Both my own siblings and my wife’s siblings have had a Christmas present exchange for the past couple of years and although the gifts are never extravagant, we always try to make them thoughtful. This year we thought it might be fun to give our siblings a choice of which present they wanted. We thought of making a card with the various options printed on it but then I came up with the idea of making a custom app that could serve the same purpose.
But I didn’t want it to simply be a card analog. It would have to take advantage of some of the unique features of iOS and do things that a normal card could not. Maybe we could somehow sneak it on to their iPads without them even knowing and surprise them with it! I was really excited about the idea and so I immediately sat down and started cranking it out. Thus, Present.app was born. Read More →
It is always fun to try and guess what Apple is going to do next. You can guarantee that there will always be surprises and sure bets, letdowns and magical moments. The Apple rumor sites do a decent job of soliciting leaks, reading between the lines and making educated conjecture. As a developer, I often like to take a good look at where Apple’s technology is right now and make logical extrapolations as to where things are headed. Oftentimes, when Apple announces some new feature or technology it seems obvious in retrospect if we had only connected the dots. Based on 2011′s release schedule, it is a fair bet to say that Apple is going to announce iOS 6 at WWDC sometime this summer and distribute a developer beta. That means that in the coming months little trickles of information are going to get doled out to the rumor sites about what kind of changes and additions we can expect. Just for fun, I wanted to get my own predictions out in the open before any of that started. Here is my very developer-oriented prediction list of what we might be expecting in iOS 6.
UPDATE: WWDC and the iOS 6 beta have come and gone. Some of my predictions now have conclusions. You will notice however that most of the predictions have not yet been updated. That is because there is the potential for Apple to be keeping a few more surprises up their sleeve for the fall when iOS 6 goes GM. Inline below are the results so far.
UPDATE2: iOS 6 GM is here which means that the NDA has lifted! Check down below to see how well I did. Read More →
Here’s demo of the new 60beat GamePad with my friend Mike‘s game Caster HD. I added support to both Caster/Caster HD and the update has been submitted to the App Store for approval. It shouldn’t be too long before the update actually hits the App Store. (UPDATE: Both updates are now live on the App Store!)
In the video I demo the controls starting with the cursor. The Mac/Win/Linux version of Caster has game pad support for the in-game cursor and so it was easiest to just hook into that. You don’t need to worry about switching between touch and game pad controls. Caster has no on-screen control overlays and both control styles will work concurrently so you just plug in and go! No setting switch required.
After getting into the game I demonstrate the settings for the camera movement which is controlled by the right analog stick. The start button will pause the game and give you access to the options menu. There you can tweak the camera sensitivity and invert the axis if you want.
A lot of the other controls are doubled up so you can use whichever you prefer. The left analog stick or the directional pad control walking movement. Button 3 or R2 will jump. Button 4 or the R1 will fire. Buttons 1, 2 and L2 will rotate through the different weapons. By holding down L1 you initiate a dash when moving.
(While I’ve got you here, be sure to check out my new 3D physics shooter Invader Zurp if you haven’t already. It is a ton of fun and there is nothing else like in on the App Store. )
The “.DS_Store” file is an abomination and must be stopped. You know what I’m talking about. I regularly rant about how this annoying file gets in your way, dirties things up and just screws with your stuff in general. Today I decided to do something about it. Before we get to that, lets quickly review what it is and why it sucks.
What Is It?
The .DS_Store is a Finder metadata file created primarily by Mac OS X’s Finder.app. Because of the dot (“.”) prefix it is typically not visible in many file browsers and most Mac OS X users are probably not aware of it. It is regularly created when the Finder accesses filesystem directories. It contains directory information about icon locations, view options, silkscreen configuration and the like. The functionality that it provides is moderately useful, but becoming less and less relevant over time. In any case, a long time ago the horrible decision was made to store that Finder metadata in an actual file (.DS_Store) in the filesystem within the relevant directory. We have been paying for it ever since. Over time more and more metadata relating to files and the filesystem has been added to Mac OS X, but thankfully those have been stored in saner places (extended attributes, etc). For the time being though .DS_Store is still here with us and still causing trouble. What’s so harmful about the file you might ask?
Last September I wrote a blog post introducing Invader Zurp which revealed a little of the back story on how I came upon this new game idea after it’s first 2 months in development. Fast forward to 3 months later and Invader Zurp had just hit the App Store! I thought it would be useful to sit down and review the last 5 months of development, kind of plan out where I want to go from here and go over the events and insights that I thought were most influential during development.
The Story So Far…
So to recap the original blog post a bit, it was the middle of the summer (2011) and I had been working my brains out on Cannonade for the previous 6 months. I was a little discouraged at that point because progress wasn’t coming quite as quickly as I had hoped. Reception from my testers (just friends and family at that point) hadn’t been as positive as I had wanted either. I still had a very clear vision of what I wanted Cannonade to be and still believed that there is a ton of untapped potential for multiplayer-only games on iOS. But there was only so much I that could do as a one-man team and testing a multiplayer game can be quite time consuming. I took the family on vacation in early July and was able to step away from things for a while. It was then that I got an idea for a single player experience that distilled the core gameplay mechanic of Cannonade down to it’s essence. Thus Invader Zurp was born. Within two weeks I had modularized the Cannonade game engine, re-written the graphics sub-system in OpenGL ES 2.0 and had a working prototype. And it was fun! I found myself on very long “testing” sessions playing even after I had verified my fixes. I seeded the first alpha version in early September and wrote the introductory blog post. Then began the journey of finishing the game and kicking the darn thing out the door. Read More →
Aright it’s here! Invader Zurp, the project I have worked so hard on for the last 5 months is now for sale on the App Store! I want to thank all my wonderful testers for all their time they put into playing it and even more for the thoughtful and productive feedback that they so lavishly furnished on me. I couldn’t have done it without you!
In developing Cannonade and Invader Zurp I have invested a fair amount of time becoming familiar with the Bullet Physics Library and trying to milk every bit of performance out of it as I can. Realistic physics simulation plays a crucial part in both games and is also the performance bottleneck in the majority of gameplay scenarios with both. When trying to optimize for performance I generally see myself using two kinds of approaches. One is a higher level algorithmic approach that tries to see ways to create less work or avoid work in order to keep things going fast. Once I have nailed down as best I can, the minimum set of work that I really cannot avoid doing, then comes the work of getting down and dirty and speeding up the routines that actually do that work. When I initially approached the problem of speeding up Bullet, I first simply treated it as a black box (work that I wouldn’t be able to avoid) and explored what kinds of compiler configurations I could leverage to create the fastest possible execution of the physics simulation work. Later, after I had nailed down the gameplay mechanic for Invader Zurp I was able to start specifically attacking the set of physics simulation work needed for the game and whittled it down to a much smaller amount using some simplifications, accuracy compromises and psychology.
So I have these thoughts…a lot. No not that kind! I get these fun ideas for neat projects or crazy inventions as I am driving in the car, singing in the shower, lying in bed or even in the midst of coding. Really creative ideas that may or may not be realistically viable but worthy of entertaining nonetheless. I get really excited and start working it over in my mind. It feels like inspiration. Then something happens… Life resumes and I need to deal with the actual task at hand. No worry, it was such a compelling idea that I will surely remember it later when I have cycles to devote to it. And then I never think about it again. Or even worse, the next day rolls around and I all of the sudden remember that I did think of a cool idea the day before, but I can’t quite bring the memory into focus. Does any part of this sound familiar to you?
Write It Down
“No more!” I declared. Nothing gets remembered unless it is written down. Hmm, idea notebook? TextEdit file on the computer? I did the text file thing for a while but I kept forgetting that it was there or didn’t have access to it at the time. No worries… Evolution of the computer to the rescue! Transferred things to Notes.app on the iPhone. Not good. Too jumbled, un-organized, too much information presented in-general. I knew of the million and a half “getting things done”, task management, mind-mapping and brain organization apps/ecosystems out there. But I found most were too general for what I wanted and too heavy. Well, if you want something done…
Above is some footage from the current Invader Zurp alpha (apologies for the bad exposure). As you can see, things have come quite a ways since I released the first video! There are a lot more visual effects, 5 music tracks from Monte ‘Trance’ Emerson, a new gameplay mechanic, an in-game currency system and tons of other little advancements. I must say that I feel like things are progressing quite nicely! I still have a ways to go though and so I am going to continue cranking away with my head down until it is finished.
What are your thoughts on how development is going? Let me know in the comments. Also, a huge thank you to all of my testers who have given me invaluable feedback on all the builds thus far.
The Startup Grind is expanding! You may or may not have heard that we have recently opened up a Los Angeles chapter of the Startup Grind and to coincide with that we have added multiple chapter support to the Startup Grind.app! Now if you are a member of the Startup Grind LA your upcoming and past events should be visible when you log into the Startup Grind.app with your Meetup account. If you are a member of multiple chapters then you will be presented with a top level pane allowing you to switch between them at will.
As we open up more chapters of the Startup Grind you will be able to access all the information and interactive elements for the events for every new meetup that we get going. More awesome features are in the works so stay tuned!
Spencer Nielsen 
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I get these fun ideas for neat projects or crazy inventions as I am driving in the car, singing in the shower, lying in bed or even in the midst of coding. Really creative ideas that may or may not be realistically viable but worthy of entertaining nonetheless. I get really excited and start working it over in my mind. It feels like inspiration. Then something happens… Life resumes and I need to deal with the actual task at hand. No worry, it was such a compelling idea that I will surely remember it later when I have cycles to devote to it. And then I never think about it again. Or even worse, the next day rolls around and I all of the sudden remember that I did think of a cool idea the day before, but I can’t quite bring the memory into focus. Does any part of this sound familiar to you? 
