The end of an Era, the dawn of the future!

Hello world.

Sorry for not keeping this blog up-to-date, let me tell you what has happend since the last post! First of, I'm done with the iPhone app development ( for now at least.. ). I had a couple of reasons for leaving the iPhone "dev-circle". The biggest reason is the fact that Apple turned down a lot of people with the iOS 4.0. I was very exited on the release day, installed it directly on my iPhone ( a 3G ) and at first it was good. But during the week I tried it out I started noticing how my phone was getting slowdowned and frozed a lot more often than usuall. My battery drained even though I didn't use it for more then just checking the time/surfing. I was also not aware that Apple took away all the features that made iOS4 interesting, like the multitasking/background picture for the springboard.

My resoultion? I jailbroke my iPhone and it's really alot better, I get the same features as in iOS4 but I can use my phone and the battery last as good as it was day one! I really enjoy all the extra stuff you can do with an "open" iPhone. And no, just because I jailbroke my iPhone, that does not mean that I'm a pirate now. What I think most people fails to understand is the fact that when you have jailbroken your phone it doesn't include any way to download pirated apps. If you want to join the "darkside" you will have to add additional sources ( a form of repositories ) in Cydia. So don't hate the jailbreakers, hate the pirates! I've downloaded alot of apps, both from the Cydia store and the AppStore, I have NEVER downloaded an pirated app!

Ok, now where done with the iPhone. What's next? Well, I'm currently unemployed ( HIRE ME!!!! ) so I will be focusing on building my portfolio and learning a lot of new stuff! First up, Xbox Live Indie! I will try to post some updates on this blog during my tries :) More info will come when I have something neat to show.

Bye! For now....^^

Joakim

Project GnipGnop!

New project!
I'm currently working on a simple 2D multiplayer game, the 3D racing project is put on ice untill I find some time to restructure some of my code. I'm still using my engine for the 2D project, so it's still evolving!

The new project will be using the GameKit that Apple supplies. GameKit is used to connect two or more i-devices with either Bluetooth or by Wi-Fi/Cellular network. I will start with implementing the Bluetooth connection, and the game will be for 2 players. The game will be really similar to the classic game "Pong", I want to keep it simple and polished this time so expect a lot of nice effects :)

That's all for now, will post some screens when there is something to show!

Joakim


-- Posted From My iPhone

Some Good News and Some Bad...

So last weekend I discovered that something is wrong with my texture-coordinates in my model-class. I spent the saturday trying to find out where the problems, still haven't found it. Then I tried to workout the normals/lighting, turns out I still need to read up a bit on that subject though...

So then I turned to another thing I will be needing in order to create a good game engine for the iPhone, I'm talking about sound. My first though was to use the Apples' SystemSound, but there was some major limitations to that, such as not being able to use soundclips that are longer than 30 seconds and perhaps the biggest limitation, that SystemSound isn't played immediately but put in one of Apples' queues. So I decided to go with OpenAL. I found a couple of great tutorials that showed the basics, then I tried setting it up.

Right now I can load in a soundclip and have several different "sources/speakers" play that soundclip. I have a couple of more things I would like to add 3D sound, either using OpenALs or making my own. Oh yeah, I did another concept-sketch!

That's all for now, I really want to get the engine ready for production now!! Excpect more more info soon :)

Joakim Rosenstam

Concept Sketch!

I made a small sketch for my next project earlier today, expect more to come!







No coding update today!

Joakim Rosenstam

-- Posted From My iPhone

A small update

Hello dear Reader!

I've been working some more with the Engine ( still haven't figured out a name ) and I've started to work on a .obj model loader! So far it's pretty slow and the rendering of models still needs a bunch of optimizations, but I'm able to load a triangulated .obj file, with textureCoordinates and normals. I haven't started the work on lighting/normals, but all the info from the .obj is being loaded correctly into the engine.


As you saw on the screenshots in my last update, I got particleEmitters up and running. I will need to rewrite them too use VBOs. Same thing goes for the models. I feel like my framework is growing bigger and bigger, which is great, but I will need to make sure everything works and is easy to use.


When I'm done with models, lighting and sound, the framework is usable and I will try to make something cool in it! I got a few ideas.. Feel free to send me an email if you have any questions about the engine or if you just feel lonely and need someone to send cute mails to!

That's all for now, will try to start post more regular updates. Thanks for reading and showing intrest in my work, I'm out!

Joakim Rosenstam


-- Posted From My iPhone

Framework/Engine news!

Hello everyone, I spoke (very shortly) about the new "Framework"

I've been busy working on in the last update, I feel like it's time to show how far along I've come. First thing first, the framework has turned into something much closer to a game-engine then a framework so from now on I will refer to it as a Engine. I made the engine from the ground-up, I use a mix of C and Obj-C to create all the classes that I need.

I got a lot of help from two really good friends, Tommy Vågbratt and Arvid Binder

Ekedahl, and if you guys ever read this, you should know that I'm really thankfull for everything you taught me :). The first

thing I made were a vector and a matrix class, they aren't fully optimized but they are good enough for me. I then carried on with creating a core for the engine, I made alot of small utility classes such as color and vertex classes. I then carried on creating a camera class, and some other neat things to be able to get the most out of Open-GL.

At first I used the same setup on rendering as in the example of Open-GL that Apple provides

(a NSTimer that calls a specified function in a specified

time interval). I had some major problems with that though, I could not get the rendering over 20-30 fps, even when I specified a higher rendering frequency. I also read alot about the way/when NSTimer calls the function specified by the coder and I don't believe that this is a safe way to go for a game-engine.

The way I handle, update/render right now is fairly simple. On startup a second thread is started that updates and renders all game

data. This means that I can choose if I want a locked interval of update/render calls or if I simply want to update/render as fast as the iPhone/iPod can.

If you look close at the screenshots you will notice that the newer

ones miss the debugtext, this is a issue that I bumped into when switching to a multithreaded approach. Apperantly all uiobjects, such as

UILabel, have to be updated in the main-thread. So that is on my todo-list.

Well that pretty much everything so-far!

Am I keeping somethings hidden/unexplained?

Of course I am! There will be plenty of updates on my new project/projects, just wait for it :)

Joakim Rosenstam

And yeah, if you have any questions/comments/ideas

toss me an email

(joakim.rosenstam@hotmail.com)

and I will answer as fast as possible!

10.000+ Downloads!

Just want to thank everybody that downloaded my apps. The total count of downloads is now: 10.986, with an avarage of 50 downloads per day! To celebrate this success two of my apps are now made free and will stay free for ever, if you haven't downloaded iKeepScore and iThinkQuick already, do it now, they are free :).

iSpark is still available so if you like sparkly and shiny things, take a look at it.

The news flow has been a bit dry, this is due to the fact that I've been realocted and quite busy at work. But do not fear, I'm in the middle of creating a framework that will allow me to make more apps, faster than before. More news on this will come soon.

Thanks to the guys over at AppFigures for the great stats compiler!

Have a great weekend!

-Joakim

Let me introduce: iSpark

First of all, thanks to the man/woman at Apple who reviewed iSpark in 48 hours! That's a new record for my apps, and I'm really happy about it being released before the new year .

This is what I wrote in the description on the Appstore:

"iSpark is a Particle Manipulator that lets you play around with 4 individual particle launchers. Each launcher can be customized using the sliders, you can choose size of the particles, growth, number of particles launched, speed of particles, you can even change the shape of the particles!

iSpark is the perfect app to play with during boring busrides, lectures or meetings. It's silent, fun and the result of a couple of minutes of tinkering is usually quite breathtaking.

Directly when you start the app there will be a tutorialvideo explaining the basics of the app, after that you're on your own, but you can always restart the app to see the video again.

iSpark manages 1200 particles when all the number sliders are at the far right, this means some pretty tough calculations for you iPhone/iPod, don't throw the app away if you get low framrate, try waiting for a bit or restarting the app. iSpark uses the accelerometer to affect the particles, try rotating your device to get different effects. It's also the perfect app for the holiday, celebrate the new year with 100% safe fireworks!"

And now to the nice part, it's free for NOW, it will be free for 2-3 hours so hurry up and download it now before the price is rised to the unhuman price of 0.99 $...

Download iSpark @ iTunes

Have a great New Year's Eve!

Joakim Rosenstam

News and a Contest!!!

Good news first

As some of you might have heard, I'm working on a new app, this app will be released sometime in the beginning of 2010, I still need to work alot on the UI but all major functions of the app is already done.

This time I'm really pleased with my work, the new app is a "particle manipulator", which basicly means that you have control of a number of particle emitters :). So far you control 4 emitters and you can move them, change number, size, speed and alot of other varibles. You can also manipulate the color and shape of the particles for each of the emitters.

Contest

Yes I shall have a contest! I need help with comming up with a good name for the new app, if you got a good name for it, post it here in the comments or send it too me by mail at: joakim.rosenstam@hotmail.com.

The rules are the following:

* The name of the app cannot be offensive.

* The name of the app needs to be really awesome, not just "P4rticl3s".

Don't take the contest to serious, I will however reward the winner with... Well we have to see about that later, but the winner will most definitely have his/her name somewhere in the new app :)

That is all for now, more info will come soon, happy holidays!

Free For All!

Hello world, it's friday and today I'm feeling good so I decided to cut the price on all of my apps! Yeap that's right all my apps are now available for 0.00 $ ( or 0 kr if your from Sweden ) I will keep the low price only for this weekend.

Check them out and send me some feedback on them!

iThinkQuick

iKeepScore

Free Stuff!! ( U.S only )

Yeah that's right I will have a small giveaway of 10 of my apps ( 5 iKeepScore & 5 iThinkQuick ). All you have to do to get one of the apps is to live in the U.S and send an email to:

joakim.rosenstam@hotmail.com

the mail must contain which app you want and the titel of the mail should be: "iPhone App Giveaway". Hurry up to receive a free copy of iKeepScore or iThinkQuick!

Have a good one!

Joakim Rosenstam

iKeepScore version 1.5.1 is out!

Great way to start the weekend, my app "iKeepScore" just got through the appreview process and will be out on the AppStore toworrow! I will post a link to the app here when it's out.

This update fixes the bugs i talked about in this post, the update is free so if you are a proud owner of iKeepScore go update it!

Bugs.. Gotta love 'Em :)

Last night I recived a mail from a user of iKeepScore reporting some odd behavior. I booted up my version of iKeepScore, and sure enough the bug was there too. I went to sleep and first thing in the morning I started looking around the code, everything looked ok! Well, to be able to explain the solution I must explain how the app works.

What I have done is that I tagged each cell in iKeepScore with a number from 1 - 108 ( 6 players * 18 cells ) and in the

score calculating code I loop through the cells, adding the numbers together to a total score at the bottom. So this is was basiclly happend : one of the cells had the wrong tag...

So I decided to put the cells tag in the cell. The tag is basicly just a number. If you look to the right you will see two screenshots, the left one is correct, the right one is the one I got the first time. So the bug was this: instead of putting a 6 in cell number

6s tag, I had put 56 there.. and it got better... You can see that the cell where there are supposed to be a 42 is empty? Turns out I put a 41 in

that tag too. That one would have been

really hard for a user to catch, as it adds to the correct column.

I've updated the apps and sent in them to the Apple review team, expect the update to be released in about 3 weeks!

Denied again..

Just got another mail from Apple regarding my new app, looks like I resolved the issue on iPhones but not on iPods, argh... Well I'm fixing it right now, and hoping it won't take another 20 days to get some kind of respond from Apple :(

Small Update regarding the new apps..

Got my first rejection mail from Apple today.. I had forgot to put in an error message that should be displeyed if the user has lost connectivity... Well it took five minutes to put in, so I changed some other things to, I'm really exited about these apps. Sorry for all the secrecy about the two new apps, but I will provide more info when they're out!

That's all for now, have a great weekend!

iThinkQuick 1.1 is now ready for sale! And some stats!

iThinkQuick v1.1!

Yeap just got the mail from Apple, the new version of iThinkQuick is out! The new version got 2 new minigames and alot of new graphics, and perhaps the best feature is that the game is now playable on iPhone and iPod Touch devices which hasn't been upgraded to the OS 3.0!

You can download the new version of the app here: iThinkQuick v1.1 @ iTunes

Some Nice Stats!

I thought of putting some stats up here for my two apps, iThinkQuick and iKeepScore.

With "Upgrades" I mean how many people who have downloaded version 1.0 and stayed with it untill a new version was released and updated to that version.

iKeepScore

1109 Downloads

424 Upgrades

49 % of customers is located in the U.S

iThinkQuick

1735 Downloads ( 1700 Downloads first week )

0 Upgrades ( new version today! )

51 % of customers is located in the U.S

Well that's all for now, I will be back later when the ( hopfully ) "ready for sale" mail from Apple is recived again!

I will be working on a website this weekend, will link you guys to it when it's done!

Joakim Rosenstam

New app in review!

I just sent in a new app for review, it's really 2 apps, one of them is a free version and the other one will cost 0.99$. I wont publish anything about what the app does before it comes out but it has something to do with news...

The free version will have ads in it, and the paid one will remove these. This is the first time I've been working with AdMob and the experience so far has been great, it was really easy to integrate with my app and get to function fully, so thank you AdMob for bringing an easy AdFramework to the table :)

Have a great weekend, I'll be back later when I get some new info about iThinkQuick 1.1!

iKeepScore version 1.5 is out!

iKeepScore version 1.5 passed the review process and is now ready for sale! The new features in this update is an added support for the "Shake-to-Clear" function, automatic save/load preventing your gamedata getting lost by a call or sms! You can download iKeepScore @ iTunes or at the AppStore on your iPhone/iPod Touch for 0.99$!

That's all for now, will be back with more news on iThinkQuick when it get's the ok from the reviewteam.

iThinkQuick 1.1 in review!

I just sent in an small update for iThinkQuick that fixes a small bug, added some new graphics, added some instructions and I added 2 more minigames. I know it's not alot of games but they really change the flow of the game. I also changed a few things to make the app run on devices with a OS older then the 3.0 version that's out now.

Expect the update to be out in 2-3 weeks ( around the 7th of september ).

I'm tossing up a screenshot from the new version, have a nice weekend, and as usual email me or comment if you have problems/questions!

Hasta la Vista!

iPhone Development Weekend!

This weekend I will sit down and make some more minigames ,fix some issues and adding some features for my app iThinkQuick, so if you have any kind of new feature or a new minigame you would like too see, please leave a comment on this post about it, or send me an email: joakim.rosenstam@hotmail.com

Have a nice day!