The Arrival

Noooo, noooo...the game isn't finished yet.

I'm just announcing the arrival of my new iMac. So, now I will be legit. I dubbed thee, Hitchcock. My other Mac is Shyamalan.

Alright...back to real day job work, but tonight...I'll be running my fingers across Hitchcock's keys...ooohhh you're so nasty.

There Are No Problems, Just Solutions

There is no problem with the way my artist is doing transparency. Thanks to Cara Motycka, Gyuri Grell, and Chris Dillman for looking at the art and pointing me to a tutorial. Turns out my artist had already read the tutorial that Gyuri mentioned, and Cara & Chris looked at the sprites and said they were correct.

So, what's the problem you ask. The answer, and as Dave Chappelle would say, "it pains me to say it people," is either my blending code ("noooooo!" the chorus roars) or the fact that I'm running on a non-sanctioned PowerPC Mac and the color/alpha scheme is funky. RGBA on the PowerPC is GRAB, so things may be working but the hardware is showing me differently.

Also, Chris pointed out to me that my converting the PNGs to PVRTC may also be stripping the alpha out. He told me to just stick with the PNGs. The curious thing is that in the funky GRAB scheme, I found some sprites online that did alpha blend for me. Only the ones with black backgrounds worked though. So, who knows...

When my new Intel based iMac arrives (hopefully this week), I will find out if its me or the machine.

Thanks again to those dear souls that helped me see error of my ways. :)

Gyuri is already receiving a free copy of the game for being the first to answer some previous question I had, and now Chris and Cara will as well. Also, here's a plug for Chris, buy his game "Mouse House, " that is already up in the iTunes store.

Now, back to work.

Doin' The Cha-Cha!

Yesterday a took a step back to clean up some things. Today some steps forward...cha-cha, cha-cha.

I'm proud to announce that I'm now up and running in my own project. I've started laying out my different component classes (yes I am big on Design Patterns). Ahhh...it feels great to be in an organized environment.

I will continue on.

One draw back. My artist is still having trouble creating transparent sprites with Illustrator and Photoshop. I keep getting things that aren't transparent at all, or half of the sprites are transparent.

Call for help...if anyone out there knows how to create transparent PNG images in Illustrator and/or Photoshop please drop me an email.

Thanks!

Now back to work...

One Step Forward, Half A Step Back

Okay...so I spent the day (did take a 2.5 hour nap) cleaning up code and making my OpenGL class component, but ran into trouble mixing my OpenGL C++ class with the EAGLView class. I think I know what is wrong, and it is forcing me to take another step back and do something I should have done a while back, but I was being quick and dirty and making sure the mechanics of the game worked.

Alright, alright, I admit that all this time I have been adding my code into the "TouchFighter2," sample project...stripping out lots of stuff and throwing mine in. The time has come now for me to build my own project and have things nice and tidy.

So, I took a step forward today, and now have to step back again...all this stepping forward and back, will get you cha-cha-ing. You know my mantra, "the journey is the reward."

I forgot all about this...so let me post, it has been a while since I looked at the tasks I set for myself when this journey began back in December...it has been five months, but I have only worked 92 days on the project. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, I fell into a funk and basically didn't touch the code for 2 months, but I'm cranking again. I found my mojo and it is thoughts and dreams of deneros!

Oh come on people if you are developing for the iPhone you are dreaming of making some cash too! Let's don't lie to ourselves.

Anyway...here's the progress...

Key (red = task completed, green = in progress, black = not started)
Tasks/Status

1) Learn the iPhone Tech
* Download/install iPhone SDK
* Upgrade Mac OS $130
* Join iPhone Dev $99
* Read iPhone Docs/Samples
** iPhone OS Technology Overview
** Cocoa Fundamentals Guide
** iPhone Application Programming Guide
** iPhone Human Interface Guidelines
** iPhone Development Guide
** The Objective-C 2.0 Programming Language
** Write little tests programs to learn the iPhone Capabilities ( iPhone audio, memory allocation, file I/O,graphics, etc...) - (sprite displayed by Dec. 15th)

2) Test my game concepts out on the iPhone
3) Build tool(s) if needed
4) Solidify Game Design

5) Architect the game code

6) Develop game w/ scratch art

7) Drop in real assets
8) Test/Debug
9) Ship It

Haxton out!

Organizing

I'm taking the time now to start really building my engine. I've completed a good deal of the tests that I wanted to figure out to be able to do my game. The journey has been long, and interrupted, but now I am seeing the big picture much clearer. We (artist and myself) have some assets in the game and the mechanics are working. Thus, it is time to get the editor/engine built so that things can go faster.

So, I'm now putting all the mashed and hacked up code into my component classes, so that I can easily assemble my engine/editor.

I have, I think, only 2 *major* things to figure out...

1) Sound (I don't believe the AVFoundationFramework/AVAudioPlayer is difficult, so I may, this evening quickly code up a test).

2) Lua (I still have to sit down and compile/build the framework code I squirreled from somewhere...when I post that I have it working I will find author and give credit here.

That's what is going on. My iMac should be coming in this week, and then I will download the 3.0 SDK and get up and running with it.

One other thing I may tackle this week is setting up xCode to tie into Subversion, and then tie into to CruiseControl. I've been relying on Apple's "TimeMachine," for my backup repository, but that is tedious. So, something else I have to crunch down on.

How many licks does it take to get to the completion of this game?
Ahhh one, ahhh two, three, *crunch!*

I'm not evening going to whine about working a day job, and trying to squeeze in time to do work on the game...I'm not, I'm just not going to do it!

Whinnneeee arrrggghhhh whinnneeee!

Okay...so I lied. :)

Previous Bug Fix

Oh yeah... a posting before this I mentioned a bug I was having. Turns out it was art related. My artist forgot that the iPhone only supports textures that are squared so the image would not convert or load.

Sometimes it is the small things...

Bit The Bullet

I did it...I shelled out the money for a new iMac. I was getting tired of seeing the funky colors on my MacBook Pro Power PC, and the requirement that everything has to be running on iPhone version 3.0 pushed me to finally going legit.

I have had enough horrors updating the versions. I decided against the Mac Mini only because I found a good bargain on Apples web page on a refurbished iMac that cost close to the same amount the Mac Mini would cost. Also, the iMac has a 20" monitor. So, I will continue to develop on my PPC Mac, until the new arrives (4-6 biz days).

I still haven't gotten to the LUA integration yet, I hope to get to that soon.