Posted on November 4th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Apptizr is a new personalized iPhone app recommendations service that just launched in private alpha. Apptizr captures individual user’s interests to make personal app recommendations. Users can receive app recommendations both on the Apptizr website and via a weekly email.
As a special treat, we have secured 50 invites for iDevGames readers to be able to preview this service. To sign up, can go http://www.apptizr.com/invite/vi and type in the invite code “4iDevGames”. The first 50 readers to use this code will be able to sign up.
With over 100K apps approved by the Apple App Store, finding high quality apps that match your interests is like finding a needle in the haystack. Apptizr does the heavy lifting through our proprietary algorithm that matches the users’ interest with the right apps. The engine is smart enough to learn more about our users’ preferences over time as they tell the service whether they liked the recommendations or not. Apptizr also evaluate the applications for quality and only recommend the best apps in each category to the users. It’s definitely a service worth checking out.
Posted on November 1st, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Gendai Games has announced the introduction of the Game Salad Membership Program and the conclusion of the iPhone Early Access Beta Program. Members of the GameSalad Membership Program now have the ability to publish their GameSalad-made games to the iPhone at the cost of only $99 per year for an Express membership. The GameSalad Membership Program features two tiers of membership: the $99 Express membership intended for casual and prosumers, and the $1999 Pro membership intended for studios and professional developers.
Launched earlier this year, GameSalad empowers individuals with the tools to make their own games without the need to write a single line of programming code. Since the introduction of the iPhone game export feature is used to develop custom games. As a member of the GameSalad Membership Program, creators gain access to GameSalad Viewer and the iPhone export service. GameSalad Viewer is an iPhone app that connects with GameSalad Creator through a wireless connection, allowing a game to be sent directly to the iPhone without having to go through an Xcode build process for testing and playing. The iPhone export service is the method by which a GameSalad-made game gets converted for submission to the iPhone App Store.
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Posted on October 28th, 2009 by Lincoln Green
Unity Technologies, the developers of the Unity game engine, have announced that they are releasing the indie version of the game engine for free.
Today at the Unite Conference, Unity Technologies, the leading provider of the multi-platform game development platform for Web, PC, Mac, Wii and iPhone, announced that version 2.6 of its Unity Platform is available and that the feature-packed Unity (formerly known as Unity Indie and priced at $199) is now available at no cost at http://unity3d.com/unity/download to make it possible for all developers to get access to the best development platform available. Unity Pro will continue to be priced at $1,499 per license.
Addition info can be found in the Official Press Release.
Posted on October 24th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Starting life as ZBasic, FutureBASIC has had a loyal following on the Mac since Chris Stasny took over under Staz Software. We’ve reviewed FutureBASIC in the past, and even received some entries into uDevGames made with this IDE. In August 2005, Staz Software was severely hit by Hurricane Katrina and with advancements in Mac OS X, FutureBASIC headed towards the way of CodeWarrior. Staz Software released FutureBASIC as freeware in 2008 but we haven’t heard much from the community until now — an independent team of FutureBASIC programmers developed a translator that allows FutureBASIC to generate applications as Universal Binaries through the use of the open source GCC compiler. The translator, FBtoC is available for download and is currently at version 1.4.1. FutureBASIC 5.4.1 is also available from this project’s site.
Related Links:
Posted on October 21st, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
SDL is a free cross-platform multi-media development API. SDL version 1.2 now builds on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Eric Wing posted a good rundown on the numerous changes. This release is intended to clean up the bug list for SDL 1.2 and lets the developers focus on new development for SDL 1.3! General fixed include the following:
- Fixed flicker when resizing the SDL window
- Fixed crash in
SDL_SetGammaRamp()
- Fixed freeze in SDL_memset() with 0 length when assembly code is disabled.
- Added
SDL_DISABLE_LOCK_KEYS environment variable to enable normal up/down events for Caps-Lock and Num-Lock keys.
- Fixed audio quality problem when converting between 22,050 Hz and 44,100 Hz.
- Fixed a threading crash when a few threads are rapidly created and complete.
- Increased accuracy of alpha blending routines.
- Fixed crash loading BMP files saved with the scanlines inverted.
- Fixed mouse coordinate clamping if
SDL_SetVideoMode() isn’t called in response to SDL_VIDEORESIZE event.
- Added doxygen documentation for the SDL API headers.
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Posted on October 19th, 2009 by Joe Flores
Basic Screen Capturing
Screenflick is a handy screen capture utility with a wide array of options for capture size, export type, frame rate and keyboard or mouse event display. This wide array of features makes it absolutely perfect for an indie game developer, allowing you to quickly and simply make gameplay videos or tutorials. The program is pretty bare bones, with a straightforward UI, presenting all of your options in an easy-to-understand settings pane and one big, obvious record button.
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Posted on October 8th, 2009 by Lincoln Green
Registration for Unite 2009, the third annual Unity Developer Conference, is now open to the public. This year’s conference, running October 28 – 30, will be held at Fort Mason, San Francisco.
Once again it’s time for developers, artists, publishers and anyone else interested to come together for a few days to learn more about Unity and how to get the most out of it. Unity’s larger and broader than ever before: we’re now offering a four day event that starts with an optional day of advanced hands-on classes, followed by three more days of technical sessions.
The conference features keynote and roadmap presentation, over a dozen one-hour technical sessions
5 hours of hands-on lab time, a bonus day of hands-on technical classes and more. On October 27th, they will be offering a free “Unity for Flash Developers” introductory course and a “Unity for Unity Developers” masterclass. For more details and pricing info, visit the Unity website.
Posted on October 7th, 2009 by Lincoln Green
Cheetah3D 5.0, released today, builds on previous releases of the native OS X 3D software by adding an all new node based material system, better multi-threading, a large library of included materials, and many other tools and UI tweaks.
Cheetah3D 5.0 was released today. Version 5.0 adds a completely new node based material system which allows professional designers to create stunning new materials just by drag and drop. Additionally, the render engine was optimized to efficiently handle up to 16 CPU cores. The modeling tools have been extended by a new bevel tool and a bend modifier, and basic export to the Collada file format has been added. Cheetah3D 5.0 now also supports pivot points.
A Cheetah3D 5.0 single user license costs 149 US$ and 69 US$ for an upgrade from an older version (1.x, 2.x, 3.x or 4.x).
Posted on October 6th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
atMonitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Mac OS X that displays system activity in real-time. It is designed to allow quick assessment of computer’s state, but it is powerful enough to make it a core utility in any developer’s system troubleshooting toolkit. atMonitor offers a better alternative to Apple’s own “Activity Monitor” and combines the best of the features of many other existing monitoring programs. The developer has written specifically to help him with an OpenGL based framework. You can use atMonitor to not only monitor your CPU, but also GPU usage. In addition, atMonitor can monitor FPS — making sure that your game is not overflushing, as well as log all monitored values. atMonitor is compatible with Snow Leopard.
Related Link: atPurpose Technologies.
Posted on October 1st, 2009 by iDevGames
Impact Game Audio is a new audio outsourcing provider with facilities in Sydney, Australia. They have provided audio services for such films as Stardust, Happy Feet, The Sum of Us, TV shows and other movies. They work with game developers with budgets ranging from casual gaming to AAA title developers.
Simply mention “idevgames” and I am sure we will find something suitable. Our production is fully customisable to your budget.
They are also highly interested in working with iPhone developers.
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