Posted on July 8th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Creating applications for the iPhone requires a machine capable of running the iPhone SDK app development environment. Despite Apple providing a free, full-featured copy of its developer tools to make every single user of Mac OS X a potential developer and Macs being competitive with most PCs in terms or price, there are still many developers looking to enter the world of iPhone app creation without learning Objective-C or using Xcode. One such group is generating a great deal of interest from the open source community, as well as JAVA programmers. Circumventing the problem of development of a virtual machine for the iPhone, the project XMLVM allows developers to cross-compile a Java application to Objective-C and execute it on an iPhone. Of course in order to get applications to run on a real device, you still require a Mac and Xcode in order to properly sign the applications using Apple’s code-signing tools. Without the code-signing step, applications will not run on normally provisioned (i.e. non jail-break) devices.
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Posted on July 6th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Cafu, formally known as Ca3D-Engine, is coming to Mac OS X. Cafu is a 3D engine that boasts multi-player network support and cross-platform portability. Written in C++, it currently runs on Windows and Linux (GCC 3.x and 4.x). Features include:
- First engine ever to combine light-maps with dynamic lighting effects!
- Radiosity-based, physically correct lighting.
- Dynamic, shader-driven, per-pixel lighting for both worlds and models.
- Support for ATI and NVidia programmable GPUs and shaders.
- Employs fmod for all sound, audio and music effects.
- A powerful Graphical User Interface (GUI) System (or short: GuiSys) is integrated with the engine.
- Can directly import models in ase, mdl (Half-Life 1) and md5 (Doom 3) model file formats. (Importers for 3ds, lwo, obj, mdl2 (Half-Life 2) file formats are in preparation.)
- Provides continuous-level-of-detail, permitting very large out-door scenes.
- Supports Scripting based on the Lua programming language!
- Full support for curved surfaces (Bezier Patches) as seen in Doom 3, from the CaWE editor through preprocessing to dynamic lighting and shadows.
While not open source, Cafu licensing is within the reach of most indie developers. Be sure to drop the developer a note if you wish to encourage or help him speed up his Mac port.
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Posted on July 2nd, 2009 by Alex Sikora
Clear Examples and Well-Choosen Images
Beginning iPhone Development advertises itself as “A complete course in iPhone and iPod touch programming” and I think it fulfills its promise. Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche have plenty of experience and it shows in this book. There aren’t very many iPhone books out yet, as Apple continues to release updates to its SDK, but this is the best one of the group. The book is easy to understand and covers all the topics a beginning iPhone developer would need to know. From clear examples to well-chosen example images, this book covers iPhone development well.
The book’s teaching method is very well made for beginners. While those new to programming in general may have minor issues, it’s not designed to teach the beginner programmer, but anyone who is trying to learn iPhone development will have an easy time with this book. It covers user interface design, accelerometer programming, Quartz and OpenGL drawing – the chapters follow each other in a logical order.
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Posted on July 1st, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
nettuts+ has posted an article aimed at new iPhone developers. It covers making a webapp with a variety of tips, covering things such as: “must-haves”, usability guidelines, testing/debugging, pitfalls, and performance issues. The first tip is a one line statement to tell the browser to scale your page in such a way that will make it fit nicely on the iPhone. Next, the author shows how to hide the address bar. Continue reading on net.tutsplus.com. While we are on the topic of handy snippets and tips, GameDev.net has an article of Handy PC/Mac OS X Snippets for Indie Development. Such articles are very helpful, and I’d like to ask the community to submit their own handy quick tip and code snippets. Send them along with a quick explanation and we will publish the best 10.
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Posted on June 30th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
We featured Magic Stones’ postmortem by Winter Wolves back in 2006. A few months ago, Riva Celso, the indie developer behind the label provided an interview with Game Producer about the games sales.
Approximate income is $27500. I have to add that since I released Magic Shop, 99% of buyers buy the add on together with the game, so on top of that amount I need to add around 600 sales of magic Shop at $4.99, another $3000.
Despite the focus on the new gold rush known as the iPhone, its great to see independent Mac game developers still doing well.
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Posted on June 29th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Brian Greenstone is CEO and lead programmer at Pangea Software. He’s been making Mac games 1982, with notable titles such as Bugdom and Nanosaur. In 2004 Brian released his book, ‘Pangea Software’s Ultimate Game Programming Guide for Mac OS X‘, which is now available for download. Based in the mecca of the game development industry, Austin, Texas, he offers private lessons at students’ homes.
All skill levels are accepted from beginner to experienced programmers. The tutoring will be customized to each student’s skill level and interests. We will start by learning to write simple 2D games, and then as students get more proficient we’ll delve into the world of 3D gaming.
The cost for the private lessons is $50 / hour, and he recommends lessons once per week.
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Posted on June 27th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Experience the medieval town scene yourself, utilizing a selection of models from this beautiful pack. See the animated inn sign sway, the horse animate, also enter most of the buildings, uising the animated doorways. All these components and everything you see in this screenshot and the game level download are included in this pack. Carefully recreated from original English buildings and structures, using original source photographs as textures for the pack. Steve from Arteria has journeyed to different locations in the UK, including parts of Wales to bring to you this beautiful pack. Pack contains 25 buildings, 14 with full interiors. Town keep wall (connectable), horse and cart (animated), sail boat, furniture pack, foilage & tree pack, 10 track music pack. Formats include Blitz B3D, DIRECT X, OBJ, MS3D, UU3D, TORQUE DTS, DAE, FBX and OGRE.
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Posted on June 26th, 2009 by Daniel Lurie
PureBasic is a cross-platform, procedural BASIC language with game support and 3D features built on top of Ogre 3D. It features a powerful native IDE and debugger, built-in arrays, dynamically linked lists, complex structures, pointers and variable definitions MacOS X API functions are also supported. KBasic is a powerful programming language, which is simply intuitive and fast easy to learn and above all already familiarly, represents KBasic developed for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows a further bridge between Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. KBasic a new programming language, a further basic dialect, is related to Visual Basic 6 and Java. More exactly said KBasic is an object-oriented and event-controlled programming language, developed by KBasic Software (http://www.kbasic.com), is particularly designed for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. KBasic is a multi-platform programming language, so almost the entire API is the same on all platforms and window systems. KBasic is a easy-usable, object-oriented, interpreted, stable, platform-independent, fast and modern programming language.
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Posted on June 25th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Luxology has updated its 3D application modo to version 401 — promising to deliver the next evolution of 3D modeling, painting and rendering in a single integrated and accelerated package for the Mac and PC. Rendering enhancements include caustics, dispersion, blurry refraction, volumetric lighting and Pixar-patented deep shadows. The new Instance Replicators allow dense amounts of surface detail like welds, rivets, trees and barnacles to be rendered with trillion polygon detail. Animation improvements in modo 401 include inverse kinematics, dynamic parenting, channel constraints and modifiers. modo’s new animation capabilities facilitate the creation of sophisticated rigs in modo 401 that can be driven with a few simple inputs. For example, a tank model can be rigged to track and turn accurately across undulating terrain while maintaining realistic tread and wheel movement. modo is used by designers and artists working in the areas of industrial design, architectural visualization, package design, game development, film and broadcast, education and scientific studies. Educational pricing for students and teachers is available.
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Posted on June 25th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
DAZ 3D announced a new free version of its celebrated 3D art and animation package, DAZ Studio 3, as well as the debut of its enhanced, professional-quality toolset, DAZ Studio 3 Advanced, ideal for 3D animators, designers and illustrators. DAZ Studio 3 offers improved OpenGL preview display with new camera and light pointer tools, depth of field and support for version 8.5 of Pixar’s RenderMan compliant 3Delight render engine. This tool is designed to allow hobbyists to create unique digital art and animation using their choice of virtual people, animals, props, vehicles, accessories and environments. Users can simply select their subject and/or setting, arrange accessories, setup lighting and immediately begin to create beautiful artwork. DAZ Studio 3 Advanced adds a vast set of new professional-level tools including advanced render effects and shaders, COLLADA import/export, animation keyframe editing, figure mixing and support for 64-bit systems. With these high-end tools, extended export capabilities and greater compatibility with Carrara, 3D enthusiasts can easily transition into serious 3D artists.
Now available for Mac OSX 10.4 or higher, DAZ Studio 3 is free to registered DAZ 3D members. DAZ Studio 3 Advanced, competitively priced at $149.95 USD, comes pre-configured with high-quality DAZ 3D content that is ready to be loaded and rendered at the push of a button. For even further advancement of 3D content creation, DAZ 3D additionally offers the DAZ Studio Advanced Bundle, which couples DAZ Studio 3 Advanced with a suite of DAZ 3D advanced content creation plug-ins, including: Figure Setup Tools, 3D Bridge for Photoshop, FBX Exporter and Multi-Layered Image Editor. The DAZ Studio Advanced Bundle is priced for purchase at $499.95 USD.
In related news, Cheetah3D is running a sale on its Mac OS X 3D app which offers powerful polygon editing. Priced at $99, it’s an ideal addition to any game developers tool chest.
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