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. [...]
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 [...]
When developing iPhone games, one of the biggest performance optimizations you can make is to use OpenGL ES for rendering (instead of CoreGraphics or UIKit). For a 2D game like Arctic Shuffle, this means loading all of the animation into Open GL as textures, and drawing them onto simple rectangular shapes. There are two caveats [...]
Since we launched Arctic Shuffle we’ve been keeping a running list of feature ideas for future versions. Ideas have come from our own experience playing (useful), talking and watching friends and colleagues play (more useful), iTunes reviews (mostly useless), reviews on app review sites (mixed bag), and emails from users (all over the map). When [...]
Yesterday we released a Lite version of Arctic Shuffle – our fun new game for the iPhone and iPod touch. The lite version includes 20 of the 72 levels and is a great way to get a taste of the game play. So grab a copy today and let us know what you think!
Our team has just finished work on Arctic Shuffle – our first game for iPhone and iPod touch. Big thanks for Brian McBrearty for the tasty music and Trevor Van Meter for the lovely visuals. The game is in review but in the mean time here is a sneak peak! Arctic Shuffle Sneak Peak from [...]
We’re very excited about our early experiments with iPhone development. Today we are submitting our very first app to the App Store. Timecoder is a super-simple time code calculator, an idea that came to us from our super-talented video editor Kyle Sim. There is much more to come, but we are excited to make it this [...]