it’s part of the Mobile Orchard Workshops. The class is aimed at iPhone developers without previous OpenGL experience. It’s going to be very hands-on, and you’ll create both 2D and 3D applications during the weekend. You’ll learn all the basics: cameras, transforms, and how to draw meshes, but we’ll also cover some more advanced topics such as lighting, multitexturing, point sprites, and even render targets. Most importantly, you’ll walk away with a solid understanding of the basis, which will allow you to continue learning OpenGL and advanced computer graphics on your own from the docs, samples, or even browsing the API directly. ...
A couple of weeks ago I gave a presentation about iPhone development at Gamelab, the main game development conference in Spain (yes, it was my first technical presentation in Spanish!). Afterwards I was interviewed by Zoom Net, a popular TV show about games and technology. Yesterday they aired the episode with my interview and I was pleasantly surprised to see they turned it into a full 4-minute section covering Flower Garden. Coverage starts at 8m 40s from the start (and, obviously, it’s in Spanish). ...
I just wrote an article over at Mobile Orchard about the new graphics capabilities on the new iPhone 3G S. Check it out to find out the details, and what those new features might mean for us developers.
Today we finally unveiled a project we had been working on for a couple of months: The App Treasures label. Only indie games that we consider to be really fun, polished, and of high quality are part of the label. We hope that when players enjoy one of our games, they can turn to the other App Treasures games and find something they like. With the App Store dominated more every day by big developers and publishers, this is a way for small indie developers to stand our ground. With App Treasures we establish a strong brand, share resources, and get more visibility in the App Store and in the eyes of the users. The same benefits we would get with a publisher, but without giving up our independence, creative freedom, or a percentage of the profits. ...
One of the unintended side effects of my previous post on the horrible memory situation on the iPhone, was that some people pointed out it was possible to hook up a disk storage back end to the iPhone’s virtual memory system. That’s quite ironic because I think of it as compounding the already dismal situation rather than a solution or a even a stopgap measure. As far as I’m concerned, virtual memory paging is the lazy man’s caching scheme. There, I’ve said it. Now let me qualify it a bit and justify why I feel that way. ...
My recent rant about the dismal situation of memory in the iPhone quickly became quite popular. Most people were either unaware of the situation, or completely agreed that it was a major stumbling block for any app that tries to make good use of the hardware. As a response to that post, some people suggested some intriguing ways to increase the available memory on the iPhone. I’ve been experimenting with that a bit, but I don’t have any conclusive solutions yet. Right now it’s all totally unreliable hacks. Hopefully in a followup post I can present some solutions. ...
I love developing for the iPhone. It’s a really fun machine. Small enough to allow very small teams to create great apps, but at the same time powerful enough that you can do some really impressive games. The tools are great, the iteration time is great. It’s was a pleasure all around developing Flower Garden. Except when it comes to memory, that is. I really like most of the design calls that Apple made designing the software for the iPhone: Using C and Objective C (instead of Javascript or web-only apps), building it on top of a Unix-like core, and even providing OpenGL (although I would love to have lower-level access to the graphics hardware). ...
Come join us for the next iPhone developers meet-up. This should be an interesting one with lots of things to share after GDC and the launch of several local apps (Sky Burger, Appy Newz, Flower Garden and more!). When: April Wednesday 22nd at 7:30PM until whenever Where: O’Sullivan’s Pub in Carlsbad (home of the Appy Entertainment Secret World Headquarters) Appy is being a great host again and providing some munchies. You’re responsible for your own drinks though :-) ...