...the end

so I'm leaving this blog here as a reminder to myself so that I do better with the new blog.

Seriously....

It would seem like I'm never going to get around to updating this blog with any tutorials and for that I apologize. I've learned so much for other sites and forums I really wanted to give back some. I guess the only good news is that its not because of a lack of want its a lack of time.

:-(

Paid Content in Free Apps

So... here's my take;

"A Person is smart, people are dumb" (MIB)

There are a few apps that already have in-app purchasing and the reaction from the users, at least in the reviews is not one of acceptance. I think this won't really change much of anything in the App store. Sure there will be more apps with in-app purchasing (IAP) but will we see a ton of free apps that allow you to actually try out the app then use IAP to "activate" the full version? I really don't think so.

When I'm reviewing an app in the iTunes store I check to see how much the apps costs, what it does, who makes it and what else they have made. I also checkout the developers web site and hope there is some type of video demoing the app. With IAP I won't know the ultimate cost of the app unless someone mentions it (either the Developer or a reviewer). In addition, will this put an end to yo-yo pricing changes struggling developers do for attention? If you don't know about this it is very common for an app to start at a price but then go up or down, sometimes to free to stimulate sales. I understand it but it ticks me off if I just paid $2 for an app and now it's free!

We also don't know how Apple is going to track these new FAFBWIAP (Free At First But With In App Purchasing) apps. We can assume they are still going to be listed under the initial free category; if so you can expect a lot more of those useless reviews.

It will prove to be interesting indeed.

Update: I released two games, one for iPhone and one for iPad and just for the reasons listed above I also released separate Lite (free) apps. This limits the number of di#$ward, butthole reviews you get and keeps them in the free version where quite frankly who cares, the app is free if it looks interesting you're gonna try it regardless of the reviews.

Back to Basics

So I can maybe program my way out of a "small" paper bag. :-) After a bit of research here's what I have selected... oh wait perhaps it would be good to know where I started.

Note: Links to all books are at the bottom of the post; if you'd like to skip over all this dribble, head there now!

I was born a poor... wait that's a movie line. I became interested in computers back in the MS-DOS v3.x days (yeah go ahead a wikipedia that baby to see how old I am). My actual first computer was a Commodore 64. I had mine setup on a 13" color TV with dual 5 1/4" drives mostly running GEOS. Frackin sweet setup! Then once Windows 3.11 came out, wow that was cool stuff. Anyhow I did some BASIC programming and moved into Lotus 123 macros and automation then on to dBase III and IV. Did a bit of Visual basic programming and then moved into MS Access.

I know what you're thinking; for a "Mac-boy" you sure started out a Windows person. Yup, indeed I did...

So now you have an idea of where I came from and where I need to go is to have a complete grasp on Objective-C and iPhone programming. From there I can branch out and dig into my two favorite game engines; Cocos2D and SIO2.

Sorry, back to books; I already purchased "The Developers Cookbook" but honestly it is a book with recipes and did not help me that much. I went through the Stanford classes but didn't finish the final project so I dropped the ball on that (those courses are excellent though, if you haven't checked them out by all means head over to iTunes U and download them all, they are FREE!). I had also already purchased the first edition of "Learning Objective-C" and started going through it when I found that it is quite outdated, at least in terms of following along with Xcode. Please note I highly recommend the book, just make sure you pick up either edition that says it is for Objective-C 2.0 because you need to have a complete grasp on all the concepts of Objective-C to do actual iPhone development.

I follow Jeff LaMarche's blog and know that he and Dave Mark put out an iPhone Development book and that they also just released an update to it that deals with the recent 3.x changes. So that's where I started; went to Amazon.com and found the book and grabbed it. Once I started reading it the authors quickly recommended an Objective-C primer of sorts as they were not going to focus on teaching the fundamentals of Objective-C but iPhone development (radical, since that's why I bought the book ;-) ). I ordered a copy of this book and this is where I am (re)starting. Oh yeah the name, "Learning Objective-C on the Mac". Perfect since I don't care about the Microsoft Obj-C implementation, just how it works on a Mac. I can tell you this; I'm only about 1/2 way through and it is great! Very easy to read and the examples are all done with Xcode 3.1 (so it's not that far off) and really make sense. I'm excited to finish the book and the projects so that I can start with the iPhone book.

Update: Remembered this great video series that may help others -> check it out: johncmurphy

Links to the book's mentioned:

Learning Objective-C on the Mac

Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

Other books mentioned

Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition)

The Developers Cookbook

Wahoo!

I'm now published! Okay, sorry... I'm also a doofus ;-)

I worked up a revised app based on John's awesome Sliding Views tutorial. See it here: Sliding Views On and Off Screen – Part 2 – Reader Contributions

My main purpose was to think how this might work in a game for notifications. You could have notices drop down from the top and warnings slide up from the bottom, or something like that. Alright, back to work...

85k apps?

Okay, seriously - who the heck has the time to wade through the thousands of new iPhone apps that are released every day? If you haven't yet been to appshopper.com; it's a really good site that pulls in the feed from the iTunes store and lists ALL the apps based on the release date. You can sort just free ones and so forth.

What I really hate are the 15 - 20 releases of the same damn app, i.e. tracker. Do we really need a Pierce Brosnan tracker, well I guess if we need one for Sharon Osborne, why not!

This has always bothered me, even back when there was only 20+ thousand apps in the store.

This sounds like a problem in need of a solution.... ;-)

Upcoming Projects

I'm working on two Cocos2D templates or rather what I call "starter apps". They will have the basic skeleton for a Cocos2D game without the actual game code. One for landscape and the other for portrait.

For me basic skeleton is this layout

Menu with Play, Settings & About

Game - would play the game after a nice 3 second count down and include a pause button

Settings - turn on/off sound and pick menu transition types

About - info panel(s)

Why? Well, this is about the only way I can give back to the Cocos2D community and my goal is to help a few other developers improve their games by demonstrating some simple menu techniques. With the power of Cocos2D there really isn't any reason an app should be released without these basic items (IMO).