Category: I-phone

Creating artwork can be the most painstaking part in creating a game.  So when I see someone talking about how they were able to successfully outsource the artwork in one of their games I take notice.

In previous articles I mentioned a great resource on how to communicate with an artist so you could get your iOS graphic design done.  Today I found a good article on outsourcing your art using freelance sites where you can hopefully get things done right and at a good price.

The article is Alfred Baudisch and can be found on the Karnak Games website here:
How To Outsource Art For Your Game Using Freelancing Sites

In the article Alfred covers several sites that you can look at, and one other site that is not mentioned that I know can provide quality outsourcers that you may want to check out is Guru.com.  In my opinion the quality of the people on there is typically a bit above other sites like Odesk.com.

Something that I can’t emphasize enough, which Alfred touches on in his article  is that you don’t mention that the art  is for an iOS app.  When talking to some artists it just seemed that when I mentioned that it was for an iPhone app that they wanted more money.  That may just have been my paranoia, but if it’s not necessary to do so I wouldn’t mention the app store.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

.

Recently I’ve had a few experiences with the Apple Genius bar, the panel of experts that sits in every Apple store waiting to answer your most complicated iPhone and Mac questions.

To be honest, I’m continually blown away by how much these people go out of their way to help me. The other day I took in a fairly new but non-functioning extension cord but forgot the receipt. I asked if they could simply look up my recent purchase, they said there was no need. If I told them it was a new cord, they would believe me and replace it immediately, free of charge.

In another trip I brought in my cousin’s aging MacBook. The hard drive had suddenly seized up and the computer had ceased working altogether. Though it was well out of warranty, the guy at the Genius Bar actually apologized for the product, stating that this should’ve never happened. He then ordered a free replacement drive and threw in a new outer case because the old one was cracked.

In my experience, these kinds of actions are unheard of in customer support. These are the people that are supposed to shun responsibility and point blame at customers no matter what the problem. The kind of people that will stop at nothing to make sure that you don’t get that 100% satisfaction refund that was promised to you. Apple stores in my area seemed to have missed the memo.

Today we’d like to know if you’ve had any similar experiences. Vote in the poll on the right letting us know what you think of the customer service at the Apple Store. Then leave a comment below and tell your Apple genius story. Did they go out of there way to help you or stick their noses in the air and wait for you to leave. We want to hear all the details!

Hi, game fans!

Welcome back to another week’s worth of App Store selections. As your cheerful dealers in gaming addiction, we’d like to take a moment to thank you for all the feedback and suggestions for titles — keep them coming! And now, without further ado, here are the titles we’ve been enjoying this week…

Burn the Rope

Burn the Rope

Sound familiar? Well despite the obvious title homage in place here, Burn the Rope is actually a very unique game that brings its own excellent mechanic to the table and wraps it in an excellent presentation.

As a small ember, your job is to ignite a piece of rope by touching it, and then keep the flame burning until the entire rope has been burned away. The catch is that your flames will only burn upward, so you need to make use of the accelerometer by turning your device to keep burning the right way up. It’s not so tough near the start where you’re only worrying about one flame, but as you progress they’ll split into multiple embers and then it becomes quite the puzzler.

Burn the Rope is a pick-up-and-play puzzle game and it’s one of the better ones that have come out. Grab it while it’s still on sale (until the next update!)

Price: $0.99 (On sale until next update)
Developer: Big Blue Bubble
Download: App Store

Banzai Blowfish

Banzai Blowfish!

Red Piston’s new venture is a physics puzzle game with a great aesthetic and well polished gameplay revolving around the adventures of a cute blowfish.

Playing the game is a matter of manipulating the various switches, levers, and other devices that control mechanisms throughout the levels that will help get the little blowfish to its destination. The goal is to reach the hanging cage where another blowfish is being held captive and break through it. There is a bit of a learning curve since you don’t actually control the blowfish directly, and there isn’t a tutorial as such (there’s a small help button on the main page, but it would have been nice to learn those controls in context).

Regardless, it’s an addictive title once you get the hang of it, and it doesn’t hurt that it channels the cartoony vibe of Angry Birds in its visuals. 40 levels and Game Center support provide plenty of replay value, and frequent level updates are promised.

Price: $1.99
Developer: Red Piston
Download: App Store

Cave Bowling

Cave Bowling

We previously featured Urban Ninja by Donut Games, and now we’re mentioning their latest iOS title, Cave Bowling, because it continues to demonstrate that they’re among the few developers that frequently and consistently put out extremely well-polished, quality titles with a great deal of charm and individual appeal.

The premise of Cave Bowling is encapsulated in its title; you’re a caveman and you’re bowling. Luckily, the experience is far more engrossing than its simplistic setup. Each level presents you with a number of bowling pins and floating bones. Your goal is, obviously, to topple them, but how you go about it can often involve some elaborate bouncing and navigation of widgets like wheels and rotating platforms that respond to the weight or impact of your bowling ball. Controls are as intuitive as can be: touch and drag to alter the direction of launch, and drag on a slider to precisely select the strength.

There are also wacky spectators that you have to avoid hitting, and the three-star level ranking system (kind of like Angry Birds) and online highscore table will keep you coming back. It’s worth paying attention to just how smoothly everything looks and feels. The gameplay and art elements are all perfectly tuned and the almost 8-bit inspired look from previous titles is back here as well. Overall this is a wonderful game that you shouldn’t miss.

Price: $0.99
Developer: Donut Games
Download: App Store

Empire Online

Empire Online

If there’s one gaming genre that hasn’t become as strongly represented on the iOS systems as the rest, it’s the MMO. Lakoo has sought to remedy this relative gap by introducing us to Empire Online. Two years in the making, Empire Online definitely shows its depth, and for novices willing to invest some time into learning their way around, Empire can be richly rewarding.

The game’s world is remarkably large, featuring more than 1000 quests to be completed over 300 maps with 5000 items. It can seem overwhelming at first, but MMO fans won’t be daunted by the scope. Gameplay is a familiar system of walking around, talking to NPCs, getting quests, and making your way through the world to complete them. Of course, being an MMO, you will come across many of the 5 million purported other players and be able to chat and interact with them. There is also a setting to hide them from view if you’re not interested in having them around.

It remains to be seen how successful Empire Online will ultimately be, and by extension how successful MMOs in general will be on the iOS devices, but as a pioneering title, Empire Online is an ambitious, attractive, and broad offering that has much to reveal to dedicated travellers.

Price: Free
Developer: Lakoo
Download: App Store

iRequiem

iRequiem

To end off this week’s picks, here’s another fun survival horror game. iRequiem is not just your average zombie shooter though. This game plunges you into hell, where you must fight your way through hordes of enemies in a uniquely gothic interpretation of the environment where modern weapons and technology clash with medieval ones for an intriguing anachronistic blend.

There is a lot of variety to the gameplay, more than one might expect from a game of this genre. Not only do all the weapons have their own specific characteristics, but beyond the guns and crossbows, you’ll also gain magical powers, special abilities called kill skills, you’ll be able to control vehicles, and even transform into a powerful alternate form. A lot of attention was also paid to the voiceovers and visuals, both of which are successful in drawing you into the surprisingly involved storyline.

It all comes together to form a game worth checking out. Perhaps the biggest point in its favour is that there really is a great deal of content and variety to be had for the price — and there’s even a free lite version to start you off. The 55 levels are full of unlockable achievements, and there are two separate game modes to keep you busy — the second of which, survival, has unlimited levels. It may just become your go-to survival horror fix!

Price: $1.99
Developer: Rapid Turtle Games
Download: App Store

What Have You Been Playing?

It was tough to pick this week, and no doubt there are plenty of other fun games that didn’t make the listing. If they’ve been keeping you busy then make sure to pop into the comments and tell us about them.

Have a great weekend!

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Spaced. The developer describes Spaced as a beautiful, easy to use news reader featuring articles from NASA, European Space Agency, UK Space Agency and more; all on your iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Spaced is a great way to view the latest news from the space industry whereever you are. You’ll have access to the latest content complete with high resolution images and HD videos.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Spaced

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

• Top news from the space industry.
• High definition videos & images.
• Space weather & current solar activity.
• Up-to-date exoplanet count.?
• Next scheduled launch. ?

Requirements: iPhone, iPad iOS 3.2
Price: $0.99
Developer: Steven Waterfall & Chris Phillips

Vote for a Review

Would you like to see us write a full review of Spaced? Have your say in our poll:

Would you like to see Spaced reviewed in-depth on AppStorm?online survey

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the poll if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review! If you’re a developer and would like to have your app profiled, you can submit it here.

Lets face it, meetings are generally a place of boredom and outdated technology. They are filled with far more paper and xeroxing than tablets and smartphones. Even when technology is incorporated, you still spend a majority of the meeting typing and recording. What if there was a different way to hold meetings, a way that gets rid of excess paper and saves your fingers from typing out thousands of words? Meetings are about to launch into the 21st century with Agendas, a new iPad app.

Agendas is a note-taking application designed for making meetings easier and more productive. Plan out your presentation ahead of time and include text, images, and real-time polls in your agenda. Once you have a basic framework of your meeting topics and information, it’s time to start your meeting. Agendas allows you to share your meeting notes with other users, meaning less typing and more listening.

Preparing for Your Big Meeting

Keep You're Meeting on Track with Agendas

With Agendas, creating your meeting notes and agendas has never been easier. Tap “new agenda” to create a blank document. Tap the title bar to set the name and the expected duration of your meeting. The duration is important for when you later start the meeting and you see a blue timer. This blue timer shows you how much time you have left in your meeting, letting you know that your time is slowly ticking away. Next, you can start adding text, photos, and polls in your agenda. Just start entering information and designing your agenda just as you normally would. You can add polls to gather feedback on crucial questions. The best thing about Agendas is that your outline can be short and simple. When you’re actually in the meeting, you can add more detail and record everyone’s opinions on each topic.

You can add Text, Images, and Polls into your Agenda

Multi-User Meetings

Agendas has an Agenda sharing feature which makes it easier to present your notes at your meeting. Connect to a wireless network and other Agenda users can join your meeting. For security reasons, each user must enter a generated pin code in order to join. This prevents unauthorized users from seeing your meeting. Once another user joins, they can see the meeting notes that you have shared and interact with them.

Meetings can include interactive polls that make it easy to get feedback on ideas. Imagine being able to get feedback from all attendees with the simple push of a button. With Agendas, it’s that simple. Each connected user can take a feedback option and Agendas will record it for you. Connected users also can ask questions in the Agenda, making it really easy to archive exactly what was asked. You can even vote on questions you think deserves an answer

Each User has their own copy of notes, making it easy to add personal thoughts or opinions

The benefit of using Agendas over the traditional paper method is that each user instantly has a copy of the meeting notes when they connect. With no effort from you, they have all the notes they need from the meeting and can even add their own personal notes. In a traditional paper-filled meeting, you would need to photocopy the notes in order for them to read them later.

Even when compared to sharing a digital presentation you would still need to email them the file, which is another step and another disruption in the meeting. With Agendas, giving them a digital copy is one of the easiest things you can do. Just let them join the meeting and they’ll have the latest copy. Agendas even saves all the questions that were asked during the meeting, so everyone can go back to check what was asked was asked.

Notes Where You Need Them

Summary mode gives you a simple list of your topics

While Agendas was designed for meetings, the app itself can be used in various other ways. Teachers can create lesson plans and objectives using Agendas, adding polls to track the overall understanding of topics. Agendas can also be used without networking it to other iPads, meaning students can use it to take notes in all their classes and lectures. The Agenda viewer can handle multiple different Agendas, meaning you can take notes and always have them on hand.

Agendas is amazing at bringing all your notes into each users hands. Each user will be able to view photos in vivid detail (as opposed to cheap a black and white copy, or an expensive laser color copy). You could even walk into the meeting late, join the shared Agenda and instantly have access to all the work and notes that have been taken so far. A student could walk into a class after being out the previous day and could take out their iPad. Within seconds, they could download the notes from another classmates shared version of Agendas. It’s truly an amazing way of taking notes that could be a huge innovation on how we hold meetings and share information.

Conclusion

Agendas is a must have app for anyone who spends even 2% of the week in a meeting or lecture. It’s intuitive interface makes it easy to learn and implement, even for a non computer savvy user. A business looking to implement this system can even hire the developer to hand deliver 10 iPads pre-loaded with Agendas and train their staff on how to use it. Next time you’re sitting in your meeting, your classroom, or maybe your attending a conference; Ask them why they aren’t using Agenda for iPad.

The last decade has been rough for the world’s most iconic CEO. In 2004, it was discovered that Jobs had pancreatic cancer. He underwent several treatments and Tim Cook took over operations while Steve began a successful recovery. By the end of 2008, Jobs was taking another health related leave of absence and received a liver transplant in April of 2009.

Fast-forward to 2011 and Steve has once again made an announcement that he will be taking a leave of absence to focus on his health. As the world wonders how long Jobs can possibly continue in his fractured state, we can’t help but be concerned not only about his well being, but that of the company that he has dedicated his life to building.

What will Apple be like in a post-Steve era? Can it continue its seemingly never-ending winning streak or will it take a turn for the worst like it did when Steve was booted out in the 80s?

A Brief History Lesson

Jobs and Gates

Steve Jobs founded Apple Inc. in his garage in 1976 in partnership with Steve Wozniak. He built the company from literally nothing into a pioneering force in personal computing. By the mid 80s, Apple had begun a downward spiral and CEO John Sculley, who was actually a Jobs recruit, ousted Steve from his beloved company altogether.

This proved to be a great move for Steve as it allowed him to pursue the creation of another company, NeXT, which developed the software that would eventually be molded into OS X. By 1996, Apple was buying NeXT and bringing Jobs back in as interim CEO.” The interim part of his title didn’t last long as Jobs embarked on a crusade of colored iMacs and iPod music players that would catapult Apple into the huge success that it is today.

There’s no doubt that Steve Jobs is the heart and soul of Apple, and the last time he left it wasn’t so great for the company. Fortunately, whenever Steve decides to officially step down as CEO, I think we’ll be in good hands this time around.

Prepping Us For The Inevitable

For years, Steve has been the infamous face of Apple, in large part due to his frequent and energized keynote speeches, which are always announcing some new and exciting future for the company.

However, a few years ago I noticed a definite shift in Apple’s one man show. Instead of letting Steve take both the glory and criticism, other faces began making repeated appearances. Apple product launches coincided with promotional videos narrated not by Steve, but instead a small group of men that it seems Apple wanted us to get to know.

Jony Ive

Jony Ive

Ive is a rockstar, no doubt about it. This Jason Statham lookalike hails from London and has been leading the Apple Design team since 1996 (notice that’s about when Apple products started looking cool). We’d all like to picture Jobs fashioning each product design himself from magic clay, but in reality Ive is probably the biggest force behind Apple’s ever imitated but never replicated top-notch design.

Ive just oozes “cool” so Apple has been plastering his face on everything they can get away with.

Phil Schiller

Phil Schiller

Phil is Apple’s “Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing,” so a lot of Apple’s personality can be attributed to how Phil has seen fit to market the products. You can see Phil getting a lot of face time on stage at Apple events in the place where Steve traditionally stands.

He’s definitely another driving force in the way that we perceive the company, not to mention the success of ad campaigns like the long-running Mac vs. PC commercials that we all loved.

Another key player in this area that you should know is Greg Joswiak, the VP of iPhone Marketing.

Scott Forstall

Scott Forstall

Forstall has had his fingers in everything we love about Apple. He was one of the designers behind OS X’s famous Aqua interface and is of course the genius behind the iPhone’s UI and world-changing app system.

He’s now the Senior Vice President of iPhone Software and therefore the man I should be thanking for my job as editor of an iPhone-driven website. The iPhone may have been a long-time dream of Steve Jobs, but this guy made it a reality.

Bob Mansfield

Bob Mansfield

Let’s not forget that Apple isn’t all about iPhones, iPads and iPods! The Macs we know and love have seen huge success in recent years, and it’s probably Bob’s fault.

As the Senior Vice President of Macintosh Hardware Engineering, Bob is the guy who gave us little things like the iMac and MacBook Air. Rest assured that the Mac department is in good hands with this Bob at the helm.

Tim Cook

Tim Cook

Tim Cook doesn’t make an appearance in most of those Apple product promotional videos, but he’s definitely the most important member of this team. You can see him taking the stage frequently in Steve’s absence, most notably in Verizon’s recent iPhone announcement.

Cook is Apple’s Chief Operating Officer and everyone’s favorite pick for Steve’s successor as CEO. He is a major part of the success of the Apple retail stores, which are in turn one of the biggest components of Apple’s rise to fame. He also heads up the Mac division and is the guy Bob Mansfield reports to.

As an indication of Cook’s importance and the loftiness of his role, take into account that this is the man Steve puts in charge when he leaves (meaning Cook is in the driver’s seat now). Get used to the name Tim Cook, because it will no doubt be synonymous with Apple sometime soon.

Closing Thoughts

I neither expect nor hope that Steve has seen the last of his days as CEO of Apple Incorporated. However, I am confident that whether he’s the CEO or not, the success of Apple will be high on his list of priorities. Jobs has spent a lifetime building the company that we know and love and he’s not about to let it tank upon his absence.

Which is why he wants us to know that he has placed key figures in high places. The team above represents just a tiny portion of the huge amount of talent Apple keeps in Cupertino and elsewhere. As you can see by reading the brief bios above, most of these guys have spent over a decade creating the products that we use every day while we sit under the illusion that Jobs single handedly runs Apple and personally designs every aspect of every product.

The real value of Steve Jobs lies in his unmatchable leadership. The ability of this harsh and wise dictator to not only predict, but create the future is one that will not easily be duplicated by any successor. Jobs has steered Apple in no direction but forward in the past decade and I hope Cook and the gang can likewise succeed in the long-term as much as I know they will in the short-term.

Leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts about the future of Apple. Healthy or not, Steve won’t be around forever and the confidence of customers like you will be the deciding factor in Apple’s continuing success. Will Apple go on just fine without Jobs or should we prepare for the early 90s all over again?

Jobs/Gates image source: Wikimedia

If you’re working with a remote Web Service, your apps are probably displaying TableViews of objects. As soon as your dataset grows beyond 20 or 30 objects, it’s time to implement sections in your Table View. I’m going to show […]

Hello iCoders, today I am going to be open sourcing a UITableViewCell we have created over at ELC that we have found to be very useful. When developing apps we have found that many times a form of some type is required. This is common in Registration forms, contact forms, feedback forms, etc. The problem was writing the same basic code over and over to have an elegant fast form experience for the user. To quicken the development time of these elements we created the ELCTextFieldCell class which facilitates the creation and flow of a larger form. In this post I will be walking you through the usage of the class.

Over here at iCodeBlog we love Reddit. I enjoy /r/programming but often developers aren’t interested in the iOS stuff that we are. As a result today I created /r/iOSProgramming, go over there and submit articles, GitHub projects you are interested […]

Have you ever wished that you could add one, or a couple, additional functions to an Objective-C core class?
Well Apple has thought of this, and they provide a way without extended the class! The way to do this is called a category. A category is a way to enhance an existing class, by adding additional functions to it. The difference between this and extending a class is that when you extend a class, you can add additional functions, as well as variables. In a category, you can only add additional functions. The benefit of a category though is that you don’t have to use the extended class to get the benefits of the added additional functions. All you have to do is include the header file of the category, and the additional functions of that class are available to you.

Table Views are one of the most common things within iPhone Applications. The standard UITableViewCells that are provided by Apple are nice but have always had  a HUGE flaw in my mind. When you apply some text to the textLabel or detailTextLabel of a UITableViewCell the length of the text is not considered at all. If the text is longer than a single line you need to set the numberOfLines property to be enough so that your content can be showed. Moreover, you also need to compute the new total height of the cell to supply for the height delegate method.

If you have an iPad you have probably used iBooks, Apple’s eBook application that gives users access to the iBooks store. In this application you can navigate through books in a number of ways. Today we are going to focus on the scroll bar at the bottom of a book that a user can utilize to skip to any given page within the book. This control involves a customized UISlider and a UIPopoverView that drags along with the slider as the value changes. Today we will be making a UISlider subclass that will duplicate this functionality.

Hey iCoders! Today we are going to make a fun project that takes advantage of UIGestureRecognizers which were introduced in iOS 3.0, way back when it was called iPhone OS. UIGestureRecognizer is an abstract class that several concrete classes extend Eg. UITapGestureRecognizer, UIPinchGestureRecognizer. Today we are going to be building a simple photo board application. You will be able to add photos from your board, move, rotate and zoom them in and out around the board. We will also build in some simple physics to give a sense of the photos being thrown around the board. Here is a short video of what our final product will look like.