Before I start, I just want to mention that after 18 straight weeks of making iDevBlogADay posts, that this will be my last one. I’m following Noel Llopis’s lead and making room for that LARGE waiting list of developers waiting their turn. The point of iDevBlogADay was to encourage developers to blog regularly and help them get in the habit of blogging. I’ll still be making regular posts, so be sure to check back each week!...
This post is more of a public service announcement. Prior to Tilt to Live’s Game Center/Retina update we wanted to extensively test the game with a wider tester base. So we ran a small ‘open beta’ (as open as Apple’s ad-hoc program would allow us). Prior to iOS 4.0 users had to do a cumbersome dance to get an ad-hoc game on their devices. And by cumbersome, I mean anything dealing with the desktop iTunes client....
Gamezebo was kind enough to host the post mortem I wrote up for Tilt to Live. You can find it here.
Sometimes being able to ‘unplug’ is exactly what I need to recharge my motivation. This past weekend I did just that. Adam and I headed up to DC to attend the “Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear”. I use to live in DC so ti was great visiting and meeting up with old friends and just exploring the city. I tweeted maybe 1 or 2 times the entire weekend. My laptop never came on, and I actually didn’t randomly browse my RSS feed or facebook until I got back home in Montgomery....
One Man Left Studios is over a year old, but it’s been about 4-5 months since I’ve gone ‘full time’ indie. It’s been an awesome experience thus far and each new day brings a lot of joy and excitement. It’s really hard to describe the feeling of going from a job you simply ‘show up for’ and one that you can’t wait to start working on. But looking back to how I felt about certain aspects of the working life to what I feel now, a lot has changed:...
Ok, that title is kind of misleading. But for those who caught the reference, *high five*. I actually pulled gyroscope support from our latest Tilt to Live update. I had it implemented into the game at one point but through beta testing eventually killed the feature. I just wanted to go over the details as to why it went the way of the dodo bird. Gyroscope != Accelerometer Alright this a biggie....
Lot’s going on in OML-Land. TTL HD is out the door. TTL HD 1.1 is already in Apple’s queue (fixing a horrible crash for our international users). TTL 1.5 (iPhone) is in testing right now. On top of some R&D type stuff I’m messing around with so we can transition to our next project more smoothly. So retina graphics are all the rage at the moment. If you were lucky to develop your game assets all in a vector-based format, supporting retina graphics was a bit easier....
Despite the good advice on just using a library or someone else’s solution to getting game center working, sometimes I’m just stubborn. Well it wasn’t actually completely stubbornness as it was more of a “don’t have an alternative” situation. Tilt to Live uses AGON for it’s leaderboards and awards system. It has served us well and never faltered. Despite that, Game Center has arrived to rain on it’s parade so-to-speak. To give TTL hopefully more life in the long run I decided to implement Game Center alongside AGON over the past week....
Let me first start off by saying how great it feels to be genuinely “busy”. I’m talking about the “excited-and-can’t-wait-to-get-started-or-get-finished” type of busy. I’m slowly finding out that the days are flying by with me barely noticing. Each morning, I’m looking forward to getting to work (yes, even Mondays). So either I’m strange or have found something I truly love doing :). Anyway, I don’t have any technical insights for this week’s post, just more of a status update on something I’ve been tinkering with....
We sent off Tilt to Live HD to Apple for review today. I couldn’t send it off until around 3 PM today because my internet was down (since 6 AM) due to a less then stellar ISP here in Alabama. *sigh*. But that won’t get me down, I’m super excited that TTL HD will be on the ipad app store in a few short weeks! Right now I’m busy trying to cut and edit footage together for a launch trailer....