Bytesize Adventures

Astro Noughts is currently “In Review” and with any luck should be in the App store next week. Whilst I’m impatiently waiting, I though it would be interesting to write up all of the hardware and software I used to create the game.

Each game you create is going to require different tools and it’s highly unlikely you’ll find a single piece of software to cover all of your needs. In fact, you’ll likely need multiple pieces of software to cover each of the disciplines. I’d encourage you to explore and be creative. Find tools you like, stretch them to their limits, and find alternative uses for them. Sometimes you can achieve the effect you’re looking for in really unlikely places. Its not the software that matters but the effect you can produce with it.

I’ve tried to make this list as comprehensive as possible and it therefore does include some obvious things (such as a desk) as well as some luxury items. I’ve included my reasoning behind each so I’ll leave it up to you to decide how necessary they are. I’ve split this list into sections to make it easier to refer to. keep reading…

By Chris | Posted in: Development Diary, Tangents | Tags: astro noughts, audacity, brainwave, cfxr, coffee, gorillapod, imovie, instruments, macbook pro, opacity, particle designer, photoshop elements, sennheiser, thumbjam, twitter, wacom, wordpress, xcode
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Last week a great blog post, followed by a seemingly innocuous tweet from @mysterycoconut, escalated into what is now known as iDevBlogADay. The concept is fairly straightforward; Every day a developer (or two) will post on their blog. We all have an allotted day so that there is at least one blog post published every day of the week. @mysterycoconut has done a great job of organising it with the #idevblogaday hashtag, a twitter list for the participants, and even an aggregated RSS feed of all the blogs. There’s a wide variety of developers joining in – Scroll to the bottom of this page to see the roster.

We’ve already had great posts from Game from Within, Acorn Heroes, Retro Dreamer, Rizer Games and Québarium. For my post I wanted to cover something I’ve been meaning to write about for some time…
keep reading…

By Chris | Posted in: Design, Development Diary, Tangents | Tags: beginner, code, Design, graphics, iDevBlogADay, iphone development, opacity, photoshop elements, project management, sound, xcode
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It’s been about 5 months since I set out developing games for the iPhone. I started with a decent amount of programming experience but no real knowledge of Ojective-C, Xcode, or indeed games development. Now, with my first game available on the iPhone app store, my first free update complete, and a website and blog under my belt, I thought I would take some time to review the experience.

I started this journey because I have a passion for video games and video game development. The iPhone platform presented me with an opportunity to develop a game for very little cost and publish it to a potential user base of millions. I won’t lie to you, the possibility to earn some money was a big draw and certainly acted as motivation in some small form.

I spent the first three months learning to program with Objective-C in Xcode. Coming from a Java and web scripting background, I expected to coast through but alas I found some of the concepts a bit difficult to get my head around. In the end it was sheer bloody minded determination and hours of late nights that saw things finally click into place for me. The first three months also made me realise that my original idea and code needed to be scrapped and I had to start again with a blank canvas (but this time with 3 months of experience to my name).

keep reading…

By Chris | Posted in: Tangents | Tags: cocos2d, objective-c, sales, story, xcode
17 Comments »

Whilst i’m anxiously waiting for Star Fusion to be approved by Apple, I thought i’d write a post about all of the hardware and software that I used to create my iPhone game.

Obviously the software you use will depend on your own requirements and tastes but for me this list represents my iPhone game development toolkit.

keep reading…

By Chris | Posted in: Tangents | Tags: animation, audacity, bitnotic chill, cfxr, cocos2d, coffee, game development, graphics tablet, inkscape, iphone developer program, jing, macbook, music, omnioutliner, paper, pencil, photoshop elements, process 3, Star Fusion, toolkit, twitter, wordpress, xcode
17 Comments »