What makes the iPad good for games development

1) A 9.7 inch screen. It may just be a larger screen but this will make a huge difference when developing games. More screen real estate means more room for virtual controls, more possibilities for multiplayer (on the same device), and more room for advanced gestures.

2) Speed. Early reports are suggesting that the device is blisteringly fast. Applications open quickly, pages render quickly in the browser, and the interface is highly responsive. Ultimately this suggests that as games developers we will have more processing power to give a smoother playing experience (Although this is countered somewhat by the higher resolution and therefore the requirement for higher quality resources).

3) Low cost. This means that the device will end up in the hands of more people. One of the best things about the iPhone as a games development platform is the huge audience. It looks like the iPad will be no different.

4) Higher priced Apps. Its way too early to tell for sure but I do think that with the introduction of a bigger screen users may be prepared to pay more for Apps. There has to be some psychology in that somewhere.

5) Drawing Apps. I think the Brushes demo illustrated that the iPad could be great for sketching out ideas for games. I use a Wacom tablet at the moment but nothing can beat the feel of drawing directly onto a device.

What’s not so great about the iPad

1) No camera. I don’t understand this one bit. Surely a camera is a no brainer these days. Everything comes with a built-in camera, even my socks (ok maybe not my socks). A camera opens up lots of possibilities for games. Here’s hoping that it will be released as a plug-in accessory.

2) No Multi-tasking. I felt I had to mention this just because it would be nice to be able to have more than one App open. It would of course pose some quite serious issues with memory management though and if the iPad is really as fast as people are saying then hopefully we won’t miss it too much.

3) Existing iPhone Apps will be immediately available on the iPad. Not everyone will agree with this but I really don’t think iPhone Apps should be available on the iPad. The iPad will display iPhone Apps in a small window in the center of the screen and allow the user to expand the App to fill the screen. Lots of Apps are going to look really ugly with this feature, case in point – my own Rocket Santa game. It’s graphics are isometric pixel art and I suspect they will look hideous when scaled up.

How will it impact my direction as a games developer

For my own part, I plan on pre-ordering the iPad as soon as possible. However, I don’t plan on developing any games for the iPad yet, at least not until I own and have spent significant time using the device. The potential for building games specifically for the iPad is really exciting and something i’ll definitely be pursuing once it launches (who knows, maybe i’ll return to my IF game after all).

I’ll continue developing my latest game for the iPhone and if, once I have the iPad, I think it will convert well then i’ll port it over with a new interface.

Thats not to say I won’t begin investigating the iPad’s features now. Apple have already made the iPad SDK available to iPhone developers (under a non-disclosure agreement) and I already have it installed on my MacBook Pro. Exciting stuff indeed.

On Wednesday 11th November 2009 I attended the iPhone Tech Talk World Tour. Hosted by Apple in London’s Congress Centre, this is my review of the event.

I arrived at the Congress Centre at about 7.50am and there was already a queue of around 15 people. Doors were opened at around 8.10am and we began filing in to register for the event. In order to gain access to the event we needed our invite and some proof of identity and in return we were given a name tag and an iPhone Tech Talk T-Shirt (Pictured left).

After registration we were lead into a room with lots of coffee, tea, and pastries and given the opportunity to mingle. Several cups of coffee later and the now 300 ish strong crowd of developers were lead into the main auditorium for the kickoff talk.

The kickoff talk was presented by John Geleynse (Director of Technology Evangelism) and lasted for just over 1 hour. These were the key points…

15 months since the App store first launched, 50 million iPhones worldwide, 2 Billion App downloads, 100k Apps, 125k developers in the dev program.

You should strive to ensure that your Apps have the following qualities: Delightful, Innovative, Designed, Integrated, Optimised, Connected, and Localised.

A general observation made was that the majority of successful Apps use the latest technologies, go the extra mile, and keep things fresh.

In addition, In App purchases were plugged a fair bit as a way of extended the life of your App. This first hour was very much a “feel good” session celebrating what the App store has accomplished.

After the kickoff talk, there were a number of sessions to choose from covering a range of topics, all aimed at a technical audience. Of the 15 sessions on offer, I attended the following 5…

Audio Development Tips for iPhone
Adding In App Purchases to your App
Mastering OpenGL ES for iPhone – Part 1
Testing and Debugging your iPhone Application
Maximizing iPhone App Performance

Audio Development Tips for iPhone – hosted by Allan Schaffer (Graphics & Media Evangelist)

This was a really good session, very much pitched at the beginner getting started with Audio and the best practices you should follow. There were a number of points raised but perhaps the core focus was on the AVAudioSession categories. You have 6 categories to choose from when initialising your audio session and generally its clear cut what these should be used for, bar 2. Ambient and Solo Ambient share lots of similarities but the key difference is that Solo Ambient should only be selected if you want to use the Hardware codec (that is, the iPod will no longer be able to make use of it).

Another good point was that you shouldn’t ask the user if they want sound when they start your App. You should try to determine what they want based on the current state of their iPhone. E.g. If the mute switch is on then they probably don’t want sound, likewise if they are playing music then they probably don’t want sound.

Adding In App Purchases to your App – hosted by Mark Malone (Apple Internet Technologies Evangelist)

For me, this was by far the most disappointing session. In fact its the only session that I was disappointed with. Perhaps I was expecting too much from it but it basically took us through the steps of implementing In App purchases and highlighted some of the pitfalls. I spoke to others in the session who got a lot from it so i’m sure its just a matter of how relevant it is for you.

Mastering OpenGL ES for iPhone – Part 1 – hosted by Allan Schaffer (Graphics & Media Evangelist)

Like the Audio session in the morning, this was hosted by Allan Schaffer too. I have to say, the guy is a really great speaker showing heaps of enthusiasm for the various topics he covers. Anyway, this session was not for the feint of heart but Allan did a great job of pitching it at an intermediate level. As a beginner I was able to get a fair bit from it actually, including some good pointers on where to start.

A large portion of this session was discussing the differences between OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 and how to handle these on the various devices. Allan spent some time talking about how OpenGL ES fits into the iPhone SDK architecture and also touched on the various performance pitfalls to look out for.

For the beginners out there, here’s the list of resources recommended by Allan…

OpenGL ES programming guide for iPhone (iPhone Dev center)
OpenGL ES 2.0 programming guide (book)
OpenGL Shading language (book)
OpenGL programming guide (book)
OpenGL SuperBible (book)
Xcode OpenGL ES template (built into Xcode)

Testing and Debugging your iPhone Application – hosted by Michael Jurewitz (Developer Tool Evangelist)

This session was recommended by John Geleynse in the mornings Kickoff talk. There was a lot of content crammed into this hour long session but it was all very high quality and extremely useful. Michael covered how to setup Unit testing (both Logic tests and Application tests). Both of these test types are actually fairly easy to setup, with Xcode containing various templates to make your life easy.

The key takeaway from this session though was Static Analysis. This is a new tool that has made its way into Xcode 3.2 as part of Snow Leopard (so don’t go looking for it if you haven’t yet upgraded). It essentially checks your code for potential bugs without actually running it. Its kind of like an early warning system. Its very clever and a really powerful tool. The rest of this session took a look at using Instruments to look for issues in your code (Memory leaks and Object allocation).

Maximizing iPhone App Performance – hosted by Michael Jurewitz (Developer Tool Evangelist)

This very much followed on from the previous session but took a deeper look into performance issues and Michael even did a live demonstration, improving the performance of a particularly laggy application that had a scrollable list of movies. Michael gave us various tips about avoiding transparent UI elements and ensuring our images were in the PNG format. This performance session along with the previous Testing session were the two most useful and gave me a lot of practical advice that I can put to use immediately.

I feel its also worth mentioning the quality of the event hosting. The lunch was excellent and various snacks, coffee, and tea were readily available throughout the event. We even had wine and cheese at the end of the day after all of the sessions had ended. The congress centre isn’t the most spacious of venues but I think the staffs management of the space was exemplary.

I think overall the event was a winner. The content was high quality and I took a lot of information away that i’m convinced will improve the quality of my future games and applications.

“Apple technology evangelists are coming to a city near you with expert advice on how you can maximize the innovative technologies of iPhone OS within your apps. Don’t miss this unique opportunity only available to developers in the iPhone Developer Program. The event is free, but space is limited. Register for an iPhone Tech Talk today.”

I’ve just received confirmation that i’ll be attending the London event on 11th November. I’ll aim to tweet about the event as much as possible and i’ll be sure to post a write-up on this blog shortly after.

Star Fusion App Store Submission

Some great news today. Star Fusion has been submitted to the iPhone App Store for approval. Providing Apple do not find any glaring errors, it should be available to buy within the next week or so.

I’ll get a trailer up as soon as I can and i’ll also put some promotional material on the official Star Fusion page which can be found here.

It’s certainly been a journey to get this far. I started learning iPhone development a little under 4 months ago with no knowledge of the platform, armed with just a book! (Beginning iPhone Development by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche). I came up with the idea for Star Fusion 1 month ago so development on this game has been pretty fast. Obviously the journey doesn’t end here and i’m looking forward to the next stages (Promotion, Game updates, and new ideas).