Interface Reworking
Jun0
We’ve decided to rework most of the interface for iLostMyMarbles per Matt’s usability analysis. It’s more work than I expected to put into the project at this stage, as the code was pretty much finalized, but I’m happy that he has strong ideas and I want to make this first foray as solid as possible. Hopefully we’ll be able to avoid reworks during our next project by having a proper conceptual phase, something Matt was not part of for iLostMyMarbles.
The plan is to remove options and make some of them driven by a natural progression through the game. The original select-what-you-want options screen is going in favor of a simpler version that chooses your skin and spin based on your difficulty. It will also enable difficulties and levels only after you play the previous one, but I’m a bit worried that people will think they’re missing “features” of the full version when they see the grayed out options, so I’m not sure about that one.
I should have those changes knocked out by the time Matt has graphics, I’m also running behind on my consulting website and resume reflow. I thought it was the weekend?!
Device Testing
Jun0
This evening I purchased an iPod Touch to test our applications on. If you’re looking for a good alternative to the $600+ iPhone from AT&T, the iPod Touch 2G can be had for around $240 locally and $215 online (8GB models). The majority of the hardware is identical to the iPhone, so there are few performance or look and feel differences. Highly recommended, especially since it worked out so well for me. Sadly, the iPod does not have GPS capabilities, so it won’t work to test applications that require that.
After going through the ADC iPhone process to enroll the iPod and get all the development certificates set up and enrolled, I started up iLostMyMarbles for the first time and was amazed at how well Apple’s development cycle is put together. I have been developing on the iPhone Simulator, which is fine for your basic application but does not simulate the performance of the actual device. Graphics performance is the real unknown, which is critical to a game like iLostMyMarbles.
I’m glad to report that I only had one performance issue with the iPod hardware, which was related to a tracing text each frame. I disabled that in favor of a simple shadow and saw no other bugs or issues at all, so we’re on track for our first release.
Designer!
Jun0
Yesterday I had an awesome lunch meeting with Matt Garrett, a graphics designer I worked with at Pensaworks. Apparently we’re on the same page with iPhone App development, and we’ve agreed to make a joint venture out of it where he provides style and graphics and I provide features and code. Matt is a stellar graphic designer, and I’m really excited to have him as a partner on this stuff!
While there is some overlap in our skills, we’re both very solid in our respective corners and I think that will help us produce games and apps that have both great code as well as great designs. If you hadn’t noticed by the design of this website, I’m not much of a designer! My ideas on interfaces range from “concise” and “intuitive” to “responsive” and “fast work flow” - not the best memes for iPhone development, since the iPhone’s success draws from style as much as technology.
Project Management on GitHub
Jun0
I’ve chosen GitHub as a project management platform for my developments. It’s inexpensive and well featured, includes messaging, downloads, wikis, issues, and your source code. I’m a little reticent to store my source code on their servers, but I decided to take the plunge with their private repositories. So far it has been working out great!
I’m also considering FogBugz and Lighthouse for the project management side of things, as they have nifty performance indicators and milestones and releases and much, much better issue management. Lighthouse is inexpensive but does not integrate all that well with GitHub (basically it just listens to GitHub commit messages) and FogBugz is exceptionally powerful and thus expensive.
I didn’t ignore the rest of the options, but found self-hosted solutions like PHPProjekt aren’t what I need. My pitiful 2Mbps upstream connection at home really isn’t suitable for hosting much of anything, so I chose to go with an online hosted solution that everyone can get to, whether or not my Internet connection is congested or working.
