Busy, busy month.

I’ve disappeared a bit from blogging recently, but no, I haven’t taken 6 weeks off. I wish. Actually, no, I don’t wish. I love working which is partially why I’ve been absent here. I just get hyper focused and forget to attend to all my duties. So recent news…

Story Tellers iOS Starter Kit 

I added quite a bit to this in the past few weeks. Past buyers all should have gotten an email. One minor change, but very worth noting. The most recent Cocos2d library made the switch from using the extension -widehd.png to -iphone5hd.png for Retina Display images on the iPhone 5 . If you don’t include separate images specifically for the iPhone 5, your fallback extension is still the same, -hd.png, which is probably what most of you are using anyway.  There really shouldn’t be too many reasons to include unique images for both devices, unless of course it’s a background image, but even then you could have the -hd.png image wider than necessary for the iPhone 4  and just plan on it being cropped some.  Personally, I liked the -widehd.png extension more than -iphone5hd.png  since it seems inevitable to change one day (ahem, iPhone 6).

And the bigger news is that the Story Teller’s Kit now supports 5 in-app purchases, images that can be shown or not-shown based on in-app purchases,  Facebook posting, Streaming Video (instead of just video files added to the Resource folder of the kit), slide-up style menus with thumbnails, and some extra nice things like adding an array to the Root of the Plist to house images which will appear on every page of the book (good for menu buttons). The Facebook / Twitter posting feature also includes an option to attach an image to the post, which could be used to promote your app. For example, you could include a screen shot from the app. You can find out more details at the fancy new-ish looking page for the Kit…

iOS Game Programming with Xcode and Cocos2d

Some of you might have noticed this got a brand spanking new chapter added. Chapter 10 got bumped up to Chapter 11, and Chapter 10 is now….

Ch.10 Extending Cocos2d

• 10.1 - Connecting to Twitter or Facebook (iOS 6)
• 10.2 - Connecting to Twitter (iOS 5)
• 10.3 - Saving the Screen to the Camera Roll
• 10.4 - Adding Video
• 10.5 - Quick Start Guide to In-App Purchasing
• 10.6 - The In-App Purchasing Classes (fully explained)
• 10.7 - NSURL and UIAlertView

If you bought the book in it’s native iBook format from the iBookstore, you should have an update awaiting you. For my PDF people, you should have gotten an email with a download link for the update.

What Else?… Oh yeah, BootStrap. 

Click above if you don’t know what Twitter Bootstrap is. It’s a lot of CSS and Javascript to make pretty websites basically. I finally buckled down and started playing with some new layout and designs for CartoonSmart. And once I got a look I was satisfied with, I went from very happy to very overwhelmed as I realized it would take me a year to retool the entire site with fresh pages. The “entire site” is a bit of a stretch, so I’ll be starting with sister-sites like CartoonSmartKits.com, CartoonSmartCode.com, and CartoonSmartBooks.com . Basically I’ve committed to watching TV at night in zombie-mode tediously beautifying old sales pages for the next billion shows I “hear”. Fortunately I’ve got a wife that doesn’t mind me asking “wait, what’s happening?” every 15 minutes.

So that’s the latest news. On the near-horizon, we’ve got an Intro to Maya lesson! Hizzah! Some 3D again!

The First 3 Listeners added to the Story Tellers Kit…

You can add the Listeners array to your Story Tellers kit to “listen” for certain events. When a completion event occurs, you can trigger something to happen.  The kit currently supports listening for these events…

PairingCompleted -  Listen for a certain number of base and puzzle/sticker pieces to be paired together. For example, once 12 pieces are put in place, you can shoot off fireworks and add an image saying “Go to Next Page” .

TouchCountByTag – Listen for a specific number of touches on a group of ImageOverlays. These images don’t have to look the same, they simply need to share the same Tag property. ImageOverlays all have Tag property, which up till now has mostly been ignored in this documentation. For example, touching any image 5 times with the Tag set 999, could automatically go to the next page.

RemovalOfImagesByTag -  Similar to the previous listener, you can listen for the removal of images with a specific Tag number. For example, removing 10 images with the Tag set to 888, could show a video.

If you are updating your kit from version 1.4 to 1.5, all you need to do is copy and paste what’s in Page.h and Page.m to your copy of the kit. And then to add a listener, you can copy and paste the Listeners array from the BookSetup.plist (the main property list).

The documentation for the kit now has a fancy Listeners section added to it. Enjoy…

The iOS Story Tellers Starter Kit is ready to make your dreams come true…

 

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say this kit is “ready to make your dreams come true”, because  I fell asleep last night brainstorming ideas for a sample children’s book to write and that led to some wild dreams. One of the ideas I had, which this kit supports, is reading a book from the bottom up, or top down. Most countries read a book from left to right, and the standard front to back style. But with this kit, you could make a book that begins at the bottom of a really tall building and seamlessly goes upward with each page. Art-wise the book could feel like one giant illustration was drawn that the reader is ascending. Or reverse that, and start on the surface of the sea and descend downwards to the bottom of the ocean. So anyway, feel free to use those ideas yourself.

So what else is so great about this kit? Well, it truly requires ZERO programming. This is an Xcode project but as far as Cocos2d or Objective-C is concerned, you are off the hook. The classes in the starter kit are folded up nicely and tucked away so you never have to worry about them (you are welcome to tinker though if you want).

Everything is built through a Property List file, which you can see a small snippet of at the sales page. It’s essentially like a basic spreadsheet. You just fill in values for things like, the image name to show, the time to show it, is it animated, how many frames animate, etc.  Adding stuff to the app is a little like answering basic questions each time.  And the same is true for adding interactivity.

If you want to read more, you can below. I’ll paste in the same text that’s over at the sales page, but I’d rather you jump from the blog over to their now. There’s some great pictures of the kit, as well as links to ALL the documentation for free. You can watch a video demo, and download either an iBook or PDF detailing the entire kit. Yes, I went all-out this time and made some really polished documentation!.

Check it out: The iOS Story Tellers Starter Kit. 

Features

- Unlimited layers of images and scrolling backgrounds. Images can have their own animated transitions onto the page, like fades, movements, rotations or scaling.

- Particle systems, premade systems like snow, fire, smoke, fireworks, suns, can all be customized to create your own FX (the full list is in the documentation).

- Interactivity, any image can be touched to interact with other images, trigger sounds, go to URL’s, and a lot more!

- Drag image or particles, set objects to follow the user’s touch. This creates some very cool possibilities with particles.

- Any image can be animated with as little as 1 frame or hundreds. Animations can be looped and played / stopped through interactions. Looping animations can also play sounds.

- Lots of page transition options, the popular page flip effect isn’t your only option. Others include sliding right, left, top, bottom, clockwise, and more (the full list is in the documentation). The Kit also supports Hebrew or Arabic style books to simulate reading back to front.

- Run-on / continuous pages, for example one page can seemlessly slide into another page, creating the illusion of one really long piece of art. Transitions can slide up or down too, so you could create a really tall book as well. You could even include 4 directional arrows to navigate up, down, left or right!

- Puzzle or Sticker Pages, with drag-n-lock-to a location functionality. One image acts as a “sticker” or puzzle piece, that snaps to a “base” image inheriting it’s size, location and rotation.

- Quizzes, tap the right answer to proceed to the next page.

- Choose Your Own Adventure style reading, give readers multiple paths through your book. Essentially you can create multiple books in one book by just jumping around to different pages or chapter beginnings.

- Sound Machines, create a virtual beat box, or a soothing sound machine using the looping background audio properties

- Page Narration, include a narration track on each page. Images can also trigger sound files to play, so narration could be included at any time.

- Randomness, image or particles can appear at random locations. For example, a single button could be pressed to spawn twinkling stars randomly in the night sky.

- Movements, Rotations, Scaling, Fading, & Flipping are all built in properties for each image. Set a start and finish value for each transformation (which can also be reversed and looped).

- Smash things, create images that explode when pressed and make a funny noise. Kids love these apps.

- Add back stuff, repopulate the page with images that have already been seen & removed by simply using the same property list data again to add back the image.

- Twitter, an image can open a Tweet window with an auto-filled in message.

- Easy Reorganizing, simply drag and drop pages in the property list to change the book order.

- Custom Index, create an index that goes to any page of your book. Any image can jump to any page of the book.

- “Special” Pages, not every page has to be included in the primary reading order of the book. You might want a page that is only seen when requested. For example, you could include a map of the setting of your book.

- Landscape or Portrait, your choice.

- In-App Purchase ready, your book can be free, paid or in-app purchasable. There’s nothing to change code-wise, just a little extra setup in iTunes Connect if you want to include an in-app purchase (details are in the documentation for adding the Buy Book and Restore Purchases button).

The Story Tellers iOS Starter Kit was made to help you create a highly immersive environment for whatever tale you want to tell. The App Store has an amazing number of users who are more than willing to listen to a well-told story (and pay for a good one). The best ones have sounds, animations, special FX and interactivity. And that’s not just an opinion, it is also what Apple wants to see from apps that are being submitted as “Books” to their store. A simpler, more regular book would be better off distributed in the iBookstore.

This kit is made with that distinction in mind. You are going to learn how to customize your story book app with incredible features making it submittable to the Apple Store as an App in the “Books” category, using the Xcode project, documentation videos, and free setup guides in either iBook or PDF format.

Don’t worry, it won’t take much work beyond supplying some fantastic creative assets on your end, and it won’t involve ANY programming!

Promo Codes for Another Student-Made App!

CartoonSmart student, Nipin has returned from the depths of the ocean to present his War of the Caribbean Pirates app. And he’s got 20 promo codes for free downloads of this wave attack style game (no pun intended). Check out some screenshots first though. Good work, Nipin!

If you all remember how this works, its just a grab bag of codes. Pick one and if it doesn’t work, try another….

KJAKR37JRPXW
X4R4J6KR7PEY
9J3K4HJ3YNLA
J7XNRYK66E7E
A7T6E7YF4KFT
NWW4WW9HYHTY
MPP4AYKRKTLP
JFWRJKMAKL3W
P6HXKWWXNK6F
9ARHN973RRE3
LPLYJWNJWFN4
K4K6WXL6ELFP
WWMHFNEX3LAP
MWL4HF3MMTNL
WWTY6MPKFHKE
J9FNH4PF6ANX
JRKKLTLERA49
FET7T7WJ33Y3
3E6WT6XFKYMY

Steffen Itterheim’s fantastic Line Drawing Game Starter Kit is 50% off for the first 100 buyers…

Just heard from my amigo in all things Cocos2d, Steffen Itterheim (he is also the author of Kobold2D, which we will talk more about on this blog).  His very cool Line Drawing Game Starter Kit is currently half off it’s regular price for the first 100 people to get in on this deal….

CartoonSmart’s iOS Game Development Book is Available!

She’s finally ready! My first book! I mean CartoonSmart’s first book. Ah, heck, I am CartoonSmart. The machine and me are one  (wait, isn’t that from Iron Man?)   =)

If you want more of a preview you can click below, or if you’ve been waiting months upon months for this, here’s the link to it in the iBookstore. The book is 413 pages AND counting. I can add more to this at anytime, and past buyers will get notified in their iBook app that there’s an update. YUP! That’s the future of books, folks. Always update-able!  It might not make sense for Stephen King, but for code authors it’s pretty darn perfect.

Also for anyone lucky enough to be using an iPad 3 or newer, the images are Retina display-ready, so they look pretty darn beautiful. Even that fugly green-haired looking punk kid eating onion rings looks polished.

I hope you enjoy it! Oh and the first 4 chapters (122 pages) are FREE! So you can definitely try before you buy. 

Promo Codes for a free iPad game!

A brand-spanking new iPad App has hit the App Store called Sling Ninjas vs Demon Dragons. And I’ve got promo codes to giveaway!  This is another modification of my Angry Ninjas Starter Kit Template.  I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while, because Nipin, who has been modifying the kit and emailing  me throughout his progress, has made some pretty vast changes. The core game is still a sling-n-break app, but he’s added 50 levels to it with some fantastic art, sounds, Game Center integration and a little storyline.

Since I just got done playing it for 15 minutes, which is an unheard of amount of gameplay time for me on any device or console, I can say this is a damn good game because it is VERY HARD.  This does not start off with easy levels. I made it to level 4 somehow, thinking every new round was just not possible. Which apparently is what keeps me playing a game. And I’ll come back to this app again for more. So good work, Nipin!

 

 

Here are the codes, just remember this is an iPad only app. Take a code at random, and hopefully if you read this post soon enough it will be active.

6F6MWKMF7477
39LWPHEPJFEL

X97936H77AKR

3NH977LXAXPY

HFEA4KRJLX7A

A7J4PEFLK4AT

PNARAKXWPFWR

4994WJT7HHYX

YKNMPEY49LAL

3AEARMF3EANK

JEWWJNYHKRH9

KNW9FLWREEN4

YYH4TWPK6979

T76XXAMR69TE

P7M77LK7LNEF

NEF6JYE4RTNJ

6N64K49NFY7K

XPWMAHMXXFMW

WAJHKKXN79NN

9LRJEFTPPFMF

T9FNJEHHE6XW

9XMAJRTWEA4Y

AWJL3LTLFRPL

3MP3KFFLTEEX

My Angry Ninjas Starter Kit has been updated to Cocos2d version 2!

The Starter Kit Template for Angry Ninjas is up to version 8, and this one uses Cocos2d version 2.

Since there’s isnt much else to say about that. Let’s watch a mind-blowing time-lapsed illustration video…

Commander Cool iOS & Mac App Starter Kit PLUS Video Documentation Now Available!

So just try to imagine me after running like 100 feet, winded and breathing heavily to bring you this information….

(pant, pant!) New…

(pant) Incredible…

(pant, pant!) Starter….

(PANT!) ….KIT!!!

That’s how excited I feel right now about this brilliant work of programming I’m presenting here today. I connected with the developers of the Commander Cool app about a month ago over Twitter and saw they had made this really cool looking template for sale based on the app.  They were awesome enough to consider letting me take a look at what they had, and possibly do the video documentation for it. So I got their project files, published to my iPhone and played the hell out of the game right away. Keep in mind, I don’t waste a lot of time actually “playing” games. That whole “don’t get high on your own supply” thing is true with me. I’m not a gamer. I’ve heard it said that most console gamers only see the first 10 hours of the games they buy. For an App, I can rarely get through a minute. And it’s not because most games aren’t good, they just don’t hold my attention. Well the Commander actually did. And probably because it plays a lot like Mega Man, one of my favorite games growing up. I like a challenging route through a board, one where the emphasis is less on killing enemies, and more on memorizing a pattern of play where you avoid pitfalls, spikes, lasers, etc.

So then I started looking through the code. Well written, well documented, but there’s A LOT of it. And I had no clue where to begin putting in my own code to customize the game. So I thought, “darn it, what have I gotten myself into here?” It could take me weeks to learn their engine well enough to teach how to modify it.  Cut to a few hours later, and I realized adding and editing levels was done by modifying a single line in a .plist file, and then building a new map file in a program called Tiled (which is free from here… http://www.mapeditor.org/  ). I was actually floored by how simple it was to make completely new levels to this game and add them.  New levels get added to the game menu automatically, and if you add more than 10 levels, they immediately get added to a secondary (slide-able) menu, and so on in increments of 10. Genius.

If you aren’t familiar with Tiled, well that’s what most of the video documentation covers. It’s a visual front end, so you never have to fool with the core engine of this game. You just paint map tiles, and drag boxes around the map and name them things like “MovableBlock” or “Coin” to modify this template. That’s really 98% of the work.

The video documentation teaches some other things like how to convert the Tiled map file to HD instead of SD. Or from HD to iPad HD. It also covers building new sprite sheets to use your own graphics instead of the included ones. Basically it just goes over every step to get you started customizing this.

Interested? Check out the sales page for more info!  Oh and did I mention yet, you can build an App for the iPhone or iPad, BUT also the Mac? Cool huh. =)

Angry Ninjas Starter Kit updated for iPad 3 (hopefully)

Well I slept past the early store openings today so there goes my chances of getting an iPad 3 today (or for weeks probably). But I think I’ve got the Angry Ninjas iOS Starter Kit  retina-fied for the new iPad. It was actually pretty easy, what took a while was upgrading to Lion and installing the latest Xcode to Simulate the iPad 3. So a win for Apple, they finally got me to upgrade.

For those curious, here’s what need updating in the Kit. The Starter Kit builds a universal app, so the Box2D objects all had a non-hd and -hd graphic already. The iPad 1 & 2 were using the non-hd versions (instead of a separate -ipad version). So in upgrading for the iPad 3, I just kept things as is basically. Both Retina iPhone and iPad use the same -hd graphics.

The only thing that really needed work was in places where I was using separate  -ipad saved graphics. So now in TheMenu class there’s also -ipad-hd graphics for the buttons that unlock or lock the level sections.

So anyone out there pick up the new iPad today?