Posted on December 30th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Game Developer Magazine has named the finalists for the 2009 Front Line Awards, their 12th annual evaluation of the year’s best game-making tools in the categories of programming, art, audio, game engine, middleware, and books. The following books have been nominated:
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Posted on December 14th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
‘iPhone Game Development’ by Paul Zirkle, Lead Mobile Programmer at Konami Digital Entertainment and Joe Hogue, a mobile programmer with Electronic Arts. Together, provides an experienced iPhone developer with the knowledge needed to make games for the Apple iPhone. Starting with a basic overview of game and technical design particular to the new device, the book moves on to detail the development process with examples. You will find everything from game development basics and an introduction to iPhone programming to tips on using APIs to develop in-game physics and strategies for AppStore publication. Topics include:
- Learn how to develop iPhone games that provide engaging user experiences
- Become familiar with Objective-C and the Xcode suite of tools
- Learn what it takes to adapt the iPhone interface to games
- Create a robust, scalable framework for a game app
- Understand the requirements for implementing 2D and 3D graphics
- Learn how to add music and audio effects, as well as menus and controls
- Get instructions for publishing your game to the App Store
This book promises you everything from game development basics and iPhone programming fundamentals to guidelines for dealing with special graphics and audio needs, creating in-game physics, and much more.
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Posted on November 11th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
iVersion allows you to access your subversion projects on the move with an easy to use interface. iVersion brings native svn support to the iphone and allows browsing of the folder hierarchy, viewing and editing of small files such as programming code or txt files. iVersion also allows you to view the commit log or history of a file, including dates, commits and usernames. With iVersion you have a powerful SVN client at your fingertips even when your away from your desktop. Are you hosting your SVN projects on your PC? Use iVersion to backup your projects. Spotted a typo in your code? Use iVersion to edit your sources without needing to turn on your PC.
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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 June 23rd, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Apple has released an update to its Xcode application development framework. Xcode 3.1.3 has specific support for iPhone 3.0 development and a small number of bug fixes over Xcode 3.1.2. Problem where Xcode would change your default Keychain has been fixed. Xcode 3.1.3 replaces Xcode 3.1.2 and earlier, or can be installed alongside other versions of Xcode Tools in it’s own Developer folder. You can install Xcode 3.1.3 from the standalone Xcode Tools installer or as part of the final IPhone OS 3.0 SDK installation package. Xcode is now a cross-development system. You can build within it applications for other platforms than the Mac. Currently only the iPhone SDK allows building for the iPhone platform in Xcode, but the SDK format is open and documented, so whoever wants, can supply a Platform SDK that will allow Xcode running on a Mac to build and debug applications for Windows machines, Linux, Embedded systems etc. To achieve this, the Xcode SDK infrastructure was leveraged by inclusion of low-level compilers and tools within the SDK in addition to platform frameworks.
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Posted on May 23rd, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Seems like StrangeFlavour LTD isn’t the only UK-based developer enjoying the iPhone games market. “Pocket Gamer UK”: http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk has posted an interview with Nalin Sharma, another independent developer based in the UK that has produced games for the Atari ST, GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Windows. He’s recently ported a tech demo for smartphones over to the iPhone and released it as the game Killer Edge Racing. When asked, “ How did you find the iPhone as a development platform?”, Nalin replies, “Awesome. It is light years ahead of any other mobile development platform. It really is a brilliant system from start to finish, although Xcode does take some getting used to if you are familiar with Visual C++ and with other mobile platforms. In the past, Java games were a nightmare to develop and test, but because this is a native platform you have all the hardware available to develop great games like Killer Edge Racing, and at an efficient cost. He also mentions his surprise at selling over 100 copies in the first six days, though he hopes to sell 10,000 to cover his costs.
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Posted on May 13th, 2009 by James Dessart
Taking Advice From a Veteran Programmer
When I read that uDevGames was happening again this year, I got excited. I had just read an interview with a successful casual games developer about how he achieved his success. It gave me some ideas, and one of them blossomed into GnomeSpy.
Following the advice in Justin Ficarrotta’s article on A uDevGames 2008 Survival Guide , I wrote up a prototype using Cocoa through Xcode. I play-tested GnomeSpy internally until the gameplay reached a certain level of fun, then released the prototype to iDevGames’ forum members. Along with play-testing by friends and family, this provided an invaluable resource for determining reasonable completion times for the basic six-color game.
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Posted on May 5th, 2009 by Justin Ficarrotta
Background Info
After growing up wanting only to make videogames, and making a few small games with Pascal and later Hypercard in grade school, I released my first game for the uDevGames contest in 2004, called Kill Dr. Coté. It won the award for Best Gameplay, was a fan favorite, went on to be published by Freeverse, and got me my first job in the industry as a programmer.
Since then, my output has been scarce. I quickly followed up with “Arachnoid: Predator of Worlds” in July 2005, but after that, working full time in the industry drained me and thwarted any progress on independent work. Several years passed, and during that time I first yearned for the energy to work on a project, and after that failed, I started to even doubt whether I would be capable of such a project and still keep myself fed. When I heard that uDevGames 2008 was starting, I figured it would be the best time to find out once and for all. While in 2004, my purpose was to prove my talent and ability to the world, this time around it would be to prove it to myself!
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Posted on April 29th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has posted a short tutorial on creating an app on the iPhone. The ‘Hello’ app, which runs on the iPhone simulator, provides a simple introduction to Xcode. Over at TheAppleBlog they have an in-depth tutorial on creating a Navigation-based application in Xcode for the iPhone. Need more of a reason to program the iPhone? The San Francisco Chronicle has an article on newbies making apps for the iPhone.
Some are learning Cocoa, Xcode and Objective-C, the tools and languages necessary for iPhone development, while others are looking for contract designers to get their apps made. The iPhone, perhaps more than any other device, has sparked the imagination of non-developers, who see in it an idea waiting to take shape.
We’ve certainly seen an increase in requests for apps and coders in our forum, as well as over at iDevApps. Sites like eLance are also full of ads looking for iPhone developers. If you’d like to submit a tutorial on programming the iPhone or the Mac, please contact us.
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Posted on April 6th, 2009 by Iain Bethune
Background
I seem to be spending more and more time on planes these days — often slowly taxiing around airports or waiting in a holding pattern to land! While idly staring out of the window I started thinking about what it must be like to be an air traffic controller, trying to get so many planes to land safely and quickly with only a limited number of runways and aircraft stands. Thus the idea of FIDRIS was born. Fast-forward several thousand years and you have a game where the object is to manage a space station, docking as many ships as you can given finite resources of time and space.
As one of the uDevGames voters commented “I’d say it was a creative risk to tackle the idea of this game”, and that’s definitely the case — at the start of the contest I just had this idea, but didn’t know if it would actually turn out to be ‘fun’ or not! What I did know was that it was a simple enough idea to be finished and polished within the three months I had available for the contest.
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