Now if only there was instruction to this as well…
All hail rubble! ….
Click to see the rest
Archives
All posts for the month November, 2011
Longtime student Elliot did the programming on this great book below, and if you listen close you can you hear me patting myself on the back… my humble Cocos2D tutorials helped him out. Obviously the virtual ebook part gave him some useful code. Speaking of which, I’m planning to record an overview tutorial of that Ebook template, and package it back up as a separate Starter Kit like I did with the Wave Attack Game. And like that, if you’ve already bought the full course, you don’t need to buy both. A zip with the Starter Kit Ebook template will be added to your download link page.
Oh and more about this awesome book, the monster can be different every time. Read the app description……
Create your own monster character in just a few taps and see it appear throughout the story. With up to 10,000 customized monsters to choose from, there’s sure to be a monster for every child. Best of all, you can read it again and again, choosing a different monster each time.
The 3rd and final part of the Strategy Games series is finally here. You can purchase just part 3 from here, or click here/above to buy all 3 parts of the entire series. Here’s what you’ll learn in the final sessions…
- Create a shaded terrain. Dynamically adjust contrast with the ColorMatixFilter class.
- Create multiple states for an object. Progress from a simple switch statement to object-oritented states.
- Create multiple players.
- Learn to create a turn-based environment for units and players, for both human and computer input.
- Create computer opponents.
- Create multiple unit types: land, air, computer and human.
- Use the bitmap class to create a “fog of war” that reveals the map as units move.
- Differentiate between turn-based and non-turn-based states (and support both).
- Add combat between units.
By the end of these lessons you should have a very playable strategy game which you COULD publish to your usual devices that the AIR exporter supports. So this could make a great Android or iPhone/iPad game.
Also any updates to this course, for example quick “what if” questions our instructor finds worth recording a lesson on will be free. Download links would get sent to existing buyers!
Enjoy!
Diane Cipollo just got her fantastic free app approved, Dracula’s Guest, which was packaged up from Flash CS5.5-to-iOS. So thats great news for anyone else publishing an iPad book using Flash. She added lots of animation and sounds, and remember that is key. Your App reviewer needs to see that your book has some interactive elements, otherwise it won’t make it in the App Store as a Book (they’ll want it republished as an iBook)
And long time student Tyler Herring has built a really impressive library of Flash artwork. He’s got Elves, Orcs, Wizards, Camelot, Lovely Girls, Undead, Angels & Demons, Monsters, and Many more. And as you can see from the image below, they are all broken up for easy animation. Excellent stuff! 
I stumbled onto two great videos today. This first one is probably the more interesting. This is an animated video tutorial, explaining how to use the iElectribe Gorillaz Edition app for iPad. The animated is pretty limited, but its a great marketing piece for the app.
Then this second animation just impressed me
Here’s a quick lesson on using Photoshop to batch process your images if you need to adjust the sizes or rename them for the various iOS devices out there. Its a PAIN if you do this on your own one image at a time.
In the video, I start with the iPad sized images, then shrink those to 84% for the iPhone Retina, then shrink those 50% for the non-Retina iPhones. Finally I rename on the images using another simple Action in Photoshop. And if you don’t know what Actions in Photoshop are, well watch the video!
Also Session 3 part 3 has been uploaded to the delivery server for all you past buyers of my iOS course. You should be getting an email shortly. If you don’t for some reason, you can always just request more time from your past links if they expired, or if they are still active, the new file should be listed.
Enjoy!
A couple people wanted to hear my thoughts on this…. http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html … and I’m an optimist, so I think its a really good thing from an innovation standpoint. It does sound like the War is over and Adobe is conceding defeat, but I’ve been on an iPhone for years now, and its felt that way to me for a long time already.
I read that Adobe cut 750 jobs the other day, so it sounds like resources are tight over there. And I’m sure their team for constantly optimizing the mobile version of Flash Player was a talented bunch that was pulling their hair out every time some new Android based phone introduced something that made the player run funky. And why spend the resources retooling Flash Player Mobile when there’s an option that could (over time) make everyone happier.
Hopefully Flash CS6 has a well built Publish to HTML5 option. It would be crazy if it didn’t now. And maybe what HTML5 is already capable of doing will make Adobe have to step up what Flash does. Because Flash doesn’t do enough as is. I’ve complained a lot about the Filters being “as is” for the past few versions. Maybe will we get some Filters that are Publishable to HTML5-only. We saw the same thing a while back when publishing to Flash Player 7 greyed out using Filters and only the sites willing to step forward and force people to use the latest version gave their users the freshest experience. So this feels like one of those “draw a line in the sand” type moments for Adobe. Give us cooler tools to use in Flash, but make them HTML5 only.
What if tomorrow their press release said ,” to be as innovative as possible, Flash has to go on without Flash Player at all, for mobile and desktops. Flash Player 12 will be the last version”. Its not gonna happen, but would you abandon the swf format, if it did mean your development tool of choice got dozens of awesome new features. Hmmm.
So anyway, its an interesting article, just to hear where Adobe’s head is at, but for anyone hooked on an iOS device like me, a Flash-less mobile device is already a reality.
Another app my iPhone 4S inspired, a shrinkening of one of my iPad pinball games down to iPhone size. And golly, that iPad seems HUGE now that I’ve been playing pinball on my phone. Click here to download it for free! You’ll notice it has some iAds in there, which will be something taught in Session 4 of my iOs course. So this app officially proves I can get those iAd banners to actually show iAds. Cha-ching. Gimme those fat sacks of pennies!
Hot off the press. I just finished a Wave Attack Game Template which is the final project for Session 3 of my iOS Tutorial series . Sorry for the delay, but my new iPhone 4S inspired a total retina-display redo, so its now a Universal iOS App, for either the iPad, iPhone 4, or any other iPhone.
You can get the final template (with brief video overview) as part of the entire iOS tutorial series package available here.. The full tutorial will be uploaded shortly and for past buyer’s of this course, you’ll get an email with download links to those videos.
Fun features of the Wave Attack template:
- Use animated artwork for the player or enemies
- Spawn different enemies with increasing strength for each wave
- Pick up different ammo types after shooting enemies
- Vary the speed and strength of each ammo type
- Increase the difficulty with each wave of enemies
- Add various FX or sounds when enemies are shot
- Add different backgrounds for each wave
- Watch the tutorial and alter it to completely meet your needs!
