Targetting iOS devices hardware

I decided to compile all iOS devices specs here so we can get a better glimpse on their hardware and what we can expect from them. This covers iPhones, iPod Touches and iPad. iPhone/iPhone 3G – 412 MHz / 128MB / 320×480 iPhone 3GS – 600 MHz / 256MB / 320×480 iPhone 4 -~800MHz / 512MB / 640×960 iPod Touch 1G – 412 MHz / 128MB / 320×480 iPod Touch 2G – 532 MHz / 128MB / 320×480...

September 8, 2010 · 1 min · 156 words · David Amador

iPhone OpenGL screen orientation using the accelerometer

Even tough it’s not mandatory to support all screen orientations it’s always nice to support at least 2 of them. Let’s imagine your game is landscaped, by some reason the user may want to use either with the home button on the left or on the right. Most games support this, if you flip the device, the game will too. I’ve been using OpenGL to support the device orientation, most people on forums want an automatic solution, but belive me, it’s best that you have control on this....

August 27, 2010 · 3 min · 500 words · David Amador

Developers log stardate 26082010

It’s been awhile since I last updated this, I’ve have my hands full with Vizati iPhone. Ever since I got an IPod Touch 2G it was easier for Rita to get a sense of the screen size (although we knew to be 320×480) it’s different when you are testing on the real thing, text looks smaller, other stuff looks way too big. Here’s a picture she took after a few adjustments....

August 26, 2010 · 4 min · 760 words · David Amador

What are your target platforms for games?

I decided to run a little poll to track what platforms do you target as a game developer. I think this should be interesting. Please share this post link or the direct link to the poll (http://twtpoll.com/dar51l) so that we can have more accurate results. The poll closes in about 6 days and you can select various options of course.

July 26, 2010 · 1 min · 60 words · David Amador

Fixing dark borders sprites on iPhone

I ran into this issue a couple hours ago working on the iPhone sdk: See the darker borders around the image? It’s a png image and that’s was supposed to be a gradient of alpha. So why am I getting this strange stuff around it? Well that’s because that alpha isn’t 0 or 1 or 0 or 255. The first thing I found out is that XCode grabs the png images and multiplies the RGB component with the alpha....

July 26, 2010 · 2 min · 278 words · David Amador

Developing on Mac and Basalt running on the iPhone

It’s been around two weeks since my last post. Basically because I’ve been busy porting my engine Basalt to iPhone/iPad. If you follow me on twitter you might have known this already since I ranted pretty much at start, moving platform and language is always painful if you are used to other conventions/shortcuts etc. So it all started with my wish to port Vizati to the iPhone, since the game is already running on PC, Xbox360 and Windows Phone 7 one can only wish for an easy and quick port since pretty much all base code is done....

July 9, 2010 · 4 min · 688 words · David Amador

We need XBOX Live Indie Games in Portugal!!

See the little black country on the map? It’s Portugal. The green zone are countries around Portugal that have XBOX Live Indie Games. We are surrounded by countries that can place their games on Creator’s Club but we were left behind. I won’t say there aren’t many others but they can speak for themselves. I’m tired of watching developers from other countries being able to place their games there and we have to sit and watch....

June 22, 2010 · 1 min · 198 words · David Amador

Making a XNA Game Installer

I am going to start with a little rant about Visual Studio default Installer, you know, the one you can make for yout XNA games inside VS. Ugly and not very handy, sure it installs every dependency but doesn’t leave many options like….hum…I don’t know choosing the location where you want to install? Moving along…I discovered this little cool installer called InnoSetup, and best of all it’s free. InnoSetup has different ways of you building a proper installer but I am going to cover the script way, much more control....

June 9, 2010 · 4 min · 783 words · David Amador

Who wants to try Vizati Demo?

Ok, I know I’ve been making far too much posts about Vizati but this time it’s for a good reason, anyone interested in trying out the game can do it…right about NOW… http://www.differentpixel.com/2010/06/vizati-demo-available/ Also on a quick update, yesterday I had the chance to test Vizati at Windows Phone 7 Developer’s Hub on a real WP7 device, which was awesome. I want to thank João Antão, Nuno Costa, Ben Riga and Neil Hutson for the opportunity....

June 8, 2010 · 1 min · 100 words · David Amador

A good Reference system can help your game

How many times has it happened where you have this one class, let’s say it’s a spaceship that was destroyed. Now you have tell all other dependent objects that she died, any independent sprite animation class, AI, etc etc because they were relying on her. Another thing is, in my case, having a scene that contains all the objects and by deleting the ship It won’t get removed from the scene, keeping the reference alive and so Garbage collector won’t kick in....

June 6, 2010 · 2 min · 406 words · David Amador

Yay, my first Game as Indie Developer is almost out

No, I’m not dead….yet… It’s just that I’ve been stuck on Different Pixel development dungeon for the past weeks finishing and polishing (bug hunting) my first game, Vizati. Most of you have been following the process and asking things every since we showed the beta version at XNA Pizza Night, after which we decided to finish the game and try to sell it to see how it goes. Three months later and here I am, making the final touches on the game before it’s release on 11th June....

May 26, 2010 · 2 min · 249 words · David Amador

Vizati on Windows Phone 7

It’s been awhile since my last post. I’ve been utterly busy so I haven’t had the time for any tutorials. This week I got an invitation from João Antão to showcase Vizati as part of his XNA Framework presentation. This occurred during the Imagine Cup final on Portugal. I’ve been playing with the WP7 tools and I decided to try and port Vizati to XNA 4.0 and give it a try on the emulator so I could show all 3 versions running simultaneous....

May 7, 2010 · 2 min · 311 words · David Amador