Archive for April, 2009

I Updated to Unity for iPhone 1.0.2- and then my world melted. I had my UnityRemote happy up until this point.  Now I’m getting an unexpected error 0xE800003A…Thanks.

I did some research and initially I thought that it was because I had a previous version of UnityRemote installed in my iPod Touch.  As far as I know this is gone now.  Either way- most of my iPhone dev recently has been about troubleshooting crappy cryptic errors instead of actualy building my next million-dollar game.

When I was building the virtual world at Modosports Barry Hawkins our SCRUM Manager) said something that I have carried with me. Actually Barry said a lot of things that I have carried with me, but I digress. 
Barry said something relating to the principle “Do the hard thing until it’s not hard anymore” aka “work through the pain”.  When  moved on from ModoSports I took that and many other messages from him.  Right now I’m working through the pain of getting my iPhone App together.  This essentially means that I’m going to start from the durn begining and reread as if I’ve never seen this stuff or this code.

Wish me luck and await an update.  I’m about to rebuild my Unity / iPhone App from scratch.  In the word of Stiffler , “Oh Boy!!”

Unity for iPhone update 1.02 has been released. Go find out about the new features including the 50% reduction in the size of the Mono Runtime, memory use reduction by textures 50%, Long list of bug fixes including the PhysX memory leaks.

Another bonus is that scripting examples for the iPhone Specific API elements have been dded. I needed this one badly! I appreciate that the Unity team is putting in the footwork to tighten up the increasingly popular iPhone dev tool! Go check out the changes in Unity iPhone 1.02 here!

Found this via the Cocos2d Game engine site and LiveGames

They also provide a list of games using Cocos2d and CocoLive and the top paid iPhone apps using those technologies on iPhone

Just discovered the iphonedev subreddit and it’s loaded with good stuff.  Another useful resource that I found today is this comprehensive list of open-source libraries for iphone development including Twitter, Google Data, Flickr APIs and other useful open-source libraries for iPhone Development

All of the Lectures, materials, pdf files and assignments are available for the iPhone Application development course CS193P from Stanford University.  Did I mention that they were FREE!   Check it out at the stanford website.  So far it’s on lecture 7! 

According to the New York Times-The iPhone Gold Rush , on a good day you can pull in $35,000 on a hot iPhone game.  There are now 25,000 apps in the iPhone store and growing so the odds of making $800,000 in five months will be less in your favor.  The reality of it for the majority of developers is hours of coding to get lost in a sea of apps.  This didn’t stop the Pioneers from heading west and it won’t stop classes like the iPhone programming class at Stanford from getting 150 applicants for 50 seats!  Top iPhone apps can pull in $10,000 a day!  Somebody’s gotta be on top.

1. iPhone Apps are the latest Gold Rush- Canadian Financial Post
2. Which iPhone apps are making the most money?
3. iPhone Developers Go from Rags to Riches
4. AppStore Roundtable: The Gold Rush 4/24/09
   
5. Coder’s Half Million Dollar Baby Shows The iPhone Gold Rush is Still on 2/12/09
6. The iPhone Gold Rush -From iPhone News Updated 4/4/09
7. App Store Millionaires Share their Secrets

I haven’t dug into this so I’ll leave it to you OpenLazlo Commandos out there.  Apparently you can build iPhone Apps with OpenLazlo.  Point of Clarification- you’re building iPhone Apps…by proxy-  they are apps that run on the iphone through the Safari browser.
I just wanted to pass this tidbit on.  I don’t have the bandwidth to research it further right now but you can read more about it here: Our First iPhone App from OpenLazlo.org
Also check out the following

1. OpenLazlo iPhone Application Development Step by Step
2. Top 10 iPhone Applications for Safari
3. Flex Can’t but Lazlo Can- OpenLazlo on the iPhone

I just found a hand-picked collection of iPhone Resources at iphonetoolbox.com.  They have categorized the content and have a wealth of resources from iPhone Application Development guides to a collection of tips and tricks and links to different iPhone simulators.  The site even has the Ultimate List of iPhone Tips and Tricks!  As you may have guessed, I have been looking for ways to get iPhone Applications out without having to learn yet another programming language.  My favorite approach thus far is Unity.  You probably picked up on that.  I still keep an eye out for other tools that simplify specific aspects of developing the applications and enjoy seeinghow other developers are approaching the iPhone Gold Rush and who’s sitting out and why.

I call Read It Later useful because it’s a tool that you always need when you’re browsing the web. I think it’s useless because the web is so vast that you will never, ever, ever get to reading the stuff you stadck in that enormous list of things that you hoarde on the web. Either way you can now grow that list from your iPhone. The API for building your own applications using read it later is also available at the site. I plan to eventually build an application with it so I added it to my “Read It Later List”.