It’s been too long
Chances are you were wondering where on earth I’ve been. Or maybe you are a first timer to my blog and really don’t care what I’ve been up to.
Well, dear reader, I’ve been disconnected for about 3 weeks. I was visiting some family in another city here in Mexico and I didn’t have any means to get connected to the internet.
So after 3 weeks I find myself connected again and I feel good.
Yes, it does feel good to be connected again, but I haven’t found the inspiration to start working on new projects. Maybe I still have a burn out, or maybe I’m just one lazy bastard.
Just a few minutes ago I finished doing some javascript coding to have some sort of banner system that was dynamic and didn’t require any Flash.
Flash is evil, trust me!
And what about the iPhone? Comics Lib 1.3 is still under development but I haven’t worked on it since, last year. PuzzleTouch? Let’s not even start with that piece of crap.
There is one game I would like to create, which is based of an old Atari game.
I don’t think it’s too much work and I should be able to create it rather quickly. So maybe I should give it a shot.
I’ll keep you posted!
Spammmm
Just a quick message to advice all of you that spammers have found my blog.
Comics Lib 1.3 preview
As you all may know, Comics Lib is an application for iPhone and iPod touch to store your entire comicbook collection. The current version (1.2) was a massive update, adding a bunch of new features and allowing the user to do less typing.
However, the current state of the code is a mess. It’s not so easy to add new features without having to do a lot of hacks and workarounds. Also, it is not a good memory citizen, as Apple likes to put it, because the entire list is read at application launch, which is not good.
So after giving it some thought I decided that Comics Lib 1.3 will probably be a huge rewrite. The biggest new feature will be that I’m switching to an sqlite3 database to store the comics list. This will add better perfomance and will consume less memory.
I’m also going to improve the interface a lot. The current version already improved the interface, but really it could be so much better. And let’s not speak about the code itself.
Next friday I’m taking a week off, I think I may have a “burn out”. I hope version 1.3 will see the light soon, because this application has a lot of potential.
Stay tuned!
Is Mac development still hot?
With the coming of the iPhone SDK and seeing how easy it is to make application for the iPhone and iPod touch, one would concider to skip Mac development as a whole and concentrate on the development of these new devices.
However, as attractive as iPhone development is, some kinds of applications cannot be done on an iPhone. One of the apps I wanted to bring to the iPhone was RSS Menu but after thinking about it it became clear that this wasn’t such a very good idea.
There are other RSS readers outthere for iPhone and I have tried some of them, but they don’t responds the way I want them to.
Yes, the iPhone (and iPod touch) are very sexy machines to develop for and the nice thing about it is that when you develop for such a device you really need to focus on the important parts of your app.
What really makes these machine shine is game development. Some rumor sites have said that the iPod touch in particular is a great gaming device and one that could easily beat the Nintendo DS (which is the only portable gaming device with a touchscreen), and I do tend to agree.
The DS doesn’t have such a big screen and the graphics are so so, especially when it comes to 3D games.
I do think I’m gonna keep developing for the iPhone for sometime. It’s the perfect environment for me. My current Mac applications will still see some updates (ahem, RSS Menu 2.0) but my main focus will be on the iPhone. At least for now…
PuzzleTouch 2.0 coming soon
After a giving it some thought I decided to halt the development of my next game until I have something more concrete. It’s just that I’m not happy with how things are going and I’m still unsure about the usage of the cocos2d library for my projects.
Though the library offers great stuff for beginner game developers, I can’t get around using it and I have the feeling I’m less in control of what I’m doing.
So what I’m going to do is work on a new version of PuzzleTouch, a slide puzzle game for the iPhone and iPod touch. I’m rewriting the entire thing and have it suck less.
Does the current version suck? Well no, but it doesn’t feel like an iPhone app. Since it was my first iPhone app, I didn’t have enough knowledge so I did a lot of things that look ugly.
As far as new features go here’s a list:
- ability to use the camera as a source for the image to compose
- new difficulty mode
- better graphics and animation
Another thing I would like to do is use the accelerometer in some form. And I do have some neat ideas which should be possible 
I’ll keep you posted!
AppStore thoughts
After reading what people have to say about the AppStore, I felt it was time for me to say something.
For me the most important issue is getting into the store itself. When you have a new app it usually takes 2 to 4 weeks to get in. That’s usually too late because your development continues and by the time your app gets into the store, you already have an update.
Speaking of updates, getting one into the store usually takes 1 week or longer. Updates are usually urgent and need to be available asap.
I’m well aware that Apple gets a huge amount of apps each day (or even each hour), but they need to come up with a better solution for this. A way to get apps faster into the store.
The pricing situation is fine for me. But I do agree with what the others have to say about that. Read more here: Improve the AppStore
It’s freezing…
OK, I’m probably exagerating, but it feels damn cold.
The good thing about Mexico is that even when it feels like winter is coming for you, there will always be sun. And unlike Belgium, the sun here can and will burn you if you stay to long underneath it.
Cold weather is not always good though, in fact it is never good: People get sick and when you get a shower you don’t wanna turn off the hot water.
In my case, I get a mix of diseases. One day I went out with some friends and when I got back I almost lost my voice with an ear infection as a result. Why did my ear get infected? Quite a lot of reasons. The first being that I probably didn’t get cured the first time I got the infection (around August, which was really scary). Second, during that week I got the flu, not very heavy, but enough to having to breath through my mouth.
Add to that the fact that I was shouting that day and you have the percect environment to get some sort of infection.
So, what’s next? The doctor said I just need to put some drops in my ear and hopefully that will cure the damned thing.
Well, I hope so…
Updates and updates
When browsing the Twitter site I discovered that WordPress 2.7 was released. So I immediatly wanted to update my copy.
Things, however, didn’t go as they should have gone. For starters, instead of doing an update I ended up reinstalling the bloody thing from scratch. Luckily, my database was left intact, so I didn’t lose any of my previous posts.
But was it worth it? Yes! The new admin page looks fantastic and it’s now much more fun to write stuff. If you plan to update, by all means please do so. But be prepared for things to go wrong.
Oh and I also changed the theme. This one looks cool, but I may be forced to create my own theme.
Cocos2d part 2
Today I decided to start over with the game I’m developing. I’m still using the Cocos2d library, but I’m writing better code and I finally found a way to organize my objects a little better.
What I have now is a very simple prototype that uses the touch controls and the accelerometer. It’s quite playable but it’s far from entertaining. For starters, there are no enemies so there’s nothing to do at this point.
But it’s getting towards where I wanted. This game is gonna be an action game set in a futuristic environment. So that means, a lot of Photoshopping :p
Tomorrow I will start with the actual game and probably start using the real texture instead of colored squares. I would also like to add some particles but that’s not so urgent yet.
I will post some screenshots once I have something worth showing.
Cocos2d library for iPhone
When it comes to writing games, there is always one question that comes to mind: start fully from scratch or use an existing library. Professional game developers will usually opt for the first option, sinceit allows to then to have more control over the game mechanics and also a library is usually too general and they want something more specific.
A few days ago I started working on my second game for iPhone. What I really hate when doing this type of work is the setup you have to do. Not only do you need to setup the OpenGL context (which is what is used to show something on the screen), but you also need to take care of how you will organize your objects internally.
Sometimes this takes a long time and it can take awhile until you have something on the screen. Luckily I found Cocos2d which I must say is really impressive. It’s a simple library that also uses the Chipmunk physics engine and is powered by OpenGL ES which makes graphics really fast.
I just started setting up my game and it’s great. Ofcourse it doesn’t remove the tedious work of organizing your objects, but it makes it more fun. Setup of your environment is very simple.
Once I have something more concrete I will post some screenshots from the game. Let me first continue exploring this exciting new library.
You can read more about Cocos2d by visiting the following URL: http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/