Development Options
So thanks to a quick chat with Karl, a friend and developer I worked with at MindSnacks over the summer, I learned about some great iPhone development resources that definitely start to lean development favor away from Unity. Here's a list and my quick first impressions of each:
- ObjectAL for iPhone : Karl's own audio development tool for the iPhone. Sounds like a great tool but sound is way down on my checklist for development.
- cocs2d for iPhone : Great 2D development tool, perfect for my project. This is definitely the way to go for my project. Karl highly recommended it and it was used in our Mindsnacks game. It included basic workflow and spirte management and should make my initial development a bit easier.
- Chipmunk : 2D physics on the iPhone! Perfect for my game. Can't wait to start implementing and see if it will be able to manage all the gravitational and collision effects for my app.
- iCode Blog : For everything else I found iCode Blog. A series of posts outline how to create all sorts of menus, tables, etc for the iPhone.
I'm hoping to have the first three tools implemented in the next few weeks and running a basic version of my idea. My design document and wireframes should be done soon, followed shortly by my mockup (just to make a bit of light at the end of the tunnel). Hoping to post the first two tomorrow. Wish me luck...lots of work to do!
Inaugural Post
So here we are. This blogger site will probably just be temporary since I was having some trouble setting up WordPress for the first time on my server since I haven't used MySQL yet. Can't wait till Web II really get's started this semester and I learn all that juicy stuff. Anyways worked on the Proposal all yesterday and today and managed to piece it together. It was a bit difficult seeing as how the structure of the proposal is meant for more academic purposes. I think I came up with a pretty decent way to exploit that though.
I channeled a lot of what I learned in London about design cycles, patterns and such. At the time I didn't think it would serve much purpose, but it found a good outlet here. I knew a lot of the academic vocabulary for the design process which was very helpful. I just hope I can find my notes from that class. I believe I kept them but their home in DC so next time I go down there I should definitely do a search for them to implement them as resources here in this project. I can only hope they're there.
My proposal went pretty well besides the academic-theme hurdle I had to overcome. I think I communicated the game idea across quite nicely but the time the Gantt Chart took threw my work timing off (probably over-designed it for what it was considering the past proposals I looked at online). Still a proper mock-up is my first step along with reading up on Objective C and doing some tutorials. Ordered a decent book off Amazon. Reviews aren't stellar but none really are for these kinds of things, it's just hard it seems.
I'm excited to start doing said tutorials. I picked up Unity3D pretty quickly and I had to teach myself some basic C and Javascript for that as well. Though I relied more on the Javascript due to my Java experience (and the similarities between the two) I generally thought I picked it up pretty quickly. Staying motivated to do that along with regular schoolwork will be the gravest challenge in this area but I'm confident.
If my recent stand-alone work on my own website is any indicator, I don't think I have much to worry about...as long as I can get my website and demoreel done fast enough so that they don't interfere with my Senior Project too long.
Anyways, I'll post my initial sketch/concept of the game just for funsies, it's not a work of art or anything, and I'll have a basic mock up fairly soon. I won't do a proper pretty mock up till closer to the Alpha review, should only take a day or two and starting coding is the hardest, and most important, step. Wish me luck.
NB: We're now on WordPress on my domain! WOOT!