He is tasked with creating an educational video game for Kindergarten and First Graders, to teach simple math skills.

The rules are quite simple, he has to design the concept on his own (he’s allowed to ask for opinions, and receive guidance on the educational aspect).  He then has to build this video game with any tools available.  I bought him a copy of “The Game Makers Apprentice” sometime last year, and he has his own Game Maker license.  So, more than likely, he’ll be building it with YoYo Game’s Game Maker software.

What does he get if he completes the challenge, successfully? Well, he receives a $100 ‘prize’ for completing the game and … we’ll build a web site together in which we can market the game to parents and sell it for a small fee (probably something like $9.95 … ).

So … if he keeps his interest in this challenge, and does anything with it … I’ll keep track of his progress here.

Anyone whose interested in knowing me, drop a comment … I’m sure the attention will just add incentive.

The patch was submitted by James Moberg of Sunstar Media.

As usual, you can download the latest version of jQuery Growl here.

I started out with the intent to create a mermaid, and …well, as all creative flows go… wound up with something different.

Here’s the original stock photo I started with:

Girl On Water - Original Stock Photo Source

And, after about 30-45 minutes … here’s what I wound up with:

Girl on Water - Copyright © 2009 David Higgins

The Palm Pre looks like a rather nice device, but, can it hold up to what the Apple iPhone is capable of? Can it ‘do everything an iPhone can do’, it does not appear so.  However, I have applied for access to become a Palm Developer, and would like to give the Palm Pre a fair shot at game development.  The games I develop, are largely 2D based and could be ported to HTML/CSS/JavaScript fairly easily because of this, but … can the Palm Pre’s webOS handle the resource requirements of a 2D game with moving parts, we don’t know.

It does, however, appear to be more than capable of handling 2D puzzle games, in the genre of Bejewelled, and Sudoko, etc.

The iPhone, on the other hand, has access to OpenGL ES, and is essentially just a crippled version of Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.x), designed to run on a mobile platform.  This, allows the iPhone to do an unbelievable number of things … it’s great for viewing web pages, it’s great for productivity tools, and it’s one of the funner hand held game systems I’ve ever owned (compared to GB, GBA, NDS, PSP, etc).

So, will the Palm Pre really compete with the Apple iPhone … ? Perhaps in the corporate market, but … for the ‘day to day’ person, I believe the iPhone will continue to ‘rule the market’ so to speak.

I hope to eventually look into Google Android, as well as Blackberry Storm as well.  As the Andriod OS is comparative to the iPhone OS, and the Blackberry Storm is similar in nature as well (however, I’ve not yet looked into either … with the exception of seeing some advertisements here and there).

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.

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.

Steve Adamson (GWPGearWorx) on Twitter.

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

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.

Because of this, my Console is almost useless and I have to add extra stuff to my output messages to find them easier (ie; appending 5-10 asterix's).  After eventually becoming fed up with this, I started looking around and found this great blog post.  The author of 0xced wrote an XCode plugin that basically tells it to 'shut up'.  Works great, and my Console is now usable.  Thanks again to Cédric Luthi over at 0xced.