Archive for the 'iPad' Category

Much Faster CryptoJS SHA1

May 17th, 2014
Spencer Nielsen Follow snielsen42 on Twitter

400px-SHA-1

SHA1 is a pretty crucial part of my current startup, Ultralink. We need (relatively) decent uniqueness calculation and change detection, and need to be able to do it really, really quickly on a lot of content. We picked SHA1 because it’s widely supported, simple to implement, and fast. For the portions of Ultralink that run in Javascript, we needed to include CryptoJS, a third-party library. CryptoJS appears to be the go-to library for cryptographic functions in Javascript, and seemed to fit our bill perfectly. Development was humming along and everything was fine. When we would occasionally do performance passes and stress tests on desktop web browsers, the SHA1 calculation wasn’t even on the radar for perf offenders. Once we started taking a look on iOS devices though, specifically Mobile Safari, it became a completely different story… (more…)

Proxying on iOS 7

January 27th, 2014
Spencer Nielsen Follow snielsen42 on Twitter

tethering

A large number of the world’s wireless carriers enable internet tethering by default for no extra charge when using an iPhone (because data is just data after all). In the United States, no major carrier has had the good sense to do it even with data caps and throttling. Any way you look at it, paying for tethering is a bad deal. So what then are your options when you want to use your phone’s internet connection on your laptop? You can always jailbreak and enable iOS’s built-in tethering (marketed as “Personal Hotspot“) using a tweaked carrier profile or install a stanadlone tethering app. However, jailbreaking has known risks associated with it and some US carriers have stated that they will cut your service if they detect tethering without the requisite contract on their end (exactly what detection methods they employ and how much work they have invested in enforcement remains unclear). What then are we left with? Proxying. (more…)

Present.app

December 30th, 2012
Spencer Nielsen Follow snielsen42 on Twitter

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. (more…)

iOS 6 Predictions

March 6th, 2012
Spencer Nielsen Follow snielsen42 on Twitter

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. (more…)

iOS Caster Now Has 60beat GamePad Support

January 6th, 2012
Spencer Nielsen Follow snielsen42 on Twitter

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. 🙂 )

Zurp 1.0 Postmortem

December 15th, 2011
Spencer Nielsen Follow snielsen42 on Twitter

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. (more…)

Invader Zurp is on the App Store!

December 15th, 2011
Spencer Nielsen Follow snielsen42 on Twitter

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!

Check out the gameplay trailer here:

Now Go Get It!

Invader Zurp Progress

October 27th, 2011
Spencer Nielsen Follow snielsen42 on Twitter

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.

Startup Grind.app 1.3 (October Update)

October 18th, 2011
Spencer Nielsen Follow snielsen42 on Twitter

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!

Invader Zurp

September 12th, 2011
Spencer Nielsen Follow snielsen42 on Twitter

So for those of you on my Cannonade TestFlight profile, you might have noticed that I havn’t seeded a build for about two months. I have a good explanation for this.

Lets rewind back to right after my last Cannonade seed build. I was on vacation at the time and had the opportunity to stand back from Cannonade and evaluate things from a different perspective. Sometimes I don’t think I seek out those opportunities to just sit and think as much as I should (just thinking sometimes makes me feel a bit lazy for not doing). At one family gathering I observed my older son playing Fruit Ninja on his aunt’s iPhone. I was aware of Fruit Ninja and knew that it was a definite App Store success. As I watched him play I thought to myself “That just one play mechanic. One. Repeated, millions of times over and over and over.” This is the typical MO of most games that are successful on the App Store. Simple, easy to pick up and well implemented with good production values. With Cannonade I am trying to break new ground on the App Store. I still believe that there could be a place for deep multi-player experiences on the App Store and I think that Cannonade is on the right track. But watching Fruit Ninja got me thinking. Did I have a single, fun gameplay mechanic that I could repeat millions of times? The core fun mechanic of Cannonade is “Knock Your Friend’s Castles Down.” Maybe I could modify that to just “Knock Castles Down.” Even knocking down dumb castles was fun in and of itself. Maybe I could repeat that experience millions of times and put out a more limitedly scoped single player experience? I decided that it would be a really fun exercise and that I would put Cannonade on hold for a few months while I brought this new single player game to market. I call it “Invader Zurp“.

(more…)

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