Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Ex Mediis Aevīs, Scientia
Hey all. Just a quick note to check out my medieval blog as well. It's called Ex Mediis Aevīs, Scientia and it's located at http://exmediisaevis.blogspot.com. I hope you'll find it an interesting and amusing trip through the middle ages!
Alpha 3 Update (redux)
Things are progressing well on the Alpha 3 front. I've redesigned the create game logic now, so it's a little cleaner in terms of creating single player games (the two player games are targeted for next release). Overall I'm pretty happy - spent about 3 hours and redesigned how games are created, including difficulty level. I've got a weird bug where it's not cleaning up completed games, but in retrospect I need to think about whether I should even do that as I plan on having those available after you finish. At the same time, that might be all server-based, so I'll punt for now and worry about it later.
I've got the levels sorted out for the game (the screen shot to the right shows the difficulty levels available). I still need to get the UI changes in place for the new difficulty levels, but I don't think it will take too long to get that sorted out. Nightmare is easy as it's just a simplification of what I've already got. It's Medium and Easy that are going to require the most revision. I did find out how to do what I want to do with them, which is good. I'm planning on having Easy show you the correctly placed matching letters in green and correct letters but in the wrong position in blue. Everything else will be black. Medium will just show you which letters are correct (in blue), not whether they're placed correctly. Hard will be the game the way it is now and Nightmare will be hella-hard (pun intended).
I'm hoping to make some good progress this week and maybe even have the new version available by next week. That would be just awesome if I can pull it off. Then, perhaps, it's time to spend a couple of months making Alpha 4 with two player games. OooOOooo. Ahhhhhh. Ohhhhhh. (For those of you who went to the Colorado Renaissance Festival when Dextre Tripp was there, it all makes sense; for everyone else, just nod your head.)
I've got the levels sorted out for the game (the screen shot to the right shows the difficulty levels available). I still need to get the UI changes in place for the new difficulty levels, but I don't think it will take too long to get that sorted out. Nightmare is easy as it's just a simplification of what I've already got. It's Medium and Easy that are going to require the most revision. I did find out how to do what I want to do with them, which is good. I'm planning on having Easy show you the correctly placed matching letters in green and correct letters but in the wrong position in blue. Everything else will be black. Medium will just show you which letters are correct (in blue), not whether they're placed correctly. Hard will be the game the way it is now and Nightmare will be hella-hard (pun intended).
I'm hoping to make some good progress this week and maybe even have the new version available by next week. That would be just awesome if I can pull it off. Then, perhaps, it's time to spend a couple of months making Alpha 4 with two player games. OooOOooo. Ahhhhhh. Ohhhhhh. (For those of you who went to the Colorado Renaissance Festival when Dextre Tripp was there, it all makes sense; for everyone else, just nod your head.)
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Alpha 3 Update
It's been over a month since I sent out Alpha 2 and the main comment back from testers was: this game is really hard! I've decided I need to focus for Alpha 3 on adding in game difficulty. It's something I wasn't really planning on doing quite yet (it was going to be after this next release), but I think that in order to get the most feedback and to make the game approachable I need to get difficulty levels sorted out.
There are two main changes I need to make to get it working. The first is that I need to redesign the "create new game" functionality. It's kind of clunky right now design-wise, so I'm going to delve into that and get it cleaned up and segmented a little better than it is. The second is that I need to change the main game screen UI to support the easier levels.
The current UI looks like the image on the right. It's obviously very basic (and not terribly helpful), but the idea is that you find out how many letters from your word are in the computer's word. For TOMBS, none of those letters are in the computer's word. FIRED and GLYPH both share one letter, but that letter may or may not be in the right place. (In case you're wondering, the "Debug" button in the corner will show you the word in case you get stuck - but just in the Alpha games.)
I'm envisioning 4 different levels of game play. The first - Easy - will show you which letters are correct and in the right place and also which letters are correct but not in the correct position. Medium will display which letters are correct, just not whether they're in the right position. Hard will be the standard game - you only see how many letters in your word are correct, but not which ones. And Nightmare (because I do love me some Quake and Doom) will only let you know when you place the right letter in the right position (but won't show which letter). Yeah - nightmare indeed.
This is going to require quite a bit of redesign to the UITableViewCell to display this additional information. Plus, the whole background for the game board is very bland and uninteresting right now - just white with controls on it. I think it makes sense to beautify it a bit so it's not so jarringly different from the rest of the screens. So Alpha 3 will be a significant release. I just hope that I can get it working in relatively short order. I guess I better get cracking on it...
There are two main changes I need to make to get it working. The first is that I need to redesign the "create new game" functionality. It's kind of clunky right now design-wise, so I'm going to delve into that and get it cleaned up and segmented a little better than it is. The second is that I need to change the main game screen UI to support the easier levels.
The current UI looks like the image on the right. It's obviously very basic (and not terribly helpful), but the idea is that you find out how many letters from your word are in the computer's word. For TOMBS, none of those letters are in the computer's word. FIRED and GLYPH both share one letter, but that letter may or may not be in the right place. (In case you're wondering, the "Debug" button in the corner will show you the word in case you get stuck - but just in the Alpha games.)
I'm envisioning 4 different levels of game play. The first - Easy - will show you which letters are correct and in the right place and also which letters are correct but not in the correct position. Medium will display which letters are correct, just not whether they're in the right position. Hard will be the standard game - you only see how many letters in your word are correct, but not which ones. And Nightmare (because I do love me some Quake and Doom) will only let you know when you place the right letter in the right position (but won't show which letter). Yeah - nightmare indeed.
This is going to require quite a bit of redesign to the UITableViewCell to display this additional information. Plus, the whole background for the game board is very bland and uninteresting right now - just white with controls on it. I think it makes sense to beautify it a bit so it's not so jarringly different from the rest of the screens. So Alpha 3 will be a significant release. I just hope that I can get it working in relatively short order. I guess I better get cracking on it...
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Alpha 2 Love
It's official. On Thursday evening I sent out OttoJotts Alpha 2 to testers. I've picked up 3 more testers since Alpha 1, which I'm hoping will help when I start getting into needing to test multiplayer. The Alpha 2 has a LOT of stuff in it, including:
Back to the salt mines.
- Statistics for game play, including games played, won, and average guesses per game
- New help file - this is a huge improvement and MUCH better than Alpha 1's
- New background images - basic changes, but look pretty good; not final, though
- Server-based word lists (the entire word list is on the server now)
- Persistence between launches. Less of an issue with multitasking in iOS 4, but a major pain in anything previously
- Automatically scrolls to the bottom of the guesses list on load - something that should have been done for Alpha 1
- Upgrade to iOS 4 support - this was far more involved than I expected it to be
- Numerous UI improvements and tweaks - just a lot of pet peeves and usability tweaks to make it easier to use and understand (I hope)
Back to the salt mines.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Quick Departure
I'm going to take a few paragraphs here to discuss another topic outside the typical vein of the blog. That issue is Net Neutrality.
As a netizen for lo these many years (almost 25 now), the thought of a free (as in liberty) and open internet has been something that seemed completely inherent in the 'net. That someone would come along and consider restricting access was bound to crop up, but the thought is anathema to the openness of the 'net.
I look at the issue from two perspectives - as a consumer and as a small business owner - and this latter perspective is where I have the primary concerns. As a consumer, I already (over)pay for access to the internet and it seems reasonable, based on other costs, that I should. I already pay for electricity, gas, and water - internet access seems like another service being provided and the provider deserves to be compensated for that access. I can even choose how much I want to pay for the bandwidth I choose to consume - again, all reasonable. I would, however, be concerned with a "prioritized traffic" provider. I should be able to access all of the legal content I want to access when I want to access it, provided that I'm paying for that right.
As a business owner, though, I have serious concerns. The crux of the net neutrality debate is centered around businesses providing content. Services like BitTorrent were just a symptom of what the industry as a whole was experiencing - a lot of people using a lot of bandwidth. That BitTorrent could be used to break the law was, I'm certain, an impetus for internet providers. They saw this as an opportunity to "tax" business owners to get access to their services. As an ISP, the thought of all of the potential funding just below the surface would be irresistible. And it makes sense. "As a user of our network," they'd reason, "you should be required to pay commensurate with the amount of traffic you're pushing over our network." This is, however, just over the concept of "reasonable". Why? Business owners are already paying for access to the internet from their hosting services. And there are, literally, thousands of ISPs - should businesses have to pay every since ISP to prioritize their traffic? I can only assume the ISP answer to that question would be a resounding "yes!"
The biggest concern for me is the following scenario. Assume that the providers are able to prioritize their traffic based on who pays them. As a company that's not Google or Microsoft or Apple, I'm at a significant competitive disadvantage if I can't pay to get my traffic prioritized. The average person using the web will not wait more than a few seconds for a web page to display before they pick a different page (i.e, not mine). If there's a delay in displaying my information because my traffic isn't prioritized highly because I couldn't afford to pay every telco that wants to provide internet access, I lose customers or, at the very least, customer satisfaction suffers.
One of the arguments against net neutrality is that if companies haven't done it yet, there's no reason for them to do so in the future. There are a few points to be debated here, but the three that ring most true for me are: a) companies haven't really been able to do this yet, so there's been no real test of this concept, b) companies have a terrible history of doing things in people's best interest (look at the labor revolution of the late 19th century for a great example - and then go thank a union worker), and c) they're already looking at it. Comcast began to packet filter BitTorrent traffic - determined via empirical tests. And it's not that far of a leap from selectively filtering traffic to charging for that traffic. This also causes problems for consumers who now need to determine whether their provider will allow them to access the content they want to view.
So you may be asking where I stand on the whole issue (if you haven't already jumped to a conclusion). Actually, I prefer that we take a "wait and see" attitude, but we need to provide an organization - it can be the FCC, but I'd prefer an elected body rather than appointed - to oversee and insure that things don't get out of hand. We should be proactive rather than reactive to the potential direction this issue could move. Time and again we've seen that as things progress without direct confrontation about it, people become willing to accept the status quo, not status quo ante. I don't believe we need regulation, but we do need the ability to quickly address any complaints.
As a netizen for lo these many years (almost 25 now), the thought of a free (as in liberty) and open internet has been something that seemed completely inherent in the 'net. That someone would come along and consider restricting access was bound to crop up, but the thought is anathema to the openness of the 'net.
I look at the issue from two perspectives - as a consumer and as a small business owner - and this latter perspective is where I have the primary concerns. As a consumer, I already (over)pay for access to the internet and it seems reasonable, based on other costs, that I should. I already pay for electricity, gas, and water - internet access seems like another service being provided and the provider deserves to be compensated for that access. I can even choose how much I want to pay for the bandwidth I choose to consume - again, all reasonable. I would, however, be concerned with a "prioritized traffic" provider. I should be able to access all of the legal content I want to access when I want to access it, provided that I'm paying for that right.
As a business owner, though, I have serious concerns. The crux of the net neutrality debate is centered around businesses providing content. Services like BitTorrent were just a symptom of what the industry as a whole was experiencing - a lot of people using a lot of bandwidth. That BitTorrent could be used to break the law was, I'm certain, an impetus for internet providers. They saw this as an opportunity to "tax" business owners to get access to their services. As an ISP, the thought of all of the potential funding just below the surface would be irresistible. And it makes sense. "As a user of our network," they'd reason, "you should be required to pay commensurate with the amount of traffic you're pushing over our network." This is, however, just over the concept of "reasonable". Why? Business owners are already paying for access to the internet from their hosting services. And there are, literally, thousands of ISPs - should businesses have to pay every since ISP to prioritize their traffic? I can only assume the ISP answer to that question would be a resounding "yes!"
The biggest concern for me is the following scenario. Assume that the providers are able to prioritize their traffic based on who pays them. As a company that's not Google or Microsoft or Apple, I'm at a significant competitive disadvantage if I can't pay to get my traffic prioritized. The average person using the web will not wait more than a few seconds for a web page to display before they pick a different page (i.e, not mine). If there's a delay in displaying my information because my traffic isn't prioritized highly because I couldn't afford to pay every telco that wants to provide internet access, I lose customers or, at the very least, customer satisfaction suffers.
One of the arguments against net neutrality is that if companies haven't done it yet, there's no reason for them to do so in the future. There are a few points to be debated here, but the three that ring most true for me are: a) companies haven't really been able to do this yet, so there's been no real test of this concept, b) companies have a terrible history of doing things in people's best interest (look at the labor revolution of the late 19th century for a great example - and then go thank a union worker), and c) they're already looking at it. Comcast began to packet filter BitTorrent traffic - determined via empirical tests. And it's not that far of a leap from selectively filtering traffic to charging for that traffic. This also causes problems for consumers who now need to determine whether their provider will allow them to access the content they want to view.
So you may be asking where I stand on the whole issue (if you haven't already jumped to a conclusion). Actually, I prefer that we take a "wait and see" attitude, but we need to provide an organization - it can be the FCC, but I'd prefer an elected body rather than appointed - to oversee and insure that things don't get out of hand. We should be proactive rather than reactive to the potential direction this issue could move. Time and again we've seen that as things progress without direct confrontation about it, people become willing to accept the status quo, not status quo ante. I don't believe we need regulation, but we do need the ability to quickly address any complaints.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Continuing Hurdles
As I've posted previously, there are some things I really appreciate about Microsoft's approach to supporting its developers (at least back in the day when I was writing Windows code). Primary among them is that Microsoft gives you the source code to their framework, the Foundation Classes. You get to see everything that the framework does, all the way down to the Win32 calls. And even then you can see the disassembly if need be. Apple has taken the opposite approach - they hide everything. I was talking with my mom tonight and I likened it to a server in a restaurant. You tell her your order - "I'd like to put a button in this location with this text" - and then she runs off, makes your order, and delivers it to you, but you never get to see how the secret sauce is made or if the cook spit in your food. Well, right now I'm feeling like Apple's spitting in my food.
I had been working diligently on getting my Alpha 2 completed. iOS 4 had just been released and I figured I'd get A2 out and then upgrade to the new Xcode version that supported iOS4. Then I got my new phone - iPhone 4, yay! (except for the antenna problem - boo!) - but it had iOS4. *sigh* So while I could install my iOS 3.1.3 version of software on my iOS4 phone, I couldn't debug it. And wouldn't you know, I experienced a crash. So I figured - well, maybe I'll just upgrade, recompile for iOS 4 and things will magically work! Okay, I didn't really think that, but I figured I was really close and this upgrade was: a) ultimately necessary, and b) worth the investment. So I bit the bullet and upgraded. And compiled. And fixed some problems.
But then I tried to run it. And found that now it crashes, but in a very unusual way - the stack is getting blown somewhere. Not that I changed anything that would cause that - it's just the combination of the code I had written for 3.1.3 apparently had a bug or there was a feature of the compiler that made it play nice. And this is where the first paragraph comes into play. The crash is happening deep inside Apple's code and I can't figure out where it's crashing.
Because of the crash, I've been unable to actually locate the place where the stack goes "kaboom". I've run into this a couple of times in the past on Windows - unallocated memory in release mode that overwrote the call stack pointers - but this is in debug mode, which should be a lot nicer and friendlier. But because I can't quite figure out where in the framework code it's crashing (because I don't have the source code), I'm stuck now doing another task that I'd postponed until after Alpha 2 and redesigning part of the code to help identify the general area that's causing the problem.
So, while I'm actually pretty close on having everything complete, I'm spending more time refactoring something that I'd planned to do later and am being forced to do now. I guess I should be looking at the glass as half-full as I now don't have to do this in the future, but at the same time my general timeline for Alpha 2 has gone out the window.
So because of a bug that I couldn't track down on the new OS I had to do two additional tasks that I'd planned on doing later. This has actually been the general story of my experience with iPhone development. Of course, Apple does tend to schedule all of their upgrades around the June timeframe (because of WWDC), so maybe I should just stop starting apps in April. And then maybe I'll feel like Apple's not spitting in my food.
I had been working diligently on getting my Alpha 2 completed. iOS 4 had just been released and I figured I'd get A2 out and then upgrade to the new Xcode version that supported iOS4. Then I got my new phone - iPhone 4, yay! (except for the antenna problem - boo!) - but it had iOS4. *sigh* So while I could install my iOS 3.1.3 version of software on my iOS4 phone, I couldn't debug it. And wouldn't you know, I experienced a crash. So I figured - well, maybe I'll just upgrade, recompile for iOS 4 and things will magically work! Okay, I didn't really think that, but I figured I was really close and this upgrade was: a) ultimately necessary, and b) worth the investment. So I bit the bullet and upgraded. And compiled. And fixed some problems.
But then I tried to run it. And found that now it crashes, but in a very unusual way - the stack is getting blown somewhere. Not that I changed anything that would cause that - it's just the combination of the code I had written for 3.1.3 apparently had a bug or there was a feature of the compiler that made it play nice. And this is where the first paragraph comes into play. The crash is happening deep inside Apple's code and I can't figure out where it's crashing.
Because of the crash, I've been unable to actually locate the place where the stack goes "kaboom". I've run into this a couple of times in the past on Windows - unallocated memory in release mode that overwrote the call stack pointers - but this is in debug mode, which should be a lot nicer and friendlier. But because I can't quite figure out where in the framework code it's crashing (because I don't have the source code), I'm stuck now doing another task that I'd postponed until after Alpha 2 and redesigning part of the code to help identify the general area that's causing the problem.
So, while I'm actually pretty close on having everything complete, I'm spending more time refactoring something that I'd planned to do later and am being forced to do now. I guess I should be looking at the glass as half-full as I now don't have to do this in the future, but at the same time my general timeline for Alpha 2 has gone out the window.
So because of a bug that I couldn't track down on the new OS I had to do two additional tasks that I'd planned on doing later. This has actually been the general story of my experience with iPhone development. Of course, Apple does tend to schedule all of their upgrades around the June timeframe (because of WWDC), so maybe I should just stop starting apps in April. And then maybe I'll feel like Apple's not spitting in my food.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Surprising Progress
So I got some sleep Friday night after posting up about how crappy I felt. Saturday wasn't bad - I could breathe (mostly) and I had some level of mental alertness. We had an errand to run involving a road trip to Laramie (about 2.5 hours away "by way of the regular highway" (article here and lyrics here). We saw a flyer at Cathy's gymnastics for a dog looking for a new forever home. We called up Susie's mom who agreed to take the dog provided Susie thought it would be a good match. We met the dog (his name is Tank) on Wednesday, thought it would work, and picked him up Friday. Saturday was the hand-off to the mother-in-law in Laramie, so we packed everything up and headed off north. Had a pretty relaxing trip back Saturday night and I crashed pretty hard that night.
By Sunday I was feeling a LOT better, despite being awakened way too early by Cathy (she doesn't quite understand the whole "daddy gets to do what he wants to on Father's Day"). Still, I felt much better Sunday and decided to finish up Dragon Age: Origins (which I did). It was a somewhat hollow victory, though, so I went back a few saves to play a different path through the game. I'll be curious to see what's different about the two paths.
The good thing was by not working on OttoJotts at all on Sunday I was that much more excited about doing it today. I went home for lunch and got some good work in on the game. Makes me wish I didn't need to go back because things were working well. I've got a few screens added at the beginning of the game to allow players to create games. I've done a little bit with the multiplayer stuff, but that's actually not an Alpha 2 item but more like Alpha 4. Still, the basics are there for it. The single player selection is coming together pretty well.
I also touched base with a UI designer to see if she'd be interested and what she'll charge for doing the UI for it. Right now it's pretty cheesy, but it's functional. I'd like this to actually be good (maybe even compete with Words with Friends kind of good) and I know enough about my limitations to know that won't happen if I do it. :)
I've also touched based with Greystripe, a in-game advertiser that does the ads for Words with Friends, and will be looking at incorporating that into the game. That's a later addition as well. Maybe Alpha 3 as Alpha 4 is looking pretty full with the multiplayer games being added.
So, I'm pretty happy with things despite losing an entire weekend (well, one day by choice). I think Alpha 2 release might be this weekend if things keep going well, even if I run into a few bumps on the road. I did realize this weekend that I've been working on this (very) part-time since 29 April. That's kind of scary, actually, but things are progressing. It's just an important personal milestone to get this done and out in the wild. Once that happens, I feel like I can really claim to be an independent game developer. :)
By Sunday I was feeling a LOT better, despite being awakened way too early by Cathy (she doesn't quite understand the whole "daddy gets to do what he wants to on Father's Day"). Still, I felt much better Sunday and decided to finish up Dragon Age: Origins (which I did). It was a somewhat hollow victory, though, so I went back a few saves to play a different path through the game. I'll be curious to see what's different about the two paths.
The good thing was by not working on OttoJotts at all on Sunday I was that much more excited about doing it today. I went home for lunch and got some good work in on the game. Makes me wish I didn't need to go back because things were working well. I've got a few screens added at the beginning of the game to allow players to create games. I've done a little bit with the multiplayer stuff, but that's actually not an Alpha 2 item but more like Alpha 4. Still, the basics are there for it. The single player selection is coming together pretty well.
I also touched base with a UI designer to see if she'd be interested and what she'll charge for doing the UI for it. Right now it's pretty cheesy, but it's functional. I'd like this to actually be good (maybe even compete with Words with Friends kind of good) and I know enough about my limitations to know that won't happen if I do it. :)
I've also touched based with Greystripe, a in-game advertiser that does the ads for Words with Friends, and will be looking at incorporating that into the game. That's a later addition as well. Maybe Alpha 3 as Alpha 4 is looking pretty full with the multiplayer games being added.
So, I'm pretty happy with things despite losing an entire weekend (well, one day by choice). I think Alpha 2 release might be this weekend if things keep going well, even if I run into a few bumps on the road. I did realize this weekend that I've been working on this (very) part-time since 29 April. That's kind of scary, actually, but things are progressing. It's just an important personal milestone to get this done and out in the wild. Once that happens, I feel like I can really claim to be an independent game developer. :)
Friday, June 18, 2010
Illness = No Work
So since my production of Patience I've been feeling "not too well". I had some kind of bronchitis thing going on the first week of production, but got on antibiotics and felt awesomely better by the end of the run. Then it came back. Right now I'm finding it hard to breathe while I sit at the computer. And that's after taking Mucinex DM.
One of things I try to avoid doing while ill is coding. I found pretty early on that my thought processes don't operate at peak efficiency and that I end up having to refactor some of the code I write while under the weather. It's not as bad as a CUI (coding under the influence), but it's a close second.
This illness has delayed my work on OttoJotts, but things are progressing. I've got scrolling working properly and added some information about which guess has been posted. I still have several things to finish for this alpha - primarily statistics tracking. I'm doing it locally for alpha 2 and will store it in the DB for alpha 3+. Alpha 3 may incorporate multiplayer or I may punt on that until Alpha 4 - still deciding how much work needs to be done for the current tasks associated with 3.
Overall, I'm just hoping that I'll be getting better and then able to focus on getting the alpha work done. And then get it out to my testers. Or so I hope.
One of things I try to avoid doing while ill is coding. I found pretty early on that my thought processes don't operate at peak efficiency and that I end up having to refactor some of the code I write while under the weather. It's not as bad as a CUI (coding under the influence), but it's a close second.
This illness has delayed my work on OttoJotts, but things are progressing. I've got scrolling working properly and added some information about which guess has been posted. I still have several things to finish for this alpha - primarily statistics tracking. I'm doing it locally for alpha 2 and will store it in the DB for alpha 3+. Alpha 3 may incorporate multiplayer or I may punt on that until Alpha 4 - still deciding how much work needs to be done for the current tasks associated with 3.
Overall, I'm just hoping that I'll be getting better and then able to focus on getting the alpha work done. And then get it out to my testers. Or so I hope.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Alpha 1 Released!
I went home over lunch (the spousal unit is "not well") and decided to take another stab at the installation. I cleaned everything, rebuilt, and sent it back to her email address. When I unzipped everything and dragged it onto her iTunes it seemed MUCH happier - my icon showed up in her Apps list, which was nice. When I click "Sync" it all installed happily and life was looking much brighter. When I ran it on her iPhone and it actually WORKED, that was great (and it connected to the website to get the word list), life was FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC!
I've packaged everything up and sent it out to my alpha testers who will hopefully be able to install it and test it. And I hope they'll be able to read the help screen. In the interest of just getting the alpha out the door I opted to punt on the scrolling help image. It's a placeholder anyway and I couldn't see continuing to hold up the alpha to make it work when it wasn't going to be in the final project anyway. The existing solution is less-than-optimal, but it's also temporary.
In the meantime, my game is now out in the wild. A momentous day for Otto Von. W00t indeed.
I've packaged everything up and sent it out to my alpha testers who will hopefully be able to install it and test it. And I hope they'll be able to read the help screen. In the interest of just getting the alpha out the door I opted to punt on the scrolling help image. It's a placeholder anyway and I couldn't see continuing to hold up the alpha to make it work when it wasn't going to be in the final project anyway. The existing solution is less-than-optimal, but it's also temporary.
In the meantime, my game is now out in the wild. A momentous day for Otto Von. W00t indeed.
Alpha 1 Updates
Well, it was a busy weekend for the Empire Lyric Players, which meant it was a busy weekend for me (because I'm president of the group). Rehearsal Friday til 10:something-way-too-late, Saturday off (I played a TON of Dragon Age: Origins - definitely needed the break to stave off the pending mental collapse), then move-in on Sunday, which went much faster than I expected. We arrived at noon to help unload and they were finishing getting everything off the trailer into the theatre. WOW. I don't think move-in has ever gone that smoothly or had as many participants (practically the entire cast was there). Then errands on Memorial Day and first rehearsal in the theatre. Hard to believe our show goes up in 2 more days!
But wait - wasn't this a post about Alpha 1 Updates? Why yes, you're right - it is! Thanks for the reminder. So where IS Alpha 1? The short answer is "coming soon". The longer answer is a bit more complicated. I was having any number of problems getting my app debugged. It was working fine in the simulator, but as soon as I installed it on my iPhone it would crash on launch. No warning - just "no longer running". I couldn't attach a debug process, the console log (thank you Xcode Organizer!) showed nothing untoward, NSLog messages showed nothing... I was at a complete loss. I restored my phone to just 3.1.3 and then re-synched with iTunes. Still no love. Then, magically, it started working.
For anyone who's been a developer for any period of time, the "magically disappearing bug" is a frightening thing. Why did it go away? When will it resurface (because without fail it will)? I still can't find anything wrong, though, so it's hard to say it wasn't not some kind of configuration problem, but I'm not happy. I thought I would try to install it on Susie's phone as well to see if it surfaced there (I turned mine into a development device so I could see what was happening, but it didn't help). When trying to install on Susie's phone I got the strangest error:
The application "OttoJotts" was not installed on the iPhone "Susie's iPhone" because an unknown error occurred (0xE8008001).
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Why would iTunes not know what the error is? Oh, au contraire, mon frere, but iTunes DOES know what it is. What error 0xE8008001 is telling you is that you have an unsigned application that iTunes won't let you install on an iPhone. In other words, iTunes thinks the application is not a valid App Store or Ad Hoc distribution. Of course the question now is why doesn't iTunes think it's a valid ad hoc distribution? As to that, I'm uncertain at present. I need to dig into why it doesn't seem to think that I'm building an application with the right provisioning certificates. The error I was getting before from her iTunes was that there weren't any valid provisioning profiles for the application, which seemed odd as it was the exact one I was including in the build settings. She's running her iTunes on Windows and I'm on Mac, so that's always a joy, but still I've done it previously without too much trouble. Definitely more digging necessary, but here's the kicker - this is HELL WEEK.
What is Hell Week? In performance parlance, it's the week before a show opens. Every night is a rehearsal and generally you're still working a regular 9-5 (-ish) schedule that week, so you're up at the butt-crack of dawn to get to work, work a full day, then go to the theatre and spend another 5-6 hours at rehearsal. Then back home to bed all to do it again the next day. Good thing the show opens on Thursday. We have a JDBC movie night on Friday and I might end up crashed on the field at Invesco/Mile High. :)
Over the next couple of days I need to figure out what's up with the provisioning profiles and see why this isn't working as I thought. Maybe in a couple of days I'll actually have the Alpha done and out to testers. When I do, I'll make sure to let everyone know via this blog.
But wait - wasn't this a post about Alpha 1 Updates? Why yes, you're right - it is! Thanks for the reminder. So where IS Alpha 1? The short answer is "coming soon". The longer answer is a bit more complicated. I was having any number of problems getting my app debugged. It was working fine in the simulator, but as soon as I installed it on my iPhone it would crash on launch. No warning - just "no longer running". I couldn't attach a debug process, the console log (thank you Xcode Organizer!) showed nothing untoward, NSLog messages showed nothing... I was at a complete loss. I restored my phone to just 3.1.3 and then re-synched with iTunes. Still no love. Then, magically, it started working.
For anyone who's been a developer for any period of time, the "magically disappearing bug" is a frightening thing. Why did it go away? When will it resurface (because without fail it will)? I still can't find anything wrong, though, so it's hard to say it wasn't not some kind of configuration problem, but I'm not happy. I thought I would try to install it on Susie's phone as well to see if it surfaced there (I turned mine into a development device so I could see what was happening, but it didn't help). When trying to install on Susie's phone I got the strangest error:
The application "OttoJotts" was not installed on the iPhone "Susie's iPhone" because an unknown error occurred (0xE8008001).
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Why would iTunes not know what the error is? Oh, au contraire, mon frere, but iTunes DOES know what it is. What error 0xE8008001 is telling you is that you have an unsigned application that iTunes won't let you install on an iPhone. In other words, iTunes thinks the application is not a valid App Store or Ad Hoc distribution. Of course the question now is why doesn't iTunes think it's a valid ad hoc distribution? As to that, I'm uncertain at present. I need to dig into why it doesn't seem to think that I'm building an application with the right provisioning certificates. The error I was getting before from her iTunes was that there weren't any valid provisioning profiles for the application, which seemed odd as it was the exact one I was including in the build settings. She's running her iTunes on Windows and I'm on Mac, so that's always a joy, but still I've done it previously without too much trouble. Definitely more digging necessary, but here's the kicker - this is HELL WEEK.
What is Hell Week? In performance parlance, it's the week before a show opens. Every night is a rehearsal and generally you're still working a regular 9-5 (-ish) schedule that week, so you're up at the butt-crack of dawn to get to work, work a full day, then go to the theatre and spend another 5-6 hours at rehearsal. Then back home to bed all to do it again the next day. Good thing the show opens on Thursday. We have a JDBC movie night on Friday and I might end up crashed on the field at Invesco/Mile High. :)
Over the next couple of days I need to figure out what's up with the provisioning profiles and see why this isn't working as I thought. Maybe in a couple of days I'll actually have the Alpha done and out to testers. When I do, I'll make sure to let everyone know via this blog.
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