A pearl of wisdom, in a vast sea of writings…

I was digging through some messages this morning, trying to keep as up to date with my various Google Groups and Betas as I could, and ran across a post by the author of if {…} then {…} and dug through the blog, and found a handful of good readings.  The most notable of them is the ‘Loading Screen Example‘ which is useful in general, and with Cocos2D specifically.

I read through the example code, and learned a new trick … that little spinning ‘gear’ that Apple has made so popular for the ‘twiddle your thumbs for a while’ moments in life … is easily accessible with iPhone development, just by using the UIActivityIndicatorViewto display it.

It has startAnimating, stop Animating and isAnimating calls available … and runs on it’s own thread, so when you have code that is going to ‘stop everything’ for a moment, you can splash this up on the screen … and make people ‘feel better about themselves while they wait’.  We all love a useless gear that tells us … ‘everything is working as expected, just hold your horses and be patient’.

So, I thank the author of if {…} then {…} for showing me something new on Sunday morning.

Stockboy Stanley in Warehouse Trouble Released!

Stockboy Stanley in Warehouse Trouble has been officially released on the Apple App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  The game is an addicting puzzle strategy with a bit of a platformer spin on it.  Stanley, the main character, is trapped in a stock crate pit and the crate stacker has gone bezerk.  Stanley must guide the crate stacker to get crates stacked in such a manner so that Stanley can climb out of the pit to safety.  As Stanley progresses, the crates fall faster and faster.

Great fun for all ages, easy to use controls, simple enough concept that you don’t need to “learn how to play”, but for those of you who love the strategy, there’s always a better way to get out faster and go further.

Released by Gear Worx Productions, and developed by me, David Higgins.  Art is completely by Steve Adamson, with a wicked custom sound track by PunkArts.com.

Check out the Stockboy Stanley homepage and view the gameplay trailer.

Gearworx Productions on Twitter

Gearworx Productions is now on Twitter.  Check them out, follow there tweets and keep up to date on the latest Gearworx Productions news and releases.

Steve Adamson (GWPGearWorx) on Twitter.

PunkArts releases Chinese Obama.

PunkArts.com, one of my newest ventures in iPhone Development, has just released it’s first “Chinese Obama” episode to the world.  This video is the first in a series of episodes, each episode is embedded into their latest apps available on the App Store soon.

The ‘Ask’ series of apps, which contains these embedded Chinese Obama videos, are an amusing way to get a quick laugh … whether you love them, or hate them, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush will answer all of life’s questions.  You ask, they answer, really it’s that simple.

Check them out over at PunkArts.com

Performing an Ad-Hoc Distribution Build with Unity iPhone

To make an Ad Hoc distribution build to send out to your beta testers, you first have to create the Mobile Provision Profile on the Program Portal.  Once you’ve created this profile, downloaded and installed it according to Apple’s directions, your ready to begin.

Launch Unity iPhone and open the project you wish to build.  Make sure that under Edit->Project Settings->Player the iPhone Bundle Identifier matches the App ID identifier in your profile (if your profile is something like SAD723.*, you may enter any “com.yourdomain.AppName” combination).  Now, set your stripping level and Script Call Optimizations as necessary.

Goto File->Build Settings, setup your build as you normally would for Desktop or Web distribution.  Select ‘Compress Textures’ and ‘Strip Debug Symbols’ (these are really not needed on the device, and only useful if you know what your doing).  Select the ‘Build’ option, not the ‘Build & Run’ option.

Once your XCode Project is available to select in Finder, replace the Icon.png with the icon you wish to use for your application.  The icon must be a 57×57 PNG image.  Optionally, you can select the appropriate Default.png by changing the name of one of the predefined splash images (required for iPhone Basic) or, alternatively using your own (iPhone Advaced required for custom splash).

Once you have done this, go ahead and open the XCode Project.  Under Project->Edit Project Settings, select the appropriate “iPhone Distribution: Company Name” code signing certificate under “Coding Signing Identity”.  Double click in the “Code Signing Entitlements” just above that and enter the value “Entitlements.plist”.

Now, close the project settings and right click on the project in the left pane.  Select Add->New File.  Under “Code Signing” select “Entitlements”.  Name the file “Entitlements.plist” (the same as you entered above).  Once the file is created, open the file with the Property List Editor and uncheck the “get-tasks-allow” option.

Now make sure that the drop-down on the top-left of the project window says “Device – 2.1 | Release”.

You are now ready to build, so let’s do that now by selecting Build->Build.  Do -not- “Build and Go”.

Once your project is built, drill-down into the Products folder of your XCode Project and right click on the “.app” file that is there.  It should be named the same as the last part of your Bundle Identifier (“com.yourcompany.YourAppName” – ie; “YourAppName”).  Right click this file and say “Reveal in Finder”.  Drag the “.app” file onto your desktop, and copy over the “.mobileprovision” file you downloaded to create this build.  Select both, and right click and tell Finder to compress them.

You may now distribute this archive to your beta testers for review.