First Post

I guess in the tradition as a developer this post could be classed as my 'Hello World' application we all tend to make when trying a new language.

I started this blog to chart my development adventures, document my new applications and vent my general thoughts.

First IPhone project

For the past few weeks outside of work I have slowly been working towards completion of my first IPhone application. It has finally been titled Tic Tac Glow, it has been through several name changes, multiple graphical changes and a whole host of code tweaks.

I settled on the final name after completing the now final art set (See below image) and thought it matched the game quiet well. The game is essentially a take on classic Tic Tac Toe, but with a larger grid and with the ability to shake the board in an effort to knock your opponents pieces off.

My first hurdle came from the fact that until recently I had not used a Mac before and was now reliant on one for development, and secondly I had never used Objective-C before.

After purchasing a Mac (not solely for creation of this small project I hasten to add) I soon fell in love and haven't been back to windows since. After playing with ObjC for a while I realised it had issues but was still a fantastic language.

For the graphic side I looked at iTGB and Cocos2D. I own several of Torques game engines, so this was high on the list, but after looking at Cocos2D and considering the price difference, I went with Cocos2D which as it turns out was a great decision.

One of my biggest challenges was the glow effect on the pieces, which turns out had the simplest of solutions. When one pieces is placed a slightly larger blurred version is placed on top of it which has its OpenGL blending options changed to give the glow effect. It took a lot of attempts to get everything running the way I wanted and it seems to have had no effect on performance which was an added bonus.

Although the game is complete as far as my original vision goes, I have some post submission additions I will start on, the first being bluetooth support for multiplayer. One other feature I will be quiet keen to add in future is selectable themes to change the look of the game, but we shall have to see if time permits.

The game has now been submitted to Apple for review, and should hopefully be on the Appstore soon….. fingers crossed.