I needed to enable Open In in an application that I am currently working on and came across this useful document on how to enable all types of files for your application. I only needed DOC, DOCX and PDF but thought it would be useful for others.
iOS
Hack24 : Whats coming next?
So Hack24 has seen some downloads, and some regular players. 1.01 was a fast update to fix a few issues however 1.02 (which may become 1.1) will hopefully see quite a few improvements.
New stuff coming (hopefully) soon
- Steal player buildings (done)
- Rob player item (master key for players basically) (done)
- Claim all money for buildings (would save a lot of time)
- Scan renamed to probe. (done)
- New scan item to list online players
- Some in game help to guide you on your way (done in a basic way)
- Avatar colour changes based on level / rank?
- APN’s (may not make 1.02)
- Some server securities (done)
- More game levels (may not make 1.02)
- Joystick improvements (done)
Near Future:
- In game messaging
- Customise buildings
- Heads up display of near users (may not make 1.02)
Hack24 : 1.01 Submitted : Whats new?
We have submitted 1.01 to iTunes and hopefully it gets accepted. It is mainly a few important bug fixes.
HACK24 : Submitted
Finally, a month and a week late, the first version of Hack24 has been submitted. Emotional moment, trying to write even a simple MMO single handedly is a massive task, trying to do it in a month with a family and full time job, is practically impossible. I did it in 2 months 🙂
I will write more on it soon, enjoying a beer at the moment.
Version 1.0 supports (I wanted to call it 0.1):
Hacking, buying, entering, claiming from buildings
Scanning and Robbing players
Items allow players to teleport, scan, brute force hack, enter buildings, shield, speed up and invisibility.
I will be updating the website, and writing a how to play guide 🙂
Hack24 : Oh boy its coming!
So I had planned to release Hack24 for the end of May and as we are mid June, I failed! Its pretty hard to make a MMO in a month part time.
Since I lasted blogged about the project I have done the following.
- Improved FPS even on older devices by optimising what is rendered
- Items now spawn and players can collect items
- Speed, Money, hacking items can now be used
- Player can now gain XP and level up
- Added icon
Main items left to do
- Be able to teleport (new idea)
- Be able to buy items
- Quests / missions
- Player interaction
- Add help
- Finish iPhone UI
I hope to at least submit to Apple by the end of the month
Hack24 MMO : We have trees!
I had planned to do more updates but I have been trying to finish the v0.1 of the game for the end of May. To be honest it is probably not going to happen however I am making good progress 🙂 What can you do so far?
- Game has 10 different types of buildings/ world objects
- You can see other players in the game
- You can buy and hack building to give you XP, Money
- Brought buildings you can enter and you can claim money from them
- HUD display shows you your buildings, free buildings and other player buildings
- Exploring gives you XP
- More XP, the higher LVL you are and the better hacker you become
Whats next?
- Scan and rob players
- Spawn random items for people to collect
- Be able to buy items
- Implement item properties (shield, lives, invisibility etc)
- Fix collision
- Quests / Missions
- BUG FIXING
Using Obj / Blender objects in iOS
This is a small post about getting Blender objects in to iOS using the Obj file format.
First off, below is a fantastic tutorial on how to do it.
How To Export Blender Models to OpenGL ES: Part 1/3
This tutorial shows you how to export a Obj from Blender and convert it in to header files to use directly in to your iOS source.
The issue comes when you try to make your own object (I picked a cylinder) and convert it using the OSX tool it gets you to create. Every object I made, crashed the tool.
For it to work you need to apply UV (surface/mesh) co-ordinates. For someone who knows very little about 3D stuff, this caught me out.
To fix
- Select the object and press Tab (so the Mesh menu is available)
- Press U
- Select Smart UV
- Press OK.
I have no idea what it does but it does allow me to export my object and convert it using the Tool created in the link above 🙂
Air Balls for iOS has been released!
Air Balls is my first attempt at making a simple game using the SpriteKit physics engine and boy it was easy. The graphics for this game took longer than the game! Its a simple but fun free game where you need to keep the footballs off the ground. I really think that SpriteKit is a brilliant framework. It reminds me of making games for the Amiga.
GAME JAM 2
So, on the 2nd of May we had our second Compsoft Game Jam. I use the term loosely as we don’t follow any format but to have fun.
The first Game Jam we had was based on creating a game with 24 hours based on a randomly picked theme. This was mega fun and spawned (from me) Disjointed Tunnels (Android) and Stupid Chicken (iOS) which are both released. Other people made some awesome games on different platforms. We decided 24 hours was a little hard work straight after work (yes we go to work before these) and decided the next one was 12 hours.
The other changes to this one was that instead of starting new projects (the main point of a Game Jam), most of us would continue on projects that we are passionate about.
There where 8 of us this time (from 5), listed below are the projects
- Hack24 (mine) is a 3D MMO game in an endless world where you hack buildings and aim to be top hacker.
- Augmented Reality draughts (new).
- Nought & Crosses but in a multiple grid system like Sudoku (new)
- A full blown network / game engine thats massively scaleable.
- A flappy birds clone
- A postman frenzy type game (new)
- A spaceship shooter game
- Web based space shooter / resource game
As you can see, some of these projects are quite large which leads me on to my next post about Hack24.
The general feedback was that people really enjoyed it, I think in some ways it lacked the special feeling of creating something completely new based on a random theme however when someone is passionate about a project, they really churn out the code.
LocationManager gocha!
Oh boy, what a mess this caused me. I am currently working on a project that uses the location manager a lot and needs to keep track of the person location even running in the background. In testing, everything was working except background running. I searched and tried everything, it seemed to work on a device running 7.06, but not in 7.1.1. Instantly I thought BUG. Sadly it was my stupidity!
To save battery life, at the weekend I turned off Background App Refresh but had completely forgotten about it. I had also not implemented the tests to see if this was enabled in my code. Background App Refresh disables location services running in the background!
I now use the following code to check for this.
– (void)checkForIssues
{
if (floor(NSFoundationVersionNumber) > NSFoundationVersionNumber_iOS_6_1)
{
if ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] backgroundRefreshStatus] == UIBackgroundRefreshStatusAvailable)
{
NSLog(@”All good”);
}
else if([[UIApplication sharedApplication] backgroundRefreshStatus] == UIBackgroundRefreshStatusDenied)
{
NSLog(@”Error disabled”);
}
else if([[UIApplication sharedApplication] backgroundRefreshStatus] == UIBackgroundRefreshStatusRestricted)
{
NSLog(@”Error disabled”);
}
}
}
