My First iOS Gaming App Experiment – Log2

I hope you guys would have gone through my previous post  My First iOS Gaming App Experiment – Log1. Yes thats my first experience on gaming in iOS. This briefly tells my experience about starting the app after development xp.

Cocos2D with Box2D: One word people. Only One word. WOWW! A amazing framework to develop iOS games. Keeping my programming friend(RayWenderlich website) in my browser tab started the magic with my 10 fingers on the 104 keys in keyboard dreaming to create a iOS game. Now coming to the Box2D with the shapes i had a hard time figuring out the best tool in finding the shape values for the games(In any Physics Engine it has a feature to create shapes with coordinates for objects in game). So after browsing on internet found Physics Editor is awesome but still was searching for a free tool. So i put Physics Editor in my BuyList basket and started searching for tools. After finding Vertex Helper it made my iOS-Gaming-Coding-Life much easier.

Bugs: One word that every programming developer hates. Obviously mine was full of those stupid things(Yes I created them and yet I hate them and I know it). This gaming is very new for me and this c++ with box2D all in my head made my app somewhat Not-So-Awesome but then with all compromises I started fixing those sick things slowly.

Kamcord: One of the best things of friendship is friends help. Sadesh the guy who i told in Log1  helped me in cocos2d. He incorporated this framework called Kamcord in his previous game called HappyJump. Which is basically a video record and sharing framework for mobile games and i was fascinated by the potential of that framework. So i thought this a kool feature that my game should have. So got the knowledge transfer from sadesh and implemented kamcord in my game. The support from those guys are really aaammaazing. Kevin & Michele from Kamcord they are really awesome to work and get information, they supported me with all my doubts. Kudos to those guys.

Texturepacker: I was late. Not very late but too late to have known the power of TexturePacker in iOS games but anyhow i adapted to it. You know what watch their mindblowing video about spritesheets its absolutely funny and interesting. By using this i can build images into a single large sheet and can import to my other devices such as iPhones and non retina iPads. This helped me convert my ipad game into a universal game app(iPhone4/iPhone5 and iPad) very easily without any pain. You know what I purchased both Physics Editor and TexturePacker.

Finally i had some rookies at my office(Nitesh and Pratap) who just fixed those stupid bugs created by me and finally added some extra touch to my app making my game crash free and bug free.

Marketing: All of sudden i thought it is best to start the marketing before i am ready with the appstore binary. Raywenderlich has a amazing tutorial on marketing iOS aps and games.

1. PreDevelopment Phase

2. Release

3. Post Release

4. Finale

So took some advice from these. Definitely it has lot of information which i think a indie developer should get to know of. While i typing this blog i uploaded the game into appstore and waiting for my app to get approved from apple. Fingers crossed.

Like iPingpong Here

Follow Pingpong Here

Youtube Channel here

My First iOS Gaming App Experiment – Log1

I got bored of being a iOS App developer i wanna jump to the Gaming Side. How kewl it would be to play a game when you have created that game, That feeling is awesome. So it happened suddenly that i  wanted to develop a iOS game and i have to take the simpler path as i have to go through complex calculations and mathematical formulas for Gaming. But it is not that hard what i imagined when i think now. As a iOS developer for the past 3 years i love the way how Objective-C and iOS evolved inside my Medula Oblangata. It was so so soooo phenomenal.

Ideation So i jumped into the iTunes which i call the iWorld. Searched, Browsed, Surfed 100s of game to pick the right thing. Finally i found that the basic pingpong game(The classic computer pingpong) is the opt one because it doesn’t have complex controls simple swipe and simple mechanics. Also found there are some bored Not-So-Fantastic pingpong apps in appstore. So took that idea and added some wow factors like superpowers in it. I iterated Iterated and Iterated a lot in this game(There was a famous saying i remember now “Innovation is 1%Innovation and 99% Iteration) and finally created a Game design document on that

Design Finally drawing after drawing, sketching after sketching found a good complete gameplay for the app. Simple slider on both ends. Superpowers spawning from both the ends. User has to touch and drag superpowers to acqiure them. Superpower may cause damage to other user. and soooooo oooonnnnn. With some help from our UI team(Hari & Arul) designed the whole thing in Photoshop and created the Visual Elements in iPad Retina size So that i will resize that to any device resolutions like iPhone4Inch, iPhone3.5Inch, Retina and iPad.

Development For any game development. Be prepared with the Images before You start coding. With Xcode 4.6 in my Macmini. Downloading Cocos2d framework and installing in my Xcode created a Cocos2D Project. Cocos2D has been amazingly very easy to develop any game. This can be the best framework that any iOS geek can start his gaming idea. With cocos 2D i started my idea with great help from my friend(Sadesh). Keeping RayWenderlich’s Tutorials(This n this and this one too) on my Browser tabs i opened my Xcode and started coding by filling my coffee mug with Latte. After a week coding in cocos2D making just the 2 sliders on my screen heard that my game can be made very easily using Box2D extension and started reading about Box2D about how physics will be applied to the gaming objects and after reading this tutorial on Ray i got very much excited. Thats how i kicked off with my gaming app. My next Log will be discussing more on technical stuff Next Log…. Coming Soon