Here’s a problem that often crops up in our iOS projects – how do we get assets originally created as vector artwork in Flash onto an iPhone or iPad? The simple solution is to export the assets as bitmaps, but this approach has a number of issues. First, it means making and exporting multiple versions [...]
The Flash IDE has many short-comings as a code editor, but for the most part the pain is limited to the person actually using it. If, however, you’re editing ActionScript files in the Flash IDE on a Mac and then committing them to Subversion (you are using version control, right?), then you’re foisting the pain [...]
While debugging our new Tickle Tap Toddler Pack iPhone app, I had to fix a couple of obscure bugs caused by the YouTube video on the app’s info screen. After watching the video, none of the sound effects in Sound Shaker work and Field Flier just displays a blank white screen… very strange. After a [...]
Most content made for preschoolers is awful. Harsh? Maybe, but when your little monster wants to read a book, listen to a song, or watch a show on repeat, you have plenty of opportunity to notice. As a parent, finding a gem that’s rich, well-crafted and can make you laugh (even on repeat) can make [...]
While coding the sound for Arctic Shuffle 2, I ran into a non-obvious memory (to me, anyway) memory leak related to the AVAudioPlayer that took forever to track down. Here was my original code, which leaks if an error occurs in the initWithData:error: method: – (AVAudioPlayer *)audioPlayerWithContentsOfFile:(NSString *)path { NSData *data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:path]; return [...]
For the next version of Arctic Shuffle, we’re using Open GL to speed things up. One problem we’re run into along the way is strange artifacts in textures smaller than 64 pixels by 64 pixels. After a lot of head scratching, an obscure forum post saved the day. It turns out there’s a bug in [...]
There were some good questions during my presentation last night and via email this morning about units in Box2D. @jasonkrogh asked what kind of units Box2D uses. Here’s the relevant bit about units from the Box2D manual: Box2D works with floating point numbers, so some tolerances have to be used to make Box2D perform well. [...]
For the next version of Arctic Shuffle, we’re using an open source 2D physics engine called Box2D to improve the gameplay. There seems to be a lot of interest in Box2D for the iPhone, but I haven’t found a great overview anywhere, so I’ve put together a presentation for tonight’s Toronto iPhone Developer Meetup. Here [...]
Now that we’re knee deep in iPhone game development, we’re working with a number of different outside developers. Since everyone involved is pretty new to Objective-C, XCode and iPhone development, project organization and coding conventions in our projects have been all over the map. To improve the quality of our projects and make them easier [...]
Using Box2D is a great way to add physics to a 2D iPhone game. Since Box2D is written in C++ rather than Objective-C, adding it to your XCode project and getting it to build cleanly can be a bit tricky. If you just want to get aquainted with Box2D, there is an sample XCode project [...]