Archive for the ‘iPod Touch’ Category

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iPhone Game Collaboration Experiment

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Well, if you haven’t already guessed, I’m the Founder and Lead Software Engineer of JSeuss Software (http://iphone.jseuss.com). After the success of some of my recent projects (Pegs in Space for example) and given our game engine has reached a certain level of maturity, it’s time to go that extra yard. 

That’s why I’m trying out something different.  I’ve always liked isometric turn based games (XCom – UFO: Enemy Unknown being the classic) and now I’ve got some resources at my fingertips, I’m getting the team to put together an isometric strategy game made primarily for the iPhone.  But here’s the different part – I don’t want to develop this game in secret until the end.  I think it’s important to show what kind of things go on behind the scenes and to allow players to give feedback early and often.  And I’ll be letting some parts be totally influenced by the fans.

To start it off, a name has to be chosen for the new game.  All submissions welcome. Head over to http://game.jseuss.com/ for more info -it’ll be up soon.  The person who comes up with the winning name will get an App Store Promo Code for Pegs In Space, and also for the new game once it’s released.

Posted in App Store, Applications, Collaboration, Design, Development, Game Programming, Objective C, Promo Codes, iPhone, iPod Touch, iTunes | No Comments »

Audio Services Freezing App

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

If you are using Audio Services to play sound effects, then you’re going to have problems if you’re also updating your program state at a high frame rate. 

Although incredibly simple to use, the Audio Services should really only be used for one off alerts or sounds, and never as the sound effect backend of a game or similar. 

Like most Apple APIs, they use the technique of lazy loading.  That is, don’t bother doing anything like setting up audio buffers etc until you actually call the API into action for the first time.  This is useful for faster loading apps, and a smaller average memory footprint. 

But the downside to this is that the first time you try to play a sound, the Audio Services will be initialized and your app will pause for tenths of a second.  After this, however, all will be fine. 

A better way to go is to use OpenAL to handle audio playback.  It is much more flexible, and allows you to call the initialize function when your application loads, to avoid delays when you actually want sound to be played.  

The best place to start with this is to look at the Apple ‘Crash Landing’ example.  It includes a ‘SoundEngine’ module that can pretty much just be copied into your applications for use.  Remember to include the OpenAL framework though.

Posted in Audio, Audio Services, Development, Game Programming, OpenAL, iPhone, iPhone SDK, iPod Touch | 2 Comments »

App Feedback on Deletion

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

Perhaps it’s just me, but does anyone else think that the new feedback question asked in iPhone OS 2.2 when an app is deleted is a bad idea? 

If you’re not familiar with the new feature, it is just a simple pop up that appears when you delete an app from your phone and asks you to rate it out of five stars, or just say no-thanks. 

When analyzing data in any field from scientific analysis to reviews that others have made, you should always be on the lookout for confounding factors.  And what’s more confounding than skewing your data to be mostly from people who have deleted an app they paid money for?  

I’m sure the system works moderately well for free apps.  There’s less to loose if you delete a free app – you can always download it again (if it’s still free..).  And there are reasons why you wouldn’t want hundreds of free apps cluttering up your phone.  But if you’ve paid for the app then it’s a different story.  You’re either cleaning up your phone and it’s at the bottom of the ‘want-to-keep’ pile, or you just plain don’t like it and want it gone.  It’s just far easier (and economical) to keep an app if you like it. 

So where does that leave us? Now we have many reviews from people who don’t like your app or think it’s the worst one on their phone.  Personally I’ve noticed a decline in all my ratings with an influx of non-comment reviews.  

An obvious way around this would be to ask to rate after the nth running of the app.  It would be a nuisance but far less biased towards people who don’t like the app. 

Has anyone else seen this phenomenon? Any other solutions?

Posted in App Store, Reviews, iPhone, iPod Touch, iTunes, iTunes Connect | 1 Comment »

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