iDevGames

The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook is one of the first books released now that the iPhone SDK Non-Disclosure Agreement has been dropped. While it isn’t perfect, it is a useful guide for getting into iPhone Application Development. Erica takes a unique approach to iPhone development, organizing her book, as the title says, like a cookbook. The book goes through a series of small projects, which are called recipes, that build on each other and expand the reader’s knowledge.

The book seems to assume a bit of knowledge of the Apple Developer Tools, not explaining Interface Builder (Apple’s tool for designing and linking up interfaces) as skillfully as some other books do, but if you have experience with the tools, then you should be able to benefit from this book a bit better. The book doesn’t do much to help a brand new programmer, but it is well detailed. Furthermore, the code snippets show both the header .h and .m files in one file, which is a bit easier to read but new programmers can be confused that they aren’t separated. The comments in the code show where the break should be, but new programmers should be warned to move them separately. I personally like having them all together in the book to make it easier to view.

Despite all this, I feel the book has merit. The book progresses well from beginner to advanced topics, has a very clear layout, and plenty of pictures to demonstrate what things should look like to the reader. The author also includes useful notes that  the rest of the text to highlight extra information. I like the recipe style, as it is easy to go to a specific “recipe” to learn about whatever you wish. After going through the book, it is also easy to go back to a specific “recipe” as a manual. This book would do well next to a computer for checking a specific technique. The recipes are all titles well for anyone looking to complete a specific task, and the table of contents is easily navigated to assist a coder in something they need to complete. Some interesting recipes include creating your own custom cells, taking pictures with the iPhone camera, reading from the address book, and many more.

While some people fault the book for it’s occasional use of undocumented API’s, in that they are not allowed on the AppStore, recently Apple has been changing it’s tune. The google app uses the proximity sensor, and there was an app released recently that uses Coverflow to display contacts. Speaking of Coverflow, Erica included a nice short chapter on using Coverflow in your applications, that while it is not very in depth, is a good primer for getting started. This nice attention to details developers can appreciate, and really adds to this book’s use.

While perhaps this book is not the best beginner guide, it is a great beginner reference book. I feel it can be successfully used as a beginner’s guide with the help of perhaps another programmer, or with some previous experience with the Apple Development Tools. However, it can also be used as a reference book for anyone who needs a quick review on how to do a specific task, due to its detailed index and many quick “recipes” that can easily remind a developer of the correct code required.

Chapter List:

1. Introducing the iPhone SDK
2. Views
3. View Controllers
4. Alerting Users
5. Basic Tables
6. Advanced Tables
7. Media
8. Controls
9. People, Places, and Things
10. Connecting to Services
11. One More Thing: Programming Cover Flow

Taking a Gamble

The MIMO UM-730 monitor is one of a small series of 7” LCD screens that have recently been made available outside of Korea, where the 750 variant (with built in TV tuner!) has been on sale for a while. The range includes the 710 and 730 in the UK and the 730 and 740 (which has touchscreen capability) in the US. For once, we’ve had them in the UK before our American cousins have been able to buy them, so I bought myself a UM-730 this week when I saw it available online. Why would I consider buying a mere 7” LCD screen though you might wonder? Well, I was intrigued by the fact that it’s a DisplayLink monitor, which means you can plug it in over USB 2 on any modern Mac with a free driver and run it as an extra display, even if you’ve already maxed out your normal display connections or you’re using a Mac mini that only supports a single display. I was also taking a gamble that it might be a good enough display to run the iPhone simulator in its own screen.
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IGDA Women in Games, in partnership with Women in Games International, is launching GameMentorOnline, the first-of-its-kind online mentorship program for the international games industry. Designed to serve students and young professionals, men and women alike, GameMentorOnline has been carefully co-developed by both organizations to meet the growing need for peer-to-peer mentorship support in games. GameMentorOnline is a free service, open to mentors and mentees of all types and in all disciplines of games business and development. GameMentorOnline is scheduled to launch on March 1, 2009.

• Related Link: www.gamementoronline.org

Blogger Mike Rundle has posted about his experiences starting out as a Mac OS X developer. From the post:

It’s an interesting experience, diving head-first into the unknown, trying to soak up all the information you possibly can on the way down into the abyss of Mac application development. Everything is new, most of it is documented, and the rest can be learned by reading as much as possible and asking for help when you’re lost. I’m new to Objective-C, new to Cocoa, but have been a hardcore Mac aficionado since 1996 when I got my first Mac — a Performa 6200 — so I have “Apple-ness” running through my veins which is extremely helpful. Creating a beautiful and successful application for the Mac usually means that it looks as if the engineers at Apple could have created something similar, so the expectations are extremely high as far as interface polish is concerned. I’m learning just how much effort goes into a beautiful Cocoa app, and it sure is a lot.

• Related Link: Experiences As A New Mac Developer

icondesign is having a deal to help out any iPhone developers in need, where they provide free icons for any iPhone app. This is great for any developers out there without an artist. Check out the post copied below, and the link at the bottom! We would like to help you out with your stunning iPhone application. If you develop free iPhone applications that are awesome, but you’re not the best artist in the world; we can help out. We want to make your iPhone icon look the best, that is why we will use our time to create some beautiful iPhone illustrations for you. Before you contact us though, please be sure that your application has the following:

• A good idea, fart applications have no interest.
• Is well done, but you need our help to make it shine.
• You supply a reference link to icondesign in your application.
• It’s free for everyone, with no limitations – versa non profit. If you plan to make the application a pay-app, let us know – maybe we can make a deal.”

Related Links:

• icondesign.dk

Glenn Fiedler recently put up a series of articles on networking for game programmers. Currently, the series includes articles on ‘UDP vs. TCP’, ‘Sending and Receiving Packets’, ‘Virtual Connection Over UDP’, and ‘Reliability and Flow Control’.

Hi, I’m Glenn Fiedler, I’m a professional game developer working in Los Angeles.
In this series of articles, I share some of the basic game networking techniques with you. Until now, a lot of this information has been hard to find, now it’s all in one place and written specifically covering techniques for multiplayer action games.

• Related link: Networking For Game Programmers

The Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) posted an article detailing the effect that input devices have had on Video Game Performance. The study outlined in this article covers the performance of three input devices: a mouse, a PS2 controller and a joystick.

First-person shooter (FPS) games have become increasingly popular, and the player’s ability to accurately control their weapon is very important in these games. This study assesses players’ accuracy on eliminating targets in the FPS game Star Wars Battlefront IITM using three different input devices (mouse, Playstation 2 controller, and joystick) with two different rifle types (sniper and blaster rifle). No significant performance differences were found between input devices although subjectively participants believed they peformed the worst with the joystick.

• Related link: The Effect of Input Device on Video Game Performance

To celebrate the coming new year, iPhone application developers have banded together to bring the world a little bit of holiday cheer. We’ve all heavily discounted our apps as our gift to you! These applications will be discounted heavily for at least 48 hours from Dec 31st to Jan 1st — so act fast to get these deals!

• Related link: New Year’s App Blowout

Independent game developer Kevin from Montréal, Canada has posted an article exploring the costs of starting an indie game business. Three different models of increasing cost are explored, and rough dollar amounts are estimated for each.

• Related link: The indie game developer’s start-up cost

Aleksander Grande recently wrote up a small tutorial on his blog for people who are new to Xcode, Interface Builder, and the iPhone SDK. It goes through the basics of linking an interface made in Interface Builder to View Controllers and such in Xcode. The tutorial is pretty clear and well thought out, with easy to follow instructions and plenty of screenshots as well, so if you’re struggling, go check out the tutorial.

Related Links:

• Interface Builder Tutorial