Posted by Kieran on November 16, 2009 under Mobile, iPhone | 
Cocos2D is a tremendous opensource resource for the iPhone that is going from strength to strength
http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/about
Features include
- Scene management (workflow)
- Transitions between scenes
- Sprites and Sprite Sheets
- Effects: Lens, Ripple, Waves, Liquid, Twirl, etc.
- Actions (behaviors):
- Trasformation Actions: Move, Rotate, Scale, Jump, etc.
- Composable actions: Sequence, Spawn, Repeat, Reverse
- Ease Actions: Exp, Sin, Cubic, etc.
- Misc actions: CallFunc, OrbitCamera
- Basic menus and buttons
- Integrated physics engine (both Box2d and Chipmunk)
- Particle system
- Text rendering support (variable and fixed width fonts)
- Texture Atlas support
- Tile Map support
- Parallax scrolling support
- Sound support
- Streak Motion support
- High Score server (Cocos Live)
- Touch/Accelerometer support
- Portrait and Landscape mode
- Integrated Pause/Resume
- Fast Textures:Supports PVRTC textures, 16-bit textures and 32-bit textures
- Language: objective-c
- Open Source: Compatible with open and closed source projects
- OpenGL ES 1.1 based
Once you have checked out the latest version from here like so
svn checkout http://cocos2d-iphone.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ cocos2d-iphone-read-only
navigate to the directory cocos2d-iphone and run the following
. ./install_template.sh
This will install the cocos2d template into xcode for you, which makes setting up and using this framework even easier!
Great demos are available from within the project itself to learn from as well as the wiki documentation which can be found here
Some full open source examples are available from the following links
The greatest part for me personally is the heavy lifting that chipmunk can do for you regarding collisions and physics for your game, the best tutorial I have found for using it is available here
http://www.alexandre-gomes.com/articles/chipmunk/
Posted by Kieran on November 12, 2009 under Mobile, iPhone |
With particular note for free applications that need to increase their “stickyness” to achieve reasonable revenues via in application advertisements such as those provided by Admob, adding community features such as a high score boards and messaging between users.
http://corporate.scoreloop.com/
Provides location aware global high score boards
Ability to post to notifications to Facebook
Issue player challenges
Cross promotion of other games in the score loop system
Example game Wild Solitaire http://linktoapp.com/wild+solitaire
http://www.openfeint.com/
Compare games with friends
Location based scoreboards
game profiles
Achievements
Example game: http://linktoapp.com/alex+the+fox
http://plusplus.com/
Plus Plus is NGMocos private version of the above tools, they do intend to make it open in the future however
Example game: http://linktoapp.com/eliminate
Posted by Kieran on November 5, 2009 under Mobile, iPhone |
Discovered some fairly interesting behaviour of the iPhone simulator that had me stumped for a little while
When you want to have an application that starts up in Landscape without a status bar
the following code snippit placed into your applicationDidFinishLaunching method of the app delegate will allow you to test in the emulator!
//For your normal application execution on the iPhone, this can also be done in the info.plist
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarOrientation:UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight];
//How to make the simulator behave itself preprocess for just the simulator
#if (TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR)
UIScreen *screen = [UIScreen mainScreen];
tabBarController.view.bounds = CGRectMake(0, 0, screen.bounds.size.height, screen.bounds.size.width);
tabBarController.view.transform = CGAffineTransformConcat(tabBarController.view.transform, CGAffineTransformMakeRotation((M_PI * 90 / 180.0)));
tabBarController.view.center = window.center;
#endif
tabBarController in this case is the first view controller given to the window
Hope this helps someone else!
Posted by Kieran on November 2, 2009 under Mobile, iPhone |
One of the pains of getting the feedback from reviews on iTunes is that you would have to login into each country individually AppViz for $30 solves this problem, it also collates or your sales information (daily, weekly, monthly) into one place, far faster than you could possibly achieve using the iTunes connect interface
pretty indispensable in my opinion
http://www.ideaswarm.com/products/appviz/
Posted by Kieran on under Mobile, iPhone |
It has to be said that the current iTunes system for rating apps has a certain element of bias – the current methods means that probably the majority of people who are leaving a rating are doing so when they delete an application. However the code on the following page allows you to remind users from your application at set time intervals to leave you a review. Hopefully encouraging a more positive review bias.
Thanks to Arash for making this available in a simple package for integrating with your project
http://arashpayan.com/blog/index.php/2009/09/07/presenting-appirater/
Posted by Kieran on October 15, 2009 under Mobile, iPhone, payment |
In app purchases have been enabled for free applications, great move from Apple should relieve the pressure on app store submissions as people will no longer need to submit “lite apps” as well as a “paid for version”. Applications that were designed for in app purchase but required the initial application to be purchased will no longer need to be!
Posted by Kieran on August 29, 2009 under Mobile, iPhone |
List of fonts available on iPhone OS feel free to add or amend to in the comments
Font Family: American Typewriter
Font: AmericanTypewriter
Font: AmericanTypewriter-Bold
Font Family: AppleGothic
Font: AppleGothic
Font Family: Arial
Font: ArialMT
Font: Arial-BoldMT
Font: Arial-BoldItalicMT
Font: Arial-ItalicMT
Font Family: Arial Rounded MT Bold
Font: ArialRoundedMTBold
Font Family: Arial Unicode MS
Font: ArialUnicodeMS
Font Family: Courier
Font: Courier
Font: Courier-BoldOblique
Font: Courier-Oblique
Font: Courier-Bold
Font Family: Courier New
Font: CourierNewPS-BoldMT
Font: CourierNewPS-ItalicMT
Font: CourierNewPS-BoldItalicMT
Font: CourierNewPSMT
Font Family: DB LCD Temp
Font: DBLCDTempBlack
Font Family: Georgia
Font: Georgia-Bold
Font: Georgia
Font: Georgia-BoldItalic
Font: Georgia-Italic
Font Family: Helvetica
Font: Helvetica-Oblique
Font: Helvetica-BoldOblique
Font: Helvetica
Font: Helvetica-Bold
Font Family: Helvetica Neue
Font: HelveticaNeue
Font: HelveticaNeue-Bold
Font Family: Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN W3
Font: HiraKakuProN-W3
Font Family: Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN W6
Font: HiraKakuProN-W6
Font Family: Marker Felt
Font: MarkerFelt-Thin
Font Family: STHeiti J
Font: STHeitiJ-Medium
Font: STHeitiJ-Light
Font Family: STHeiti K
Font: STHeitiK-Medium
Font: STHeitiK-Light
Font Family: STHeiti SC
Font: STHeitiSC-Medium
Font: STHeitiSC-Light
Font Family: STHeiti TC
Font: STHeitiTC-Light
Font: STHeitiTC-Medium
Font Family: Times New Roman
Font: TimesNewRomanPSMT
Font: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT
Font: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT
Font: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT
Font Family: Trebuchet MS
Font: TrebuchetMS-Italic
Font: TrebuchetMS
Font: Trebuchet-BoldItalic
Font: TrebuchetMS-Bold
Font Family: Verdana
Font: Verdana-Bold
Font: Verdana-BoldItalic
Font: Verdana
Font: Verdana-Italic
Font Family: Zapfino
Font: Zapfino
Posted by Kieran on August 23, 2009 under Mobile, iPhone |
If your wondering how to have a dynamic multiple line UILabel its actually incredibly easy
theLabel.numberOfRows = 0
Posted by Kieran on August 4, 2009 under Mobile, iPhone |
Apple announced at WWDC the price points for the new iPhone 3GS and a price reduction for the iPhone 3G
3G 8GB goes from $199 to $99.
3GS 16GB to be $199 (same as old price for 3G 8GB)
3GS 32GB to be $299 (same as old price for 3G 16GB).
From O2 in the UK looking at the same 24 month price plans you would have to sign up for with ATT
the 3G 8GB is free on all 24 month contracts
The 3GS 16GB is £90 on £35 a month contracts and free on £45+ contracts
The 3GS 32GB is £175 on £35 a month contracts, £97 on £45 and free on £75+ contracts
The cheapest ATT contract I can find for a San Francisco zip code would be $30 for data + $39.99 for nation 450 + a one time activation fee of $36 .
Another thing to note many people forget that o2s contracts all include unlimited wifi with the cloud, whilst I would rather have a great hspda network everywhere I go, the inclusion of being able to use the cloud for me personally is very useful
So was it more a case that o2 was subsidizing the 3G iPhone more heavily than ATT? rather than rip of Britain being the usual case?
One thing is for certain I would be very happy if the rumours that Tmobile and Orange may be stocking the iPhone in the future are true, as competition can only be a good thing for the consumer and hopefully people who would purchase an iPhone, if it was not restricted to o2 without unlocking it will be able to do so.
Posted by Kieran on July 21, 2009 under Mobile, iPhone |
24.07.09 Update James Parton of 02 Litmus has responded over at mobile industry review, thanks James for addressing peoples concerns!
O2 Litmus yesterday launched what looks at first glance like a great opportunity to engage the developer community
O2 Litmus competition
However once you read the terms and conditions for the competition, you come across this absolute gem
Your app(s) must be free to iPhone customers and your Apple iPhone Developer Program Portal account must have at least 95 device slots available for registering O2 iPhone App Showdown judge devices. You will be able to retain 5 registered device slots for yourself.
Excluding the time that it would take submitting the 95 UUIDs to the Apple iPhone Developer Program Portal, this simply is not practical with the way the program is currently setup, whereby you are only allowed to register 100 devices in any given year. For probably not the only developer frustrated by this already, view the blog of James Thomson-> running out of adhoc profiles. Understandably Apple are doing this to stop people bypassing distribution of presumably rejected or ineligible applications outside of the app store and therefore protecting the wider community.
However assuming you have 95 available slots, for a reasonable set of test devices in a year most people are probably going to have the following at a minimum
iPod touch at 3.0
iPod 2g at 3.0
iPod 3g at 3.0
iPod 3gs at 3.0
If you factored in having one of those devices as well at 2.0(or making the assumption that in the next 12 months Apple may release another device) you have reached 5 devices
Of course in practice most people that are developing for the iPhone on a contract basis have also added client devices so that the client can view the application on their own device before it is submitted to the app store
Do O2 Litmus really require entrants to hold back 95 device slots or is there another way in which people can distribute adhoc to the judges, maybe O2 Litmus could issue a certificate with a very short expiry
Hopefully this issue gets resolved as otherwise it looks like a good promotion