Ricks Rantings

Speech Recognition

2013-05-12T12:29:00.001-07:00

I just updated the Ouija board app to recognize spoken questions. I used OpenEars which is based on work done at CMU. All recognition is done on-board and no network connection is needed.

Adding speech recognition is super easy have a look at http://www.politepix.com/openears

iScryHD enhancements

2012-05-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

I plan on inserting a camera view to turn the mirror into a mirror on devices that have a front facing camera. Along with this will be a new way of controlling the app. Of course this will be a free upgrade to the few that have purchased the app already. This will be a exciting and novel way to interact with applications.

Stay Tuned!

github, gitignore and xcode 4

2012-05-27T09:58:00.001-07:00

So Apple has git support built into xcode, However I found if I took an existing project. Added git support and tried to push to github (gitlab in my case) via Xcode 4. No Dice, Said I had uncomitted changes! WTF! I had no source files with uncommited changes so I did commit, There is a file under the project folder xcuserdata, that tracks changes in the state of the UI, so anytime you bring up an editor, etc, this file changes, which makes it impossible to keep synced with the remote GIT repository from within xcode. The trick is to make sure that you have a good git ignore file before you do the initial commits, or adds. This way you will have an xcode 4 "clean" repository. I found several good sources on the net. Here are a few links to get you started:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6051250/making-xcode-4-obey-gitignore
http://www.mindthe.net/devices/2011/04/28/12-steps-to-using-github-with-xcode-4/

So for those of us that are lazy, I have a file named .gitignore_global in my home directory which contains the following: (feel free to cut and paste into your own .gitignore_global file)

.DS_Store

*.swp

*~.nib
build/
*.pbxuser

*.perspective

*.perspectivev3

*.mode1v3

*.mode2v3

xcuserdata

I then ran the command:

git config --global core.excludesfile ~/gitignore_global

That will set this file as the "gobal"  ignore file for ALL git projects.

If you have set this file after committing the project you must remove the offending files manually.  To do this use the git rm command such as

git rm --cached FILELIST
Hope this helps.


Enjoy!

iScry HD

2012-05-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

iScryHD app is up! This App uses cocos2d version 2. Very cool features in v2. It has support for retina displays on both iPad and iPhone. It automatically adducts pixel locations so that you don't have to. For instance the flame locations were specified on non-retina display, and automatically adjusted for retina displays! As in standard iOS, images are loaded by a naming convention, however the image name suffix can be specified by the programmer. All in all a very solid, great upgrade.

Linux Install Annouyance

2011-11-27T11:13:00.001-08:00

I was installing Fedora 16 on a fairly new HP elitebook laptop. This laptop had never been setup before. A clean slate. HP setup screens are not the typical BIOS setup that most manufacturers use. It is a major pain to use IMHO. It does allow for much control over hardware/firmware. I think HP may call it simple but I think it mostly stinks. Dealing with HP setup was an annoyance, but not the main issue.

As set up progressed, there is a screen where you can choose additional Fedora Repositories. I want to select these. First you config the network. That was easy. Next it connects and downloads the repository metadata. This is where the problem happens. The connection is made, stuff is downloaded, then a cryptic error message stating that a network error has occurred. No way to debug! After much googling, network sniffing, etc. I finally found the problem. The TIME WAS NOT SET ON THE SYSTEM CLOCK! This made the signature checks on the repository fail! Leading to the bad and misleading error message. Remember the little annoyance with setup! So before you begin ANY OS install, check your system time in the BIOS first. This will save a lot of time and aggravation.

After all that, I got Fedora 16 installed, however the HP will not recognize the system as bootable! I fell back to Fedora 15, That installs and works just fine, but 16 not so much. 15 is good enough for my needs, so I did not run down the problems with Fedora 16.

I will also avoid HP products in the future.

Tioraidh!

Rolf! Accepted ! How (NOT) to Make Money on Apps

2011-11-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

Rolf! Big Dumb Fighters has been accepted! This is just the base game. Plans are to have in app purchases of additional scenarios, characters, weapons, etc. This will be an experiment in how to generate revenue.

First a little background. I am an indie developer that can barley afford the tools to make apps, let alone any budget for marketing or advertising. I knew going in that I could not compete with any well funded organization such as PopCap or EA. I also had no visions of grandeur or unreasonable expectations. I was looking at this as a hobby that would at least pay for itself and something to have fun doing. So far, my assumptions have been correct. I am having fun, It sorta self sustaining and its fun to watch the results. I also started this blog, which seems to be pretty much me talking to myself. At least I have an interesting, and educated audience!

Results to Date:

Free Version - larger Pay Version FAIL No one wants to buy something that they can get for free
Niche Market Sorta Works My best sellers fall into this category. iScry, Witch Board, etc. Also by best sellers I mean a couple a day from this category. Hardly sustainment income.
In App Ads FAIL Apple changed the rules and my revenue cratered! Was doing pretty well at 2x sales, now not so much.

So Now I have a niche app (dont tell me that these games are not a niche!) that lends itself nicely to in app purchases. I have updates in work to Rolf! that will have scenarios, characters, weapons, etc for sale inside the application. Future posts will chronicle progress.

PDF in IOS without Navigation Controller

2011-10-27T07:32:00.000-07:00

Another sample of the Art of Rolf from Elmore! If you like his stuff head over to his site and have a look. All art in Rolf is used under license.

In the creation of Rolf! I wanted to add the paper game rule book to the game. The format of the book is PDF and I though it should be no problem. After much googling (please no Binging, That does not EVEN sound right does it?) I found that there are several ways to go. A lot of folks used a web view and let webkit do the rendering. That was ok, but things did not look like I wanted. Also I wanted to be able to print or add it to iBooks. The Document Interaction framework seemed to be a perfect fit. It was but there was a hitch.

First here is the code when the rule button is pressed:

if(self.docController == nil)

{

UIDocumentInteractionController *dc = [UIDocumentInteractionController interactionControllerWithURL:url];

dc.delegate = self;

self.docController = dc;

}

[self.docController presentPreviewAnimated:YES];

This worked perfectly. The PDF is shown in its own view. A menu of supported operations is present. Perfect, except when you hit the provided DONE button it crashed.

Hmmm What delegate method gets called when the done button is pressed. This is the tricky part. According to the apple documentation on presentPreviewAnimated

This method displays the document preview asynchronously. The document interaction controller dismisses the document preview automatically in response to appropriate user interactions. You can also dismiss the preview programmatically using the dismissPreviewAnimated: method.

So over to the delegate protocol ( UIDocumentInteractionControllerDelegate) docs.

So you Must implement this Optional Method!
- (UIViewController *) documentInteractionControllerViewControllerForPreview: (UIDocumentInteractionController *) controller

I know, pretty intuitive huh! Here is the passage from the docs:

Although technically optional, this method is required if your application attempts to display a preview for a document. The view controller returned by this method is used as the parent for the document preview.

Hmm does not sound Optional.

Ok so now what happens when you are done with the preview and hit the DONE button?

Again from the docs:

If you return a navigation controller from this method, the document interaction controller is pushed onto the navigation stack using the standard navigation controller animations. If you return any other type of view controller, the document interaction controller is displayed modally, in which case, the view controller you return must be capable of presenting a modal view controller.

In Rolf! I am not using a Nav controller to move between views. I did not want to give up the real-estate and wanted better control over the navigation. So I thought COOL. All views are capable of modal transitions. NO Problem. The Preview IS presented modally. Nope I was wrong. After looking through the views in the debugger, I found that several properties on the view were nil.

Long story short Modifing my code to:

if(self.docController == nil)

{

UIDocumentInteractionController *dc = [UIDocumentInteractionController interactionControllerWithURL:url];

dc.delegate = self;

self.docController = dc;

}

self.modalTransitionStyle = UIModalTransitionStyleCrossDissolve;

[self.docController presentPreviewAnimated:YES];

Did the trick. Notice the next to the last line! That was it!

Happy Coding!

Rolf! an RPG-NOIR table top game for iPhone

2011-10-26T16:57:00.000-07:00

I have finished the first cut at a multi-player roll-playing(Not Role Playing) game under partnership with NueLow Games. Rolf! is an electronic version of the old style table-top paper RPG games that were popular back in the 80's. There games are still pretty popular with the non tech savvy and it was a chance to try something new. All artwork is from Larry Elmore and used under license. He does really fantastic work! Anyway Rolf is available as a paper game from rpgnow. The iPhone game is multiplayer only and contains a PDF of the official rule book of Rolf. The game is in total black and white. I wanted to capture the feel of paper RPG gaming. The game is Supposed to take place in your head and with your interactions with other players. Paper games typically had pads of paper for players to take notes and record moves, weapons, abilities, etc. This app takes care of some of the nitty gritty rules, but it is up to the players and their imagination to make it all work. In a future post I will outline a few problems I had and how to solve them.

Enjoy and Happy Gaming.

SONY What were you Thinking!!

2011-04-27T13:51:00.000-07:00

Ok Now I'm Pissed! Over a week without COD Black OPS! PSN (PlayStation Network) is down; Sony Pulled the plug after a major hack and users data was stolen. This is all over the press so I wont wax on about the details.

BUT SONY COME ON! Bad news never gets better with age. We are only now being hearing about our data being stolen. Thats right, HEARING About it through the press 8 days after the fact! Sony should have contacted everyone directly and warn them about it.

And being dark for 8 days with no end in site! Break me over like a shotgun and have at it why dont ya. Oh never mind you already did.

This is not the worst. Now I am getting it from my XBOX Zealot friends about how this would never happen on XBOX Live. That Microsoft is much better at security than Sony. How Superior XBOX live is and on and on and on. That really hurts!

I mean how pathetic of a looser are you when MICROSOFT can do better at security than you!

Sony time to grow up and get a pair! Take back the 4.5 mil that you paid the CEO that allowed you to be in this mess and FIX IT!!!

On the openness of Android.

2011-04-27T08:42:00.000-07:00

Could be said in 2 words. MARKETING BULLSHIT

Ok forgive the profanity, but it really twists my undies when vacuous marketing drivel gets taken as technical arguments.

ANDROID IS ONLY OPEN TO THE CARRIERS PERIOD. Since when could a user do anything they want to their android? The CARRIERS dictate what users can and cannot do. ANDROID IS CLOSED to the end user.

Android is open to the developer. Again BULLSHIT. Google is starting to crack down a bit on this. A lot has been written about Android fragmentation, and it is a real problem. Google is finding this as well and is starting to consolidate and crack down. iOS is also open to the developer. The only real difference is that Apple has a big, hairy, gun-toting, cigar-chomping guard at the door to its app store. Sure the approval process is totally opaque, somewhat arbitrary, and a pain in the ass, but I can be sure that the iPhone app from CHASE bank really connects to CHASE bank and not a site somewhere in China or Russia. The approval process is the reason that people actually BUY stuff from Apple app store and not Android Market Place. I develop for both and Android is not worth the effort. the Bazar is full of Junk, Rats, Fleas and Thieves.

A lot has been written that Apple users are more sophisticated, affluent and willing to buy stuff than Android users. BULLSHIT card again. Hang out at ATT or Verizon or where ever both phones are sold. See what kind of people are buying smart phones. Not Rocket Scientists ... Just plain ordinary unwashed public! If this argument was true then why isn't RIM selling a ton of apps! Obviously BlackBerry users should be in the top of "Sophisticated" user class. So why aren't they on top of revenue for app developers?

Back To IT!

2011-04-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

Ok it has been over a year since my last post. Life What can I say.

Many rants have been brewing since my last visit. Sit back and get ready for the ride. Next post on the openness of android

2 new apps COCOS2D

2010-02-16T08:12:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the long span of no posts or tips. Maintaining a blog is pretty time consuming, but I have been busy!

2 new apps are up. The first app is Beaver Fling. A little touch game that really doesn't do much. Simply fling the beaver off the screen. The harder you flick the higher your score.

The second app is a virtual scrying mirror. Scrying is the ancient art of seeing. The best known example is using a crystal ball. This app uses an openGL wrapper framework called cocos2d. This was originally a python library for mac, but was ported to the iPhone. It has a learning curve and documentation is spotty, but it saves a ton of time. With it I was able to do realistic candle flames, mists, ripples and transitions. If you are going to make a 2d game you need to check it out at cocos2d-iphone.

More on how several pitfalls I found later.

Enjoy!

Nav Controller and Tabs

2009-10-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

I just spent more than a little time trying to get a NavController and a set of controllers setup in Interface Builder. Normally this is a piece of cake, however throw in that the NavController is a tab in a Tabbed application and you have a real problem. I found that it is nearly impossible to do this with Interface Builder. I fell back to just doing doing it all in code.

Now for the RANT!!!!

Interface Builder is a great tool and can save a ton of time. However Documentation is spotty and not very helpful. Seems that this is one tool that relies on Guru to Neophyte type of learning. This time I am just the Neophyte and I dont like it much!

Thats it for now

Tìoraidh!

2 New Apps Submitted

2009-09-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

The Great Ad Experiment continues. I created a "free" ad support app from TicklePals. This was submitted earlier this week. The TopCat Free app continues to get downloaded and a handful of ad impressions are registered. TopCat Free has not generated any sales of the full version. Very disappointing. Very few ads are being registered compared to the number of downloads. This means that either GreyStripe stats are wrong(very possible), Nobody plays what they download (doubtful) or my use of GreyStripe SDK is flawed(also very possible). I have notice that the GreyStripe stats change from day to day. Usually the previous days totals are updated. GreyStripe states that the reports are 1 day behind. I think that they are 2 days behind. I created the TicklePals Free app to verify my usage of the SDK. I followed their directions to the letter so we will see. More on this latter.

My Daughter also created a new Rune Casting App. This one combines a match game with a single rune cast. The story goes that the elders choose 9 runes. 4 are matches and one is not. The odd rune out is the single rune cast. This game has the ability to be expanded to a 3 rune cast with 6 matches. So far the Rune Cast app is our best seller with around 8 to 10 per day. Not enough to retire on, but definitely better than a sharp stick in the eye!

Tìoraidh!

Preloading Views

2009-08-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

A little tip for everyone.

I have an app that has a tabview controller. There are 4+ tabs with each view coming from its own NIB. I am using the NotificationCenter to send messages between the different view controllers.[BTW NotificationCenter is GREAT way to do IPC (interprocess communication).It saves you from having all objects so interconnected.] The problem is that the code to connect to Notification Center needed to be executed pretty earl so I put the calls in the viewDidLoad methods. Early events were missed! It turns out that the OS does lazy loading (for good reasons). That is, objects are not loaded from the NIB files until first accessed. Views not loaded, viewDidLoad methods are not called. This caused several subviews to miss events until the tab was selected! Since the other controllers were not loaded, they missed the events. The problem was now how to get the correct instance of the view loaded and initialized!

The fix was very simple.

You just need to access the views in question to get them loaded.

Here is the code:

UITabBar *tabBar; // the TabBar

// All controllers accessed by the tabs.

NSArray *viewControllers = tabBar.viewControllers;

for (UIViewController *controller in viewControllers)

{

controller.view; // access the view to get it loaded.

}

Thats It!

Just insert this code in your main view controller viewDidLoad method. Word of caution. This might use a lot of memory at startup.

Hope this Helps!

Tìoraidh!

Top Cat Free I Up

2009-08-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

After a bit of a delay(my fault) TopCat Free is now ready on the app store. I had a few downloads yesterday, but I think the ad supported app experiment can now officially begin.

I will post how the app is doing, if it is pulling downloads for the non-free version, and how the ads are working out.

If this works out, I will convert a couple of other apps to free with ads, if not, oh well, nothing ventured as they say.

I have another application that is 2/3 ready. This one is also a rune-casting app, but this time it is also a matching game. The rune that is left over is your rune that will answer your question!

Tìoraidh!

Thanks All

2009-08-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

I have received a couple of thank you notes on my info button tip. Cool! Glad that I can help. I will post tidbits and tips as I run across them. There are many pitfalls in embedded application development. No matter how good XCode is at hiding the details, it is really embedded programs that you are writing for the iPhone.

After using Java and Eclipse for many years, I find that I really miss it when doing Objective-C and XCode. I have had to relearn much that I took for granted in the Java World. I remember how much I bitched about Java having no pointers! Pointers are now the bane of my existence in Objective-C. Wish that Objective-c was more Java like and less C like. Too much to ask, but at least its not C++!

Tìoraidh!

Top Cat Free

2009-08-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

TopCat Free was rejected on 8/11. I did not follow the rules and can agree that according to published guidelines, the app as submitted should not have been accepted. Bet you have not heard of a developer saying that before! Anyway it was fixed and resubmitted on 8/11. This free app has ads from GreyStripe. I noticed on the GreyStripe site that TopCat Free was played yesterday on an IPhone version 3.0.1. This must mean that it is getting close to being accepted (or rejected). It has been taking a long time (14 +days) to do reviews and get apps up on the store. They are swamped! Which means an app that is rejected a couple of times takes over a month to get posted on the store. Way too long in my opinion. If I was making my living doing applications, that would be a huge hit to potential revenue. You can not time releases with any certainty. Say I had an app that could follow football stats. How can I be sure that the app would be posted before the end of the season, let alone the end of it! You really gotta plan ahead, allow for 6 weeks and put in your ready date accordingly. Bummer Really.

Tìoraidh!

Witch Runes A companion to Witch Board Live!

2009-08-04T17:20:00.000-07:00

Witch Runes a rune casting app is now live on the App Store. This application does a traditional 3 rune cast. One main difference between this app and other rune casting apps is that Witch Runes provides an interpretation of the cast. It is a fun little app that is uncanny in its ability to predict and comment on life's questions.

Give it a try.

This app was done by my soon to be graduated daughter. Everything including the art work was done by her. She learned how to do random choices and manage data in such a way as not to reuse already used runes. All in all a pretty successful teaching experience.

Tìoraidh!

App Store Changes

2009-08-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

Well gentle readers, this is a RANT. It seems apple has made a few changes to the app store. First thing I noticed is that it is taking much longer than normal to get my apps evaluated. Witch Runes was submitted on 7/10. It was rejected a week later and resubmitted later the same day. Still no word on anything. The TopCat free app was submitted on 7/25 and according to the add reports, Apple has not looked at that one at all yet. (Interesting by product of ads! You can see any and all activity on your app!)

The Next thing (a good thing I think) is that Apple now requires keywords on all applications. I updated these yesterday. You can only have 100 chars worth of keywords counting the commas and spaces required as separators.

Next the ITunes Connect site was changed, and all the app tracker applications quit working. The change must have been internal, since the site, does not look different.

Now I looked at my apps from the App Store on my IPOD and all ratings are gone! Thats right, vanished, deleted, gone! Is this a sign of major renovation to the app store is nigh?

Stay tuned! I will post when I find out more.

Tìoraidh!

How to Drive Apple App Store Sales

2009-07-26T09:43:00.000-07:00

Like many other hobby iPhone programmers, I am looking for ways to drive sales. I tried a Fart App, with no success. I would think that a non G rating would at least get some attention. I tried AppConnect also no success. I have bought my own apps and rated them, still no effect. I have used digg to pump my apps. But as expected a single digg wont do much. All in all, the efforts have been for nothing.

One method I have not tried is a free light version of a larger application. I did a bit of research and fond that some people have had success in having an ad supported free version and a pay version of the same application. Some people have reported that the free version drives sales of the pay version. So I am giving it a try with Top Cat!

I also decided to try embedded ads in the light version. There seems to be 2 main players in the IPhone Ad biz, AdMob and Greystripe. They have very different approaches. AdMob uses a banner ad. That is you give up a bit of real estate for a banner ad that is always present. Greystripe uses a full screen, animated ad. Some of these ads are like mini-games themselves. Greystripe also has a very simple API. The stats reporting on Greystripe is also very nice. It tracks how many players(unique devices) and how many plays (number of uses). This will make it easy to see if people think that the app is worthwhile or not.

So I am using Greystripe. The app is Top Cat![free]. It will only use 4 cats and not the user selectable number. Your high score is also not tracked. This will be an interesting experiment.

Tìoraidh!

Dreaded Code Signing Failure!

2009-07-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

I just spent the better part of the morning looking into a problem with my provisioning profiles. When I when into XCode this morning and tried to install a new app onto my IPod Touch I got the following error:

"a valid signing identity matching this profile could not be found in your keychain"

I brought up the organizer and all my profiles had the same error.

Perplexed I googled and tried everything short of starting over. I went here and found the site helpful, but it sadly did not have a fix. I did get a clue however.

Turns out that the fault was with File Vault. Or rather with keychain manipulation by File Vault. This Apple utility encrypts your home directory so that your files can only be accessed by you when you are logged in. Only the logged in user can see unencrypted files. To me this is much better than whole disk encryption that is used in the windows world. (More on that at a later date) After starting the process I decided to cancel the operation since it was going to take a long time to encrypt my files. Not wanting to give up my machine for hours, I punted. This is where the problem started. File Vault sets up a new keychain. This new keychain is set as your default. Since I did not complete the process, no keychain was actually created. The end result was that I had a default keychain that did not exist. XCode apparently only looks for keys on your default keychain. Since my default did not really exist, I had an epic failure. To cure it I simply used keychain access utility to set the login keychain as the default. Now everything is back to normal.

Seems to be 2 bugs. The first is that File Vault should never set the default keychain, until complete. Next is XCode should prompt you for which keychain to use, if the keys cannot be found on the "default" keychain.

Hope this helps save someone a bunch of time.

Tìoraidh!

Tickle Pals Accepted!

2009-07-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

Just got the email today. Tickle Pals is now accepted for sale. That makes 7 apps up on the store and 1 to go. It will be interesting to see if a "Fart" app out sells the others. So far the Ouija board and Netbrowser are the top sellers, with Cats Meow coming on strong. I am a bit disappointed in Top Cat and Follow Me. Top cat is what Follow Me should have been. I will be upgrading Follow Me to do what Top Cat does.

I am over all a little disappointed in sales in general, Only 2 to 5 apps sold per day. Not too surprising with no marketing. I also wonder if posting the apps under a personal name is worse than doing it under a "company" name. I can have my kid apply under a different name and we can see if that helps. An experiment to try.

Also I get no feed back on the blog, I bet I just have an audience of 1. At least he knows good reading when he sees it!

Tìoraidh!

Witch Runes A companion to Witch Board is postedI

2009-07-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

A Rune Casting app has been posted to the app store. This application does a 3 rune cast also known as Norn Casting Ritual. Witch Runes also does an interpretation, which is different than the other casting applications. They explain the meaning of each rune, but it is left up to the user to interpret. The interpretation is only one of many possible readings. It should help novice casters and not get in the way of those more skilled in the art of Rune Casting.

This application was almost entirely done by my daughter. As with all applications, all art work is done by her. On this project she did the design of the software as well as 90% of the coding. Next time I should not have to do anything. It may be time for her to get a developers ID of her own!

I will post when it is accepted.

Tìoraidh!

Top Cat is UP!

2009-07-06T14:50:00.001-07:00

Top Cat Has been accepted to the app store! This game puts a new twist on the old Simon electronic game. Instead of only colored areas, you have Cats!

You play against Top Cat. He will choose cats at random to sing in his choir. You must match his moves!

Very fun and addicting.

Get Top Cat from ITunes here.

See previous posts about a couple of IPhone gottchas that had to be over come.

Tìoraidh!