Apple iPhone – a fertile gaming platform

In bringing about a revolution to the mobile gaming industry, the first and foremost name that comes to the mind is the Apple iPhone. Although not the first device to have games, it definitely changed the entire perspective of game playing on mobiles and smartphones due to exclusive in-built features and functions.

The enhanced graphics, unique iOS, touch screen, gyroscope, accelerometer etc. in an iPhone, sets the tone of innovative games. The latest generation of the iPhone (4S), furthers it with a speedier processor, retina display and iCloud, which made game playing an even more exhilarating experience on the particular platform.

Various games developed as a part of iPhone apps

There are endless possibilities of games that can be developed for the iPhone in different segments based upon the number of players or nature of the game. For instance, different single player or multiplayer game apps for the iPhone can be classified as: Puzzles, Board games, Strategy based games, Role-playing games, Arcade games and Racing games.

Using the distinctive iPhone platform and various technologies, many third-party games for these categories are being developed and uploaded on the iTunes store. The close competition for developing exceptional game apps for various mobile devices has contributed in raising the standard of games. Game lovers also look forward to ‘out of the ordinary’ games. Thus, distinctive games which are of high quality are a prerequisite these days to survive the intense competition.

The phenomenal success of games like Angry Birds is an apt example of feature-rich iPhone based games that get an overwhelming response worldwide. Released in 2009, it has undergone many changes for making it more appealing to the game enthusiasts. Similar to this game, there are endless possibilities of games for both iPhone and the iPad devices which share the same iOS platform and belong to the same ecosystem. Hence, the same set of developers can create innovative games under iPhone application development and iPad application development.

There are already some solutions to this problem out there but non of them offers the features I needed. First, the solution I present in this article uses a work-around for the well-known UIWebView bug that causes erratic behavior when combining “zooming operations” and “landscape orientation”. Moreover, the solution presented is highly customizable.

I have called it TSMiniWebBrowser. You can download the source code at the end of the article.

Features

TSMiniWebBrowser offers the following features:

• Back and forward buttons
• Reload button (optional)
• Activity indicator while page is loading
• Action button to open the current page in Safari (optional)
• Displays the page title at the navigation bar (optional)
• Displays the current URL at the top of the “Open in Safari” action sheet (optional)
• Customizable bar style: default, black, black translucent.

As you can see, there are some items that are “optional”. That means that you can configure the browser to display or not those items, depending on your app needs.

Moreover, TSMiniWebBrowser supports 3 presentation modes:

• Navigation controller mode. Using this mode you can push the browser to your navigation controller.
• Modal mode. Using this mode you can present the browser modally. A title bar with a dismiss button will be automatically added.
• Tab bar mode. Using this mode you can present the browser into a tab of a tab bar. The browser controls will be located at the top of view automatically.

Usage

If you are OK with the TSMiniWebBrowser defaults, you can simply use this snippet to create and display the browser:

TSMiniWebBrowser *webBrowser = [[TSMiniWebBrowser alloc] initWithUrl:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://indiedevstories.com"]];

[self.navigationController pushViewController:webBrowser animated:YES];

If you prefer, you may customize the browser behavior. There is also a simple Demo app within the project.

TSMiniWebBrowser *webBrowser = [[TSMiniWebBrowser alloc] initWithUrl:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://indiedevstories.com"]];

webBrowser.showURLStringOnActionSheetTitle = YES;

webBrowser.showPageTitleOnTitleBar = YES;

webBrowser.showActionButton = YES;

webBrowser.showReloadButton = YES;

webBrowser.mode = TSMiniWebBrowserModeNavigation;



webBrowser.barStyle = UIBarStyleBlack;



if (webBrowser.mode == TSMiniWebBrowserModeModal) {

    webBrowser.modalDismissButtonTitle = @"Home";

    [self presentModalViewController:webBrowser animated:YES];

} else if(webBrowser.mode == TSMiniWebBrowserModeNavigation) {

    [self.navigationController pushViewController:webBrowser animated:YES];

}

As usual, very easy to use

Adding TSMiniWebBrowser into your Xcode 4 project

To add the TSMiniWebBrowser component to your project you simply need to drag & drop the entire “TSMiniWebBrowser” folder. In the image below, you can see the files included in this folder. Only two files, apart from the icon images.

Conclusion

TSMiniWebBrowser has been created to easily add in-app browser capabilities to your iPhone apps.

Here you can download the source code.

Hope this helps!

note:This competition is part of our #iOSBlogIsOne birthday giveaways, please click here to see what else we are giving away if you like.

This short book is part of a collection that will, along with new material, be compiled into a larger book, iOS Sensor Programming. The other books in this collection are Augmented Reality in iOS, iOS Sensor Apps with Arduino, and Basic Sensors in iOS.

Enter in 3 Simple Steps

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3) Post name & twitter status url below.

The Rules

1) The winners will be chosen at random and notified via twitter. The winners must be following @iOS_blog 

2) You may only enter once per twitter account

Dealine information

Competition closes May 31st 2012 at 00:00 GMT, The winner will be notified within 24hours of the closing date and time via twitter.

That’s it – Good luck everyone.

searchDisplayControllerWillBeginSearch

method and have it contain the following:

- (void)searchDisplayControllerWillBeginSearch:(UISearchDisplayController *)controller{

   self.searchDisplayController.searchBar.showsCancelButton = YES;

   UIButton *cancelButton = nil;

   for (UIView *subView in self.searchDisplayController.searchBar.subviews) {

      if ([subView isKindOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"UIButton")]) {

         cancelButton = (UIButton*)subView;

      }

   }

   [cancelButton setTitle:@"Annuller" forState:UIControlStateNormal];

}

The above code assumes that your class is a

UISearchDisplayDelegate

Why do you believe mobile apps have become so popular?

I believe that since the introduction of smart phones and tablet devices, bringing with them powerful operating systems, mobile applications have become so popular because they provided a new and interesting way to interact with the device. It not only allows businesses and organisations to utilise the inbuilt functionality but has something for everyone, be that personal, work or leisure. In relation to the iPhone, there really is an app for everything. The main thing I believe makes them so popular is that you can have it in your pocket, access them any place any time.

How easy is it to create an application?

It’s fairly easy to create mobile applications and there are technologies out there for the novice in you to create an application, have it compiled and released, like Phone Gap. However to create a good app, considerations should be taken into account, for example the existing design methodologies set out by Larry Constatine (1) and usability issues by Jakob Neilson (2) along with various other methodoligies and best practices I would say are definitely a great starting point.
For those learning mobile development, providing you have a good knowledge of programming fundamentals its fairly easy to start as the documentation that is available online is in large quantities and there is a plethora of other developers out there testing new things, been creatively curious and most importantly, sharing their ideas and findings on blogs etc..

What are your favourite apps at the moment?

Right now, I am a sucker for DrawSomething, other than that I really don’t use apps that much, I have my social media ones like Twitter and Facebook, a few extra for business and my freelance work and that’s about it.

Currently, I using the just giving app a lot, as i’m Walking the Great Wall of China and current fundraising for it, Would you like to sponsor me?

In your opinion what makes a good app?

My opinion can be summed up in one word, simplistic. For example the Shazam App – The majority of people that use it want to find out a song name and artist and that’s probably the most they would do. You open up the app and there is one button to press. You wait a few seconds and it finds your song. There are other features for those wishing to explore the service further, which is great. It’s even greater that the app isn’t constantly asking you to do this or that, opening new pages and most annoyingly, asking you to sign in every single time.

Are there any traits of apps that make them addictive?

For me I would say no, this is subjective and also relevant to the individuals. We all have our likes and dislikes and we all have addictions to other things.

What money making potential is there in creating mobile applications?

According to research carried out by Forrester and written by Compuware the mobile commerce will reach about $31 billion by 2013. So I would say a lot.

What ways are there for developers to monetise apps?

This depends on what you class as monetization, Each person that uses your app can be worked out as a figure of potential, however if you mean capitalistically making hard cash then I’m not sure about Andriod, However in iOS development, developers can incorporating iADs into their applications. Depending on the app also you may have premium services or accounts or extra features that could be purchased.

Check out one of our blog posts here: Implementing Ads in your iOS Application

References

(1) Constantine, Larry L. (1994). Collaborate Usability Inspections for Software. Software Development ’94 proceedings, San Fransico: Miller Freeman

(2) Neilson, Jakob (2009). Mobile Usability. [online]. Source: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html

Look what we have here: Paintcode.

Paintcode is a drawing application that generates Objective-C in order to draw visual objects using Cocoa APIs: Quartz and Core Graphics.

The basic workflow of Paintcode is very simple: before starting to draw shapes, you first define the colors that will be part of the color palette of your project, then you build gradients based on these basic colors and finally you create shadows. Created objects will then use these colors, gradients and shadows as you wish. Changing a single color will be reflected everywhere from the shapes to the gradients and shadows that are build on this basic color.

Objects attributes include identify names that are used for variables naming in the generated code. Very precise control for everything is available. Live preview of code generation is how Paincode works so you always get an up to date Objective-C code. By the way, depending if you are developing an iOS application or a Mac OS X application, you can switch between the two for generated code flavour. For project examples, go to http://www.paintcodeapp.com/examples.html and see for yourself to get a better idea of what Paintcode can do.

Usage of Paintcode are many: Learn the basics of UIKit/AppKit graphical programming in Quartz and Core Graphics. You’ll save quite some time of trial and error for programmers who are not good at graphic designs programmatically. Those who wants quick results in having up and running drawing code in their projects will appreciate Paintcode.

What is missing or could be improved? The application could include other basic graphical elements like glass overlays that we often see on iOS navigation bars for example. Full screen mode is not available for Lion users. But remember, this is version 1.0 of an application with a lot of potential. According to the developers, the next update will add PNG export, blending modes  and bug fixes. Another thing that could help the developer is to wrap the generated code in an object that could be easily be integrated in the developer’s application code. Right now, the code needs tweaking in order to be used.

One observation on application pricing: some developers find the 79$ price tag a bit steep but I don’t think it is: it may be too easy to compare to other lower priced applications on the Mac App Store. I think you have to look at the inherent value of the application: you’ll save time by using it. Recently, PixelCut added a demo version that you can download and try for yourself which is a good thing for a 79$ application.

I look forward to see how Paincode will evolve in the near future.

Enter Locayltics

Localytics (www.localytics.com / @localytics on twitter) is a service for providing mobile analytics.  They have APIs for Blackberry, Windows Phone 7, Android, and of course iOS.  Localytics provides three levels of accounts – a Free Community account, a Premium account (currently $95 / month / app), and an Enterprise account ($895 / month for all apps).  I’ve been using Localytics for just about a year now using the Free Community account and have been satisfied with the data I’m getting.  They offer a 30-day free trial of the Premium account so you can try out the more advanced tracking data.

Pro Ttip – turn on your free 30-day trial when your app launches so you can get the extra data around your product introduction.

Integrating Locaytics

The staff at Localytics have provided an awesome iOS integration which they call their “Ten Minute Implementation Instructions“.  It’s a quick 12 step process and there is no real value in repeating their installation guide here.

Setting Events

By doing nothing else, you will now be able to see stats appear in Localytics – even when you are running your app in the iOS simulator.  You’ll see how many users you are getting today (new versus returning), what devices are running your apps, what OS versions are running your app, what versions of your app people are running, where your customers are, etc.  This data can be powerful, but where Localytics really shines is event tracking. Adding an event is as simple as inserting the following line of code

          [[LocalyticsSession sharedLocalyticsSession] tagEvent:@"Level 1 Cleared"];

By changing the value of the string on tagEvent, you can track multiple events – when a level is cleared, when a particular screen is accessed, or when one of your apps feature is accessed. There is no limit on the number of tagEvents that your app can use. I choose to err on the side of more data, rather than less.

Now What

Now that you are collecting data what are you going to do with it?  During Beta testing you can use the data to make tweaks to the design of your app / game levels based on how your beta testers are interacting with it.  Once the app has gone live, the data can help shape the direction your app updates take.

Remember this is just data; you are still going to have to make some guesses about the data you are getting.  Say your users are never going to a particular screen or utilizing a particular feature.  Is this because the feature is unimportant, or is it because you haven’t explained the importance of the feature.  If you are using a framework like iNotify you can add a pop up that points out that little used feature.  If you don’t see a bump in usage of that feature, then maybe it really isn’t that important to your users.

Caveat Emptor

There’s one little caveat to this analytics data.  The number of new users does not correlate one to one with your sales.  So don’t use it for sales tracking – that’s what your iTunes Connect reports are for.  Of course you can just blame the inconsistencies as piracy, but that does not explain 100% of the differences.  Why is that?  There are people in the world that have iPads and iPhones.  People can use the app you just sold them on both devices so one sale now reports as two new users in your analytics data.  People also upgrade their phones too so when they transfer their purchases to a new iDevice that counts as a new user to Localytics.

note:This competition is part of our #iOSBlogIsOne birthday giveaways, please click here to see what else we are giving away if you like.

Whether you’re a developer looking to spend more time coding and less time figuring out how to install your application, or a release engineer responsible for producing reliable builds, this guide will help you successfully navigate the build and release processes for your iOS app.

• Get an overview of the iOS Dev Center, including the iOS Provisioning Portal, Member Center, and iTunes Connect
• Create your App ID, and generate signing certificates for development and distribution
• Manage the provisioning profiles necessary to test your app on iOS devices
• Learn common scenarios for iOS Simulator, Ad Hoc, and App Store distribution builds
• Automate the process to continuously build, sign, and package your app(s) for distribution

Enter in 3 Simple Steps

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3) Post name & twitter status url below.

The Rules

1) The winners will be chosen at random and notified via twitter. The winners must be following @iOS_blog

2) You may only enter once per twitter account

Deadline information

Competition closes April 30th 2012 at 00:00 GMT, The winner will be notified within 24hours of the closing date and time via twitter.

That’s it – Good luck everyone.

If your primary customer base isn’t in one of the mentioned countries, don’t worry. There’s a lot of alternative ad-frameworks such as Google’s AdMob.

The following is a example of how you can implement the iAd framework in your app, and back it up with AdMob when the iAd network isn’t available.

Implementing iAd and backing it up with AdMob

First off, select your project in the ‘Project Navigator’, and then select the appropriate target and add the iAd framework.

Next download the Google AdMob SDK from here and follow the instructions on how to add it to your project.

In the ViewController of the View, where you wan’t the ad to appear, add the following properties to the .h file:

@property (nonatomic, strong) ADBannerView *iAdBannerView;

@property (nonatomic, strong) GADBannerView *gAdBannerView;

and let your ViewController implement the protocol:

@interface MyViewController : UIViewController<ADBannerViewDelegate, GADBannerViewDelegate>

In your .m implementation synthesize the new property and add the following code to the viewDidLoad (Or create a init method)

CGSize bannerSize = [ADBannerView sizeFromBannerContentSizeIdentifier:ADBannerContentSizeIdentifierPortrait];

iAdBannerView = [[ADBannerView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, -bannerSize.height, bannerSize.width, bannerSize.height)];

iAdBannerView.delegate = self;

iAdBannerView.hidden = YES;

[self.view addSubview:iAdBannerView];



gAdBannerView = [[GADBannerView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, -GAD_SIZE_320x50.height, GAD_SIZE_320x50.width, GAD_SIZE_320x50.height)];

gAdBannerView.adUnitID = @"YOUR_ADMOB_ID_HERE";

gAdBannerView.hidden = YES;

gAdBannerView.rootViewController = self;

[self.view addSubview:gAdBannerView];

This will create a banner in the top of the view, and place off-screen, so that it later can be animated down.

The next step is to implement the iAd and AdMob delegate methods

bannerViewDidLoadAd:(ADBannerView *)banner

bannerView:(ADBannerView *)banner didFailToReceiveAdWithError:(NSError *)error

and

adViewDidReceiveAd:(GADBannerView *)banner

adView:(GADBannerView *)banner didFailToReceiveAdWithError:(GADRequestError *)erro

The bannerViewDidLoadAd method will be called when the iAd banner loaded an ad, and the adViewDidReceiveAd will be called when the AdMob banner loaded an ad. So we’ll want to act on this. I did this by creating two helper methods to show and hide banners:

- (void)hideTopBanner:(UIView *)banner{

    if (banner && ![banner isHidden]) {

        [UIView beginAnimations:@"bannerOff" context:NULL];

        banner.frame = CGRectOffset(banner.frame, 0, -banner.frame.size.height);

        [UIView commitAnimations];

        banner.hidden = YES;

    }

}



- (void)showTopBanner:(UIView *)banner{

    if (banner && [banner isHidden]) {

        [UIView beginAnimations:@"bannerOn" context:NULL];

        banner.frame = CGRectOffset(banner.frame, 0, banner.frame.size.height);

        [UIView commitAnimations];

        banner.hidden = NO;

    }

}

So the idea is, that we’ll first let the app wait and see if the iAd banner loaded an ad, and show it when succesful. If the iAd banner fails, we will request the AdMob banner for an ad, in the bannerView:(ADBannerView *)banner didFailToReceiveAdWithError method.
So all in all the four delegates methods should look like this:

- (void)bannerViewDidLoadAd:(ADBannerView *)banner{

   [self hideTopBanner:gAdBannerView];

   [self showTopBanner:banner];

}



- (void)bannerView:(ADBannerView *)banner didFailToReceiveAdWithError:(NSError *)error{

    [gAdBannerView loadRequest:[GADRequest request]];

    [self hideTopBanner:iAdBannerView];

    [self showTopBanner:gAdBannerView];

}



- (void) adView:(GADBannerView *)banner didFailToReceiveAdWithError:(GADRequestError *)error{

    [self hideTopBanner:banner];

}



- (void) adViewDidReceiveAd:(GADBannerView *)banner{

    if ([iAdBannerView isHidden]) {

        [self showTopBanner:banner];

    }

}

Hopefully this will help get you started implemented ads in your app. Further information about the iAd Framework can be found in the Apple Developer Docs
and more on the Google AdMob can be found here

360|iDev is the leading iPhone developer conference in the world. Our focus is to bring the best and brightest in the developer community together for 3 days of incredible sessions, awesome parties, good times, and learning. We were the first iPhone developer conference, and are regarded my many as the best. We focus not on marketing hype, or selling books, or anything like that. Our focus is the community. Helping new people get into the community, and making sure those already here are having their minds blown every 6 months.

Our conferences aren’t marketing events, or sales events. They exist solely to bring the community together and have fun, and learn some awesome shit while we’re at it. We screen each submission/speaker to make sure the content is top notch. There’s no pre-madonna’s, there’s no ego. We strive to make sure our sessions, are the best content you’re going to find anywhere.

See http://360idev.com/ for more info.

Enter in 3 Simple Steps

1) Follow both @iOS_blog  & @360idev on twitter
Follow @ios_blog

Follow @360idev

2) Tweet this message: “Want to Win a ticket to #360idev, September 2012 (Denver)? Enter now: http://bit.ly/yZsMUV”
Tweet #competition

3) Post your full name & twitter status url below.

The Rules

1) The winner will be chosen at random and notified via twitter. The winner must be following @iOS_blog  & @360idev.

2) You may only enter once per twitter account

Location, location, location..

Denver, CO (Hotel: TBA)

More details and Map to follow

What you’ll leave with

New friends, business contacts, inspiration, and more knowledge than you’ll get anywhere else (40+ Sessions, delivered by over 30 speakers). Probably a book or two as well.

360|iDev is the first and still the best iPhone developer conference in the world. We’re not a publishing company pushing books, or a media company selling subscriptions. We’re a conference company, focused on community. Our goal is to bring the best and brightest in the developer community together for 3 days of incredible sessions, awesome parties, good times, and learning. If you don’t leave Wednesday night, with more ideas than you know what to do with, we’re not doing our jobs!

This Summer you can get your fill of iPhone awesomeness! We’ll be bringing together the best of the iPhone community . Join us in Denver, CO.

Deadline information

Competition closes August 31st 2012 at 00:00 GMT, The winner will be notified within 24hours of the closing date and time via twitter.