At first, an idea flashed in a head about doing it all myself , but I was smart enough to quickly reject it. So, I’ve went to see if there were any solutions ready, and googled for FTP server or client code. I guess my googling skills are dusting, as it took some time, but I finally came across ftplib. It’s a small and portable library implementing FTP client’s protocol. On Windows it worked without any modifications. On iOS I wasn’t so lucky, but the only problem was that Xcode’s compiler doesn’t define “__unix__”. So after modifying couple #ifdef’s it was ready to go. Overall it took me a couple of hours to get it working, mainly because the first FTP server I’ve tried was crashing. But then I came across ftpdmin, which worked flawlessly, and the best thing about it is that its distribution is only 1 exe file. Here’s a screenshot showing ftpdmin serving a level to the game engine:

Whole code for this takes just like 20 lines or so. Here’s the first hackish implementation (with a bonus buffer overflow!) that got the snowball running:

    netbuf* control;
    FtpInit();
    if (FtpConnect("192.168.2.100", &control) == 1) {
        LogInfo("Connected to ftp");

        FtpLogin("game", "game", control);

        netbuf* data;
        if (FtpAccess(gLevels[mLevel].mFile, FTPLIB_FILE_READ, FTPLIB_IMAGE, control, &data) == 1) {
            LogInfo("Ftp file open");

            const int size = 102400;
            char buf[size];
            int read;
            read = FtpRead(buf, size, data);
            if (read == -1) {
                LogWarning("Error reading ftp file");
            } else {
                buf[read] = 0;
                LogInfo("Ftp file read");
            }

            FtpClose(data);
        } else {
            LogWarning("Couldn't open ftp file");
        }

        FtpQuit(control);
    } else {
        LogWarning("Couldn't connect to ftp");
    }

So now when I’m working on levels I simply launch ftpdmin on my Windows machine, and the game on my iPod automatically downloads the levels. I play it, edit on Windows, save it, restart the level and it’s ready to be played again. Fast and effective. Yay for iterative development! The only thing I hate is that it has to use Wi-Fi… I wish iPods could access network through it’s USB cable.

The best thing about this is that you don’t need to stop with level editing. Just imagine editing and instantly downloading scripts.

I’m using Bonjour (which is an implementation of Zeroconf) on Windows to resolve it’s hostname to IP for Mac. It’s a single nice side effect of having iTunes installed. Our router has a DHCP service, and since I’m using laptop in a lot of different places I’d hate to mess with “/etc/hosts” and switch to a static IP, or relocate SVN in a Mac Mini to a different IP of my laptop each time I needed to get sources from SVN. It’s so nice just to be able to enter “svn://sandbox.local” for a repository url and see everything magically work. So if you’re struggling with a similar situation, then I advice to look into solving this with Bonjour.

And finally the solution to the problem… since Bonjour uses multicast for it’s service, router also must support it, and it must be enabled. I’m using Linksys BEFSR41, so for me the option was in “Security->Filter->Filter Multicast”, and it simply had to be enabled. The option is also misleading, as it seems that enabling it would actually filter out multicast packets, but it’s backwards. Another name that this might hide behind is IGMP, so if it’s not working, then check related settings too.

The common problem at the start was that old thinking habit. People were shocked: it takes more lines than that just to initialize the window and start OpenGL or DirectX. And what about loading assets? Models, textures, levels? And arghhh… engines! This shows how such habits are really constraining creativity. Instead of thinking about game ideas, and only then about how to stuff those ideas into 50 line limits and other constraints, people go the other way and try to think about limits, their usual ways of work and only then about ideas. As my experience through whole game developers career showed it multiple times – it’s a bad thing to do. As they say: think out of the box!

Star Wars Kamikaze game. My entry for contest.

Contest’s main rules were quite simple: only 50 lines of code, any programming language was accepted, and game could use unlimited amount of assets (data files). Unfortunately, I’ve had to add some sub rules to explain what exactly one line of code was, because it’s very easy to abuse this with reaaaaally long lines. So, rule of one command per line was added. As expected, it’s hard to grasp what one command could mean, so I’ve had to add a bunch of other sub rules, to explain what was allowed and what was not. This is probably the only part of the contest that has failed, because simple one line rule became a couple pages of explanations on what was considered one line or command. I’ve wanted to keep it simple, but it quickly got out of hand. Next time, I think it would be easier just to limit line length to 80 or so symbols, so in the end, you just need to keep your code in a 50×80 box. Then the only problem would be language differences, where some languages may be able to stuff more code in a single line than others.

JTG - Journey Through Games by KestasL. Winner of best game award.

Despite some problems with rules, final games were AWESOME. It’s amazing what is possible to do in just 50 lines of code, and I must say, that some games made my jaw drop. This is the link to the final games with their source code, have a look at it: 50LocAllGames. In the end 10 games were submitted and participated in the best game’s vote, and 3 more submitted applications were disqualified, because they lacked common features making them as games. The best game was voted “JTG” aka “Journey Through Games” by KestasL. It’s absolutely amazing, considering it was written in just 50 lines of code. Yes, it uses a lot of assets, but the idea and concept of the game is ingenious! Congratulations to KestasL.

Conclusions? 50 lines of code is a lot! People imagination, as always, has a surprise ready. It was a great deal of fun. It’s awesome to write small games in a small amount of time and get the feedback quick. In the end, contest went really well. It was a lot of fun and people liked it. I want to organize it sometime again, and I already have some interesting ideas floating in my mind.

URL that opens application in App Store is this: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=326683049&mt=8. Now, to fix the problem, all you have to do is change “itunes” part to “phobos”, so the URL would look like: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=326683049&mt=8. Sometimes you wish all the problems could be solved like that! Code for opening an app in a webstore is here:

 NSString *buyString=@"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/" \
   "MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=326683049&mt=8";
 NSURL *url = [[NSURL alloc] initWithString:buyString];
 [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];
 [url release];

So, the annoying thing was fixed, and BSP Lite is on it’s way to App Store! Hopefully Apple will approve it soon. Fingers crossed.

New blog url: http://smilediver.joystickninjas.com
Blog feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakeGamesOrDieTrying
Blog comments feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakeGamesOrDieTryingComments

Now back to the point… So what is Brainy Smarty Party? Simply put, it’s a collection of 15+1 fun and addictive games to train your brain. The coolest thing about it is an ability to post your hi-scores online, and compete with people all over the world. It also includes Sudoku puzzle, for those who are addicted to it! You know who you are. Since the pictures tell more than a thousand words, take a look at a few eye candies from Brainy Smarty Party:

For more screenshots check out Brainy Smarty Party web page here: clicky, or directly on iTunes here: clicky.

Other great news, is that we finally have our own logo! It was created by my good friend Tomas Jakubauskas, and I think the logo looks awesome. It conveys the message really well, and it literally is: we’re here to kick ass, and make great games! And here it is:

Ok, so enough reading, now go and check out Brainy Smarty Party, and buy a copy if you have an iPhone – ninjas need food too.

Yes, we are one of those unlucky that had to deal with: “The binary you uploaded was invalid. The signature was invalid, or it was not signed with an Apple submission certificate.” error. After a quick googling around, it was apparent that behind this error was a billion of different things that could be wrong. Some people were lucky with just rebuilding their projects, some found out that you can’t use spaces for the build’s zip file, others forgot to include app icon in proper format and so on.

In our case error was triggered by a couple of files beginning with “._”, or more exactly two  “._resources.xml” files. I have read about “._” problem in one page from Google search results, but quickly dismissed this case, since our project didn’t used such files and a quick file search in the build’s zip file found nothing. But… after a lot of messing around, I’ve noticed that signature file (_CodeSignature/CodeResources) actually contained lines for non existing files like:

<key>Games/General/Config/._resources.xml</key>
<data> 
D4z0McjugF22KhX0wp+ZjJ1MK9Q=
</data>

Looking at the above it was obvious were the problem was. Game’s source “Games/General/Config/” directory had our original “resources.xml” file and also “._resources.xml”. Now, I’m not sure why these “._resources.xml” files were there. It seems that they either were auto generated by Xcode or Mac OS X itself. Anyway, after this we quickly fixed it and upload went well!

So if you run into similar problem, do a search for files beginning with “._”. Also get ApplicationLoader from iTunes Connect site, and run it from the console. It will give a bit more detailed report about the error in the console. Though, in this case error message was very vague too, and didn’t helped much.

Looking back at it now… maybe all this mess was a good thing, because during the process we found another two bugs. And… as you can guess, we are near the launch of our first game! Hopefully submission process will be much more smoother.