Fire Hoop Racer – OUYA CREATE Submission

by Peter Levine on January 24, 2013

First, The bad news. Turns out, due to time constraints and my lack of reaching out to others for help, my controller mapping for the actual OUYA device is messed up. Secondly, the OUYA launcher intent isn’t in my apk. So, in-short, my submission doesn’t work for the OUYA. I only had a Nexus 7 to test, which worked well for me.

Now, for the awesome news. I was able to make a really fun, to my kids and myself at least, game in 10 days! It has 12 levels that are pretty quick and a little too easy. I reached my milestone of being able to create custom levels! I had a blast working on this project.

I’m kicking myself right now though for not creating a game for the android platform before. Writing Java vs. Objective-C or C++ feels like I’m writing code a hundred miles an hour. I’m able to rapid prototype a game in a very short amount of time. I’m thinking of scrapping my current C++ project and writing native Java and native Objective-C, two code bases, instead of my current trajectory of writing it for the NDK in C++.

I want to thank Kill Screen http://killscreendaily.com/ for putting together an awesome Game Jam. I was able to connect with other developers, learn a ton of stuff I never knew before ( Java being the big one ) and was able to focus and “finish” something in 10 days! I loved every minute of it. I’m super sad the event is over and for 10 days I got to feel like a real Indie Developer! Cheers to all the other devs out there for joining me on the Game! Now back to your regularly scheduled job that’s not game dev :( .

Check out my submission video:

Check out my final time lapse. I hope all of you enjoyed watching me make the game start to finish!

Fire Hoop Racer – OUYA CREATE Game Jam – Milestone 1

by Peter Levine on January 22, 2013

Finally got around to posting some progress. Got hit with a cold the first two days of the game jam so I wasn’t able to start anything until last Wednesday.

I decided to go a different route this time around and go for something very simple and fun. I also didn’t want to ditch my kids for 10 days so I brought them into the process. They came up with some awesome ideas for the game and I ended up creating a game based off of their idea:

 

It’s actually pretty fun to play. I still have two days left on the competition so hopefully I’ll get the custom levels finished and fix some of the physics so it’s not so crazy. Here’s a gameplay video of the kids today. Luckily they were able to grasp the controls in a matter of seconds. Even my four year old who has hardly played any games was playing it.

 

Lastly, I condensed about 20+ hours of development for anyone interested. It’s got some pretty sweet music. It’s a timelapse taken at 30 FPS and then sped-up via windows movie maker at 64X. Hope you like it! I hope this game is at least semi-interesting. If not I already have 3 fans of the game.

 

 

OUYA CREATE! – Get your environment for 2D Game Programming Setup From Scratch!

by Peter Levine on January 11, 2013

Hey All!

Been a long time since I posted a blog post but I just found something awesome. OUYA and Kill Screen Game Mag are partnering up to host a 10 day game jam! They’re expecting brand-new content that was developed in the 10 day period and I’m extremely excited to participate.

OUYA CREATE

http://killscreendaily.com/create/

Link to the Event Announcement: http://killscreendaily.com/create/

So for my game, I’ll be writing a small 2D game in AndEngine. Since I kickstarted a non-early-development ( limited edition ) I don’t have mine yet. So I spent the better part of last night setting my environment up and I recorded the whole thing! I’m a beginner so don’t judge too harshly, haha.

Here’s my video to setup your Android Environment from scratch, even without Java!. My next task was to put the OUYA launcher on my nexus 7. Since I don’t have a dev ouya to test I’ll be using the Nexus 7 with the OUYA launcher. Everything went better than expected. Lastly the USB Gamepad ( I’m using a wired xbox 360 controller ) worked and the devs over at OUYA have support for that in the launcher too! Check it out!

So, the Framework I decided to use was AndEngine. Most of the video is myself figuring out some of the errors that were checked-in to the git hub repo. So if there’s anything you’re interested in I’ve provided a table of contents.

Please provide any feedback and I’ll incorporate that into my next set. Hope this helps someone!

Free 2048 x 1536 Background in celebration of We Love Apps

by Peter Levine on March 16, 2012

Here’s a pretty little background for your new retina ipads in celebration of the launch of We Love Apps! Check it out in the App Store!

We Love Apps - In the App Store Now!

We Love Apps - In the App Store Now!

 

We Love Apps Background

Free 2048 x 1536 Background

We Love Apps – Announced

by Peter Levine on March 13, 2012

Here’s an app I’ve been working on for the past few months. It’s a very simple approach to working with the app store. It searches the popular social mediums for any top 50 ( iPhone / iPod Touch ) and top 25 ( iPad ) apps and gives a better glance at what the users actually say about these apps.

If you’re like me and purchase apps based on what twitter says about an app instead of the app store’s review system than this app is for you. It searches the most recent tweets, youtube videos, public facebook posts and reddit posts about an app. We Love Apps also allows the user to save apps that they want to look out for in the future. If the user has iCloud enabled, any apps that the user has saved for the future will show up under their saved list on all of their devices.

We Love Apps is just a more social way to get awareness of apps on the store with hopes that it will empower users to make better decisions about their purchases.

We Love Apps already supports the iPad’s new Retina Display for images within the app. There is an update coming for Launch and Icon Images to support Retina within the coming week.

We Love Apps - On the App Store Now!We Love Apps Icon

iPad Screen Shots:
Top Free Games - iPad Retina

Category View - iPad Retina

Saved Apps - iPad Retina

More Details - iPad Retina

Startup Screen - iPad Retina

iPhone / iPod Touch Screen Shots:

Category View - iPhone RetinaTweets - iPhoneYoutube Videos - iPhoneSaved Apps - iPhoneStartup Screen - iPhone

Apple’s iOS Custom Icons and Image Guidelines; an Infographic ( Including iPad 3 )

by Peter Levine on March 8, 2012

I’ve done my fair share of googling sizes in pixels for various images for iOS and then had to do separate google searches for what they’re actually called. I’ve also read through te iOS Human Interface Guidelines many times yet still seem to go back over and over every time I create a new app. So Here’s a handy bullet list format and a handy infographic you can share to help you in the future.

iOS Image Guide Infographic

iOS Image Guide Infographic

  • Application Icon
    • Device – Required
      • iPhone / iPod Touch
        • 57 x 57 Pixels
          • Icon.png
        • 114 x 114 Pixels Retina
          • Icon@2x.png
      • iPad
        • 72 x 72 Pixels
          • Icon-72.png
        • 144 x 144 Pixels Retina
          • Icon-72@2x.png
    • App Store – Required
      • iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad
        • 512 x  512 Pixels
          • ItunesArtwork – No Extension
        • 1024 x 1024 Retina
          • ItunesArtwork@2x – No Extension
    • Small Icon – Spotlight Search Results and Settings – Optional
      • iPhone / iPod Touch
        • 29 x 29 Pixels
          • Icon-Small.png
        • 58 x 58 Pixels Retina
          • Icon-Small@2x.png
      • iPad
        • 50 x 50 Pixels – Spotlight
          • Icon-Small-50.png
        • 29 x 29 Pixels – Settings
          • Icon-Small.png
        • 100 x 100 Pixels – Spotlight Retina
          • Icon-Small-50@2x.png
        • 58 x 58 Pixels – Settings Retina
          • Icon-Small@2x.png
  • Launch Image
    • Remember – <basename><usage_specific_modifiers><scale_modifier><device_modifier>.png
      • @2x – Scale Modifier
      • ~ipad – iPad Device Modifier
      • ~iphone – iPhone Device Modifier
    • iPhone / iPod Touch
      • 320 x 480 Pixels
        • Default.png – Generally
        • Default~iphone.png – Optionally
      • 640 x 960 Pixels – Retina
        • Default@2x.png – Generally
        • Default@2x~iphone.png – Optionally
    • iPad
      • 768 x 1004 – Portrait
        • Default-Portait.png
        • Default-Portait~ipad.png – XCode will automatically add the ~ipad modifier if Default.png exists
      • 1024 x 768 – Landscape
        • Default-Lanscape.png – General – Not needed if supplying Left and Right Landscape
        • Default-LandscapeLeft.png – Landscape Left
        • Default-LandscapeRight.png – Landscape Right
        • Default-Landscape~ipad.png
        • Default-LandscapeLeft~ipad.png
        • Default.LandscapeRight~ipad.png
      • 1536 x 2008 – Portait Retina
        • Default-Portait@2x.png
        • Default-Portait@2x~ipad.png – Size Modifier ( @2x ) comes before the device modifier ( ~ipad )
      • 2048 x 1496 – Landscape Retina
        • Default-Lanscape@2x.png – General – Not needed if supplying Left and Right Landscape
        • Default-LandscapeLeft@2x.png – Landscape Left
        • Default-LandscapeRight@2x.png – Landscape Right
        • Default-Landscape@2x~ipad.png
        • Default-LandscapeLeft@2x~ipad.png
        • Default.LandscapeRight@2x~ipad.png
  • Toolbar, Tab bar and Naviation Bar Icon
    • Toolbar / Navigation Bar – iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad
      • 20 x 20
      • 40 x 40 – Retina
    • Tab bar – iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad
      • 30 x 30
      • 60 x 60 – Retina

Foo

by Peter Levine on February 28, 2012

Well, I decided to not renew my hosting and went with different host. I’m still recompiling everything but decided to just drop my old blog and start new. This one is a lot more elegant and will focus entirely on content, code and opinions.

So, starting fresh this year I decided to focus more on my career and on my personal development. I’ve been spending a lot of time both in XCode this year writing a new app that’s hopefully to be released prior to the iPad three ( which was just announced by the way! ) and working out to reduce my stress and high blood pressure.

iPad 3

Late last year I was diagnosed with stage 2 hypertension and was at the borderline 160/120 area. So I’m on a very small dose of meds and have started working out a bit more to reduce some fat.

On these notes, I can’t wait to share some things I’ve learned in iOS development land with the rest of you with this new blog!