Code Dojo

Dink for iDevices beta 1 goes out the door

Seth — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:28:07 +0000

Ok, back from vacation and focusing on finishing up Dink!

I’ve sent out the first beta (universal binary for all iDevices) – hoping to hear it works ok. In the meantime, will run through and apply some more features and fixes, and also see if I can get out a PC version.

One click DMOD installing

One nice new feature is the ability to perform 1-click DMOD install/play from a “browse” menu directly inside the game!

If you’re interested in joining the Dink beta, it ain’t too late, drop me a line with your device UDID.

Mind Wall 1.4 released – Native iPhone 4 screen support added

Seth — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:33:54 +0000

If you’re one of the lucky few (er, many, I guess) with an iPhone 4 you’ve probably been sitting around wondering how amazing Mind Wall would look taking advantage of your new delicious 960X640 screen.

WONDER NO MORE, CHILD! Mind Wall V1.4 is now available on the App Store.

iPhone4 screenshot. But you need to imagine it squished to the iPhone 4 DPI.

iOS4 task switching is now also supported.

Thanks to Shawn for letting me to know it ran ok on the iPhone 4. I’m still working on getting one, apparently the local phone place has no procedure to just plop down money to buy one. I have to buy a second phone contract?! Fine. Also, there is a one month waiting list.

The latest happenings

If on the other hand you’ve been wondering when I’ll finally get off my duff and release Dink iPhone/iPad port or a Dungeon Scroll HD… good questions!

When I need to add a new feature (like adding iPhone4 “Retina” support) I like to do it with a simple project first. This Mind Wall test sort of paves the way as the updated base-code can more or less be “turned on” for my other projects.

Dink has now also been updated for iPhone 4 and if Apple will be good enough to not release new devices every two weeks I should be able to get it out the door.

The “secret” project has sort of been winding down and should I should be completely free to procrastinate work on my own stuff without a valid excuse soon.

Dink Smallwood Mobile – coming to iPad too!

Seth — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 02:01:00 +0000

Well, I’ve been pretty busy working on some top secret projects (if I talked about them, they’d have to kill me!) but in the background the improved Dink has been slowly shaping up for release.

Here are the latest new things (all the screenshots are from the iPad):

It’s now a universal app – it runs natively on iPhone and iPad
Added an additional way to install add-ons. Besides downloading directly by url, you can just drag and drop .dmod files into iTunes. Nice if you want to install a lot at once.
Added instant quick-save and quick-load from anywhere. I debated about this but I figure with how hard some DMOD’s are this is key to avoiding frustration. It’s lightning fast and remembers your last quick save on a per-dmod basis. Normal saving and loading with save spots is still supported, as well as automatic ‘save and restart’ from anywhere when you quit. (Credit: the dmod in the screenshot below is Pilgrim’s Quest)
Added a “speed up” rabbit icon – hold this, and the entire game runs faster. Useful for zooming through unskippable cut-scenes and dialog.
Add-on select menu now shows actual images from the dmod
Added a second control scheme “drag-anywhere” to move Dink around for those that don’t like the virtual pad.

Not much left to do!

Justin is working on new icon artwork and I’d like to play around with getting external bluetooth/dockable keyboard controls working. (anybody know if you can get raw key-up/key-down messages from it?)

I also plan to release this for PC (this new version is ultra portable) after I add gamepad support. I know, it had it in before but I sort of killed all things DirectX when I made it GL optimized.

So to anyone having problems with the current freeware dink versions, hold on a bit.

Mind Wall 1.3 released – now with native iPad support

Seth — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:55:04 +0000

Got an iPad? For the same low price of $0.99 US, Mind Wall now includes native full screen iPad support! If you’ve already bought it, go upgrade, it’s free.

Mind Wall on iTunes

Maybe someone can tell me if it actually works – developing for a device I don’t have (yet…) is really scary!

Kuoushi does a live playthrough of Dink Smallwood

Seth — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:11:48 +0000

Thanks to a herculean voting campaign by “iamnobody2″, Dink has stirred up enough votes to be chosen for the Kououshi live playthrough!

What does that mean? It means you can hear a funny and expletive filled commentary as Dink is played through and make smart remarks in irc while it happens!

Or, if you miss that, you can watch the archived versions (they are at the bottom).

Random picture tuesday

Seth — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:36:32 +0000

Out of PEZ

Random picture tuesday

Seth — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:31:42 +0000

Dink Smallwood on the iPhone/iTouch preview video

Seth — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:49:50 +0000

Despite working on a ‘secret project’ for the last three weeks (more on that later..), Dink for iPhone is still coming along nicely and I wanted to show it in action.

It truly is a great port, including features not found in the original versions such as ‘full state saving from anywhere’, faster script processing, rewritten graphic/resource handling, native GL support, the full original CD sound-track, and a built-in .dmod downloader/installer.

Instead of the usual screenshots here is a crappy youtube movie to give you an idea of how it runs ‘on-device’. Controls/GUI are not final! Hope to put in my new control idea soon and see how it works.

Cosmo in KidZania

Seth — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:23:44 +0000

Been awhile since I’ve posted anything besides boring programming junk so here we go.

KidZania is an edutainment amusement park where kids can (sort of) learn and (sort of) do eighty different career paths. Each ‘career’ takes about half an hour to do and earns you “Kidzoes” to spend in the store.

There are ten KidZania’s splattered across the world. This is the one in Koshien, Japan – there is also one in Tokyo.

KidZania is tiny working indoor town.

At exactly 4 PM, all the stores open for business! Cosmo chose package delivery as his first job. Many of the business in KidZania are real companies in Japan – this company, Kuro-Neko is sort of a Japanese FedEx.

In the pic above he is receiving training for his job. Parents can’t enter most buildings in KidZania, but everything has lots of windows so we get to snoop around and take pictures.

Training complete, he prepares to do some work! He delivers and picks up packages from various other KidZania businesses and does some inventory work. At the end he receives 8 Kidzoes in pay.

He goes to the KidZania bank, gets an account, and deposits his cash. There is a working ATM system.

Here he learns to work at a Pizza place.

The best part of the pizza career – you get to eat what you made!

The bakery, candy maker, and sushi chef careers also feature making real food but he didn’t do those… There is no way to do everything in one day!

Cosmo makes small chat while working as a gas station attendant. The girl driving the car has rented it from the Rent-a-car place – you can only do this if you’ve earned your KidZania license by going to driving school.

One of the most popular careers – Fireman! After training, a building catches on fire and kids are driven to it. The vehicles in KidZania move slightly slower than a normal walking pace, but hey, it’s a firetruck with a siren!

Maternity ward nurse! There was also a dentist career.

Cosmo works security. We caught him transporting cash to the bank. They really let them go off alone to do their ‘missions’.

The pilot career. Nearby, those that chose the flight attendant career path were being trained to give safety instructions.

At the end of a great day, completely worn out physically and emotionally the holy land awaited! He entered “The store” to see what he could buy with his Kidzoes.

We watched through the glass as he wandered around looking at the price tags. I saw him tear up as he realized everything good was just way too expensive for him.

He finally decided on a crappy little plastic thing, the best he could afford. Welcome to the real world, kid!

My verdict

Very cool and worth doing at least once.

Price: $40 US + the usual milking techniques like expensive food, photos, etc

WWW: Kidzania Japan website Note: You need to make reservations.

How to make Xcode feel like MS Visual Studio (MSVC)

Seth — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:37:06 +0000

There are times when you just have to bite the bullet and do some real coding with Xcode. Here are some tips to make it ‘feel’ more like MSVC (with Visual Assist installed of course) so you can bounce back and forth without snapping and murdering your family again.

Step 1: Get rid of that horrible funky mouse acceleration and fix cut and paste

Setup Synergy+ so you can use your Windows mouse and keyboard on your Mac. It’s free.

Just think of your Mac screen like an extra monitor.

Note sure if you’ve heard but the Ctrl-X/Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V shortcuts are freakin’ backwards on the mac. (Don’t get mad Mac people, I just mean from a long-time Windows user’s point of view!)

To fix this, open the Synergy settings on the server side, which would be Windows, and set up the Mac target to reverse the Ctrl/Alt buttons. (See pic above)

This makes the fix system wide, much better than just trying to fix Xcode specifically to do it.

Advantages of using Synergy:

No switching keyboards/mice! Switching keyboards can kill productivity.
Saves desk space and looks cool
You can cut and paste text between the OS’s
If you’ve got a linux box, you can also set that up with Synergy

Disadvantages:

Need two machines running all the time for this to work

Alternative methods:

There are free methods to get rid of that nasty acceleration, none of them really work, maybe the $$ ones do. Some 3rd party mouse drivers will do the job, but you have to OWN that mouse for it to work right.

You can also reverse the Ctrl/Alt (Sorry, Command key, whatever) under keyboard preferences on the Mac side, but I seem to remember having a problem with doing it that way.

Step 2: Use my MSVC key binding set

Install my MSVC key config. (Works fine with Xcode 3.x)

Download this, unzip it, and place MSVC.pbxkeys in YourUserName/Library/Application Support/Xcode/Key Bindings.

Next, start Xcode and click Xcode->Preferences, select Key Bindings, then choose “MSVC” as your key binding set. Now Ctrt-Shift-F does project wide find, Ctrl-Shift-H does project wide replace, F5 does build and debug, Ctrl-` (tilde) will swap between source/header and so forth.

It also remaps debugging keys, F10 will step over, F11 will step into, etc.

It’s not perfect though, it doesn’t seem to want to map a key twice, I can’t get F5 to also “Continue” while debugging. So that became F6.. consider this a good place to start from that you can further customize.

Step 3: Fix Firefox so Home/End works like you would expect.

You’ve gotta websurf from your Mac once in a while, so install Firefox so you don’t have to deal with Safari.

Install Keyfixer, a Firefox 3 plugin so pressing End or Home while editing text will actually do what you expected it to.

While you’re at it, you can fix it so your mouse’s forward and back buttons work properly in Firefox by using the hotkey mapper in Synergy on the server side:

(Map mouse button 4 to Ctrl-L and mouse button 5 to Ctrl-R)

Step 4: Finding a decent SVN client for your Mac

Well, you can’t. The gold standard is of course TortoiseSVN on Windows – but I can’t find anything close on the Mac yet, at least not for free. Yeah, I’m cheap like that.

SCPlugin shows a bit of promise because it attempts Finder integration but is currently broken enough to steer clear of. Maybe later…

RapidSVN is reliable but makes you jump through some hoops if you want merging/diffing.

What works for me currently:

Place the SVN checkout on a networked Windows drive so I can use TortoiseSVN. Xcode will behave fine working directly from it – you can override where projects gets built in Preferences->Building so that part happens on the Mac side. (Faster, and less worry that permissions will be screwed up when you do your final install)
Also enable the SVN support in Xcode, it’s.. uh.. not the greatest but better than nothing.

Step 5: Relax and enjoy your MSVC like coding environment

Well, almost. You’ll still feel a little empty inside without VisualAssist’s advance code refactoring abilities, but hey.

If you’ve got any more tips to ease the Win->Mac pain please share ‘em.

iPhone development on Windows – A basic framework starter kit