benbritten.com

I just posted a lovely long piece on the Tin Man Games blog about our thoughts on Android, WP7 and Kindle, you should totally go and check it out:

and now a word about platforms

The Android marketplace (and the other Android compatible app stores) are all a bit different, and you are not required to have an account at the store to use your Android phone. This is a boon for some people who don’t ever need to buy stuff, or don’t want their credit card details on file somewhere, but it is a bane for the casual games on those devices. Adding that extra hurdle just to spend a few bucks on an app seems to take it’s toll in purchase numbers.

Cheers!
-B

Hey, so I upgraded to SDK 4 when it came out and everything is groovy, love the new iPhone 4 simulator, even if it makes all my non-doubled images look like ass.

Anyhow one huge frustration I was having was that the sound and video that worked just fine in the older SDKs no longer seemed to work on the simulator. (everything works fine on the device) I had a few bugs with the way the 3.2 and above handle video, but even after sorting that out it refused to work on the simulator.

I have been pulling my hair out about this for a week now. I mean, it is not a huge deal, I can get by without sound in the simulator, but it is really annoying when i KNOW the code is fine.

Just to be clear: I have a hybrid OpenAL/AVAudioPlayer sound management system, and the videos are all played with MPMoviePlayerController (using the old ways on the old systems and the new ways on the new systems) everything works groovy on all of my myriad devices but NOT on the simulator.

The movies wont even kick off, you tell them to play, and you immediately get MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification. No errors, nothing.

I finally figured it out! It was my iSight camera. I have an old school original firewire iSight attached to my MacPro for the iChatting etc.. I disconnected that from the system and suddenly sound and video are working again! So I guess I would suggest to anyone else having similar issues: disconnect any external devices that deal with sound or video and see if the problem persists.

Anyway, I am glad I figured out the problem, but I am a bit annoyed that I have to unhook my iSight in order to be able to develop with the simulator. Mighty annoying.

Cheers!
-B

Just released a new little app: iRaspberry. It was actually last week, but I am perpetually behind, so there you go. Apparently we got some 12,000 downloads the first weekend, so that is cool :-)

It is free to download, and you get two of the raspberry videos for free, and there is an in app purchase to upgrade to the full app which gives you 16 ways the stick out your toungue at people :-)

anyhow, it is a silly thing, but lots of fun, so check it out!

Cheers!
-B

I posted this to the Escape Factory website yesterday and thought I would crosspost it here as well for your perusal:

I am just playing around with making myself some groovy looking wallpapers and lockscreen backgrounds for my iPad and realized it is not as easy as just whacking up some 1024x768 image. There is the whole auto-rotating issue. In the end I decided to make a template, and I made it just a wee bit nicer so I could post it here.

Lovely isnt it?

The basic upshot is that for desktop wallpapers (the one that shows up behind your icons) your best bet is to make a 1024x1024 image and the center 768x768 is the area that will always be visible.

Here are some examples I took, to give you an idea:

It is important to note that the iPad overlays a gradient on top of your image (as well as icon shadows), so if you want to be color-perfect then you will want to take that into account.

As for the lockscreen, it is a slightly different beast since it has the overlay bars. In portrait, you have the same 768x768 'safe' area in the middle, but in landscape that is chopped down to a slightly thinner slice of image:

Thats it! have fun, make some cool wallpapers!

Cheers!
-Ben

Hey, my new book is out! (actually it has been out for a few weeks now, but I am just getting around to blogging about it :-)

Here is the amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPhone-Games-Development-Cabrera/dp/1430225998/

Anyhow, it is a really good book, even if you are not a beginner. Here is a snippet from the promo blurb about 'what you will learn':

• Efficient methods for drawing in 2D and 3D to the iPhone screen
• Game-specific animation techniques with Core Animation
• To use OpenGL ES for more complex and realistic gaming backgrounds and action
• Numerous ways to add music to enhance the gaming experience
• How to give your users access to their iPhone libraries from within games
• The tools and techniques of 3D audio for creating even more realistic gaming experiences
• How to do networking right, including two-player games over Bluetooth and multiplayer games over Wi-Fi

I wrote the chapters on OpenGL, so feel free to ask me any questions you might have about them :-)

Enjoy the book!
Cheers!
-B