Juggling With Jelly

Development Environment

2011-08-28T09:12:00.004+01:00

Finally found a spare 5 mins to consider iCrania again, decided to reassess the dev tools marketplace as it has been a long time and there have been numerous changes to the app store rules in that time.

Decided on iTorque 2D, I had looked at Torque Game Builder in the past and it seemed to be pretty good but not quite there for mobile development, it would appear this has been rectified. Very nice integration with Xcode for deployment means that I can get on with the basics fairly easily. So finger crossed that easing the tedium of actually creating the interface will actually help me to finally get my game onto another phone!

New plan of attack (shouldn't take much more than 10 years at my previous rate!!):

Get basics of interface up and running - 10% complete
Implement basic controls mechanic - 5% complete
Redesign puzzle engine (to allow better portability to different resolutions)
Add all remaining screens
Implement full game mechanic
Polish
Get to play my game on a phone again :-)

Obviously number 3 will help me with iCrania HD for iPad which might finally see me adding all the original Crania Super Deluxe ideas:

Improved higher resolution FX
More levels
More play modes (puzzle mode, delivery mode, Super Arcade mode)
More types of crate, graphically different and for SA mode functionally different
Achievements (Game Center?)

Let Development Commence

2009-08-18T19:35:00.002+01:00

After a bit of a hiccough with the registration process (Apple's automated system didn't believe I was me!) I'm now fully registered. Still plenty to do to get the developer cert sorted and installed but another step completed. I'll probably have to just use the iPod for development as the iPhone will have to be registered on the Enterprise account for work.

Spent the day trying to climb what proved to be quite a steep learning curve on Objective C for the work applications, all the concepts are very similar to C++ and Csharp (must learn how to use this Mac keyboard!) but as usual the devil is in the detail, not to mention the syntax. Made significant progress on my understanding, although perhaps not outwardly on the fairly basic example I created.

iCrania foundations

2009-08-17T14:35:00.004+01:00

So I'm finally getting some time this week to get to grips with developing for the iPhone for work, just a simple dashboard app first, baby steps and all that.

Anyhoo, over the weekend and in preparation for this I did a bit more reading up and got sidetracked down the line of games programming and so how to get started. The upshot is that I've paid my £59 and signed up for the iPhone developer programme for myself. I'm fully aware that so far I've never actually gotten to the stage of releasing Crania on WM (although I get to play the damned near finished version myself) but I think that is a reasonable enough price even if I don't release anything in year one.

In addition to this I've also bought another book, but in a first for me it's an online and pdf only book. And even more interesting it isn't even finished yet! I've used the O'Reilly Rough Cuts service to get a copy of the pre-published iPhone Game Development book. A great idea in my opinion. I've also watched and read a number of tutorials and am hoping to get enough free time over the next week to knock up a proof of concept. So whilst I wait for the activation email and before I get to finish the signing up process I've got time to make some design decisions and even delve into the code itself. One down side of the Apple sign up process is that to have a company name you have to have a real company (!) and so the games will have to be released under my own name instead, no biggy I suppose.

How I'm going to do it!

Still a couple of major decisions to be taken, the biggest being do I go down the road of OpenGL ES, I am leaning heavily in that direction at the moment as although Crania probably wouldn't need the performance I'm sure that should I decide to revisit VSTOL and maybe even FormFighter that they would need the OpenGL power to get past the hurdle that prevented either of them seeing the light of day on WM.

I'm pretty sure that most of my game engine code for Crania will be easily ported as the main guts of it was written in C, the code for creating the initial layout of each puzzle and checking if it has been solved at each step shouldn't need much work. The collision detection which was always a bit messy and had to have additional code to give it a helping hand in positioning the crates will be scrapped in favour of simple positional checks.

As the original control method included touch screen buttons I'll no doubt continue with the same control mechanic, I'm just not sure that you would get a responsive enough control using tilt to move the crane.

The graphics will no doubt go through another bout of reworking to try and bring them up to scratch for the correct size required, this will once again push my pixel manipulation skills to the max .

I'm thinking that I'll probably try and create a simple 5-10 level iCrania Lite first with the same single play mode as the original. Once I have everything running I can then turn my attention to the deluxe version and all the ideas that I've been milling over for ages now.

Welcome to Manchester

2009-07-17T11:03:00.004+01:00

More great work from the excellent marketing people at City

MCFC

New Man City Website

2009-07-01T23:50:00.002+01:00

So my favourite football team (in all the land and all the world) have launched a new version of their official website, and it is super slick. Much better than the old site and bereft of unsightly advertising banners. It’s good to be the richest club in the world!

MCFC Website

iCrania anyone?

2009-06-20T12:00:00.010+01:00

So I now have a MacBook Pro in my grubby paws to allow me to develop iPhone apps for work, I’ve got plenty of ideas running through my head which will keep me gainfully employed for a while.

However this also throws up the obvious possibility of me making an iPhone/iPod version of Crania, iCrania if you will. I’ll be doing some tech tests in the coming weeks as I get to grips with the 3.0 SDK and will no doubt post my thoughts here.

iCrania Interface Mockup, crude gfx

OS 3.0 on iPod Touch

2009-06-20T12:00:00.008+01:00

I sat watching the clock tick round to 6pm on 17th so that I could download the new version of the iOS for my iPod Touch. Unlike iPhone users I had to pay £5.99 for the pleasure but overall I think that it is worth it and much preferable to the WM world where OS updates are very unlikely.
Having now had a few days to play with it I have to say that I can only think of positive things to say about the new additions. Cut/Copy/Paste works very well, as does the shake to undo function. The landscape keyboard for email entry is a godsend and I’m very pleased that I can now log into YouTube from the bundled app.

I’ve not really had the chance to use the Voice Memos app yet but as I’d bought a similar app previously I would say that I will use it in the future.

Let the game …… carry on

2009-05-20T12:00:00.003+01:00

I have finally blown the dust of my little puzzle game, Crania is edging closer and closer to completion.

Having played around with the main graphics elements in photoshop creating, hopefully, far better looking gfx for the upcoming PC version (and scaled down version for a possible WM VGA version too) I managed to muster up enough enthusiasm to actually tackle the game itself.

The first problem that I hit was that I didn’t have Game Editor installed anymore and when I installed from the file of the official website I just got a demo version that couldn’t be registered with my existing details. A quick PM to the creator got me fixed up pretty quickly though and I’m now running v1.3.9 of the tool.

The actual gameplay mechanic has been finished for a very long time, the bits that are left to do are the boring interface side of things which probably explains the times when I blow cold on the project. One thing that I’d been putting off for a long time (even by Crania’s long winded gestation periods standards) is the menu navigation tweaks to allow the game to run on a WM smartphone. As I only really use smartphone now I quickly decided that the SP functionality would be the first thing I tackled. After musing over my previous thoughts on the method for non touch screen menu navigation I had a sudden brainwave and instead opted to number all the buttons and then capture the keypad presses. As simple as it sounds and ultimately will be when compared to what I’d had in mind before this still presented a few problems which I’m slowly working through. Most importantly though, I now have a copy of the game on my SP which I can play.