Lessons learned

So last night I was working on getting a singleton¹ created to store the player data so that I don't have to track it through all the different view controllers in OttoJotts (there are quite a few). I had done it with the dictionary already and that was working beautifully, so I thought this would be a piece of cake. I created the new class (using NSObject as the base), pretty much copied and pasted the code, made the requisite changes, and compiled. And I got this cryptic message:

The unusual error

I was a little surprised. I had declared that PlayerAccountData was a singleton. I mean, hadn't I just copied and pasted the code? Hadn't I made the changes that I needed to make? I went back and checked - yes, everything looked correct and all the changes had been made. What the heck was going on here? Why would this not compile? Obviously I'd done something wrong. Oh wait - this was the Xcode 5 developer preview; could that mean something? I searched online to see what I could learn and was stumped. Nothing seemed to work. And no one else seemed to have seen this. What on earth was going on?
Then I noticed that things seemed "not quite right" in the file. And here's what I mean by "not quite right":

Comparison of the new and old code

The original code had coloring for the SYNTHESIZE_SINGLETON_FOR_CLASS macro which the new code didn't. Now what the hell did that mean? Why didn't it recognize it as regular code? I tried adding the #import for the SynthesizeSingleton.h - no luck. I tried removing it - no luck. So back to the web! And nothing. And I had a sad face.

Something made me open the right-hand side bar for the file - and that's when I noticed something interesting. There was a check box under the section called "Target Membership". It was unchecked for the new file. But right there was my app logo next to the check box. And when I clicked it? The syntax coloring changed for SYNTHESIZE_SINGLETON_FOR_CLASS! Well, how 'bout them apples?

So what was the lesson learned or, in my case, re-learned? Really check to see what's happening with the error messages you get from Xcode. Sometimes they seem cryptic but actually contain the exact information you need to fix the error. But I think in this particular case it means that sometimes the differences between what you expect and what you get may be slightly hidden from you. I didn't even think about the right-hand properties sidebar for my .m file - and it didn't dawn on me that when I added the file to the project that it wouldn't be appropriately associated. But the next time I add a class, I'm going to be double-checking to make sure that the target membership is set correctly. And maybe this saves you a little time in the end too.

Happy coding.

1. The SynthesizeSingleton macro I'm using is from the incredibly awesome Matt Gallagher of CocoaWithLove.com. The singleton code is located here.

OttoJotts REBORN!

Once, a long time ago in a land far, far away, there lived a wanna-be game developer who decided oh-so-frivolously that he would write a game based on a game from his youth. One that he had played with his very erudite mother and worked wonders to both improve his vocabulary and his spelling. He thought that he could write the basic game in a few weeks and then the multiplayer version in a few months and be done by the end of summer. But alas - our wanna-be game developer had a case of the hubris.
He was able to complete the core game mechanics in a week or so and then spent far, far too many days working on getting the user interface to work. For, you see, our developer wasn't "graphically inclined" (read: his artwork suxors). So he spent many a day trying to get some basic things looking good enough to play. And then - amazingly - the single player version was complete! And there was much rejoicing!
As he began to work on the two player version, however, he stumbled and stuttered and fell flat on his face, for his game required a "back-end" (read: database and middleware to talk between the device and the database). And he despaired because again, alack, his database skills were "lackluster" at best and his middleware skills were, perhaps, rated "mediocre". He worked diligently, though, trying to connect all of the pieces. And finally, he got some of the information he wanted to get from the device to the database and back again! And there was more rejoicing!
But then came the actual "two player" work. And there was much gnashing of teeth and grunting of exertion and swearing of curses. And the developer grew weary and tired and despaired of ever completing his opus. He feared that perhaps he would always just be a "wanna-be" game developer.
And then the Great Fruit From Which A Bite Has Been Taken decided that the manner in which he getting information from and to the database was Wrong^TM. And it was deprecated (read: removed). And the developer was despondent. Not only would he have to actually finish the work to allow two player games to work but he would also have to change all of the code that worked to do that work. And he despaired. And exerted. And cursed. And gave up.
One day, he found that his current hosting provider was deprecating the product he had grown to love these past 10 years and would require that he move to one that was far more limited or one that was WAY more complicated. He decided to move his website and his databases and his code to a new provider who offered a product more in line with his old product. And it was good.
Then, while distracted with another as-yet-fruitless pursuit, he decided to open up the old code and see whether it was possible to make the needed changes for the new database host and make sure he followed the rules of the Great Fruit From Which A Bite Has Been Taken. After looking at the code and the middleware he decided that it wouldn't be that bad after all. And he poked and prodded the middleware, making a tweak here and a revision there until - it worked! And there was astonishment!
And our poor, despondent wanna-be game developer is no longer so despondent (although he is much poorer). He had Purpose. He had Intent. He had - a real opportunity to actually get back to finishing the damn thing.
So now, to you, my gentle reader who has so patiently put up with this long and purposeless fable, I make claim to the Twitterverse, the Facebookverse, and general Internetverse that OttoJotts is REBORN! And it WILL. BE. DONE! (By Halloween.) (No seriously, I mean this.) (Stop laughing.) (Dicks.)

Simple diversions

I've been working on my game for a bit over the past few weeks, but have run into something of a roadblock. I don't know whether I want to continue on this path - I'm having a hard time "finding the fun" in it. Plus, the "real job" has been a real Debbie Downer, so I've been in a bad mental state. Not sure if the problem I'm experiencing is general malaise or if it's indicative that the game really isn't that fun. I've been playing some Modern Warfare 3, Civilization V, and Skyrim (trying to level my blacksmithing to 100) trying to recharge my enthusiasm. Not really helping so far. Although I did get my blacksmithing to 100 and then made it "Legendary" which reset it. Not really sure what the benefit there is, yet...
I attended the Mile High Agile conference on Friday and one of the sessions was about "gamification" in the agile space. A lot of the context was "how do you insert game elements into your teams so that they stay engaged". He provided some examples like LinkedIn's profile completeness (you want to be at 100%, right?) and the Nike+ product (which I'd heard about in a different context) tracking/sharing/comparing against your friends. There are some game elements in there to be certain. I'm not sure what elements of gamification would work at the 9-5, but the jarring reminders about basic game design left me contemplating the game I'm writing. Some of the basic elements (progression of difficulty, activity loops, etc.) just really aren't there. Is this because I'm failing to write something of quality or is it because there are different elements? What is the "fun"? How hard/easy is it to "find the fun"? Will it end up being the same game over and over again (and therefore boring) or will people stay engaged? How might I make the game continually challenging?
All of this was swimming through my head all weekend and I wasn't really any closer to resolving it until actually writing it out in this blog. I have some ideas about progression now. I had already decided on some kind of "ranking" system, but that was just a rudimentary tracking system based on the number of games you'd played successfully. But the difficulty of the game never changed - until now. I think I know how the single-player game can be more dynamic and grow with the player. Nothing fancy, mind you - but enough to make it something someone might be able to start with and then get better at over time. Not counting the multi-player version, of course (which will be hot-seat only for now, I've decided - back-ends and me are just not working right now).
So for now I'm working on the fully-expanded version and will then winnow it down for the first time players. But the point is that I'm now feeling a little more energized about working on this. Sometimes all it takes is a conversation with yourself to get back on track. Owen Goss, the main guy at Streaming Colour Studios, tweeted me this morning (whilst I was in the depths of whining about my un-developed/un-released software) that I needed to just "ship it!". And he's absolutely right. Funk over - development restarting. Thanks Owen.
I thought I'd leave this here, though. It's my Xbox Gamer Card and shows how much (or how little) I'm playing. And if you have an Xbox live account and want to kick my ass (not a hard thing anymore), maybe I'll see you online.

UITableViewCells and Forgotten Wisdom

I've been playing around with a new game for my daughter based on an old game called Electronic Detective. I'm actually making a version of it for her to play (since my old solid state system, for some reason, only plays about half a game before crashing out). I had originally planned on making everything fit onto a single screen (which would have been better on iPad, but I'm a sucker for pain which is why I'm making it for iPhone), but decided to be considerate and moved from a single UIViewController view to a new UITableView layout. But the new version of Xcode makes creating UITableViewCells a little, um, wonkier than I remembered.
NB: I'm sure this is all 1,000,00% easier with storyboards, but I'm not using them as I'd like to target devices more than 6 months old. And yes, that was some slight sarcasm.
The first thing I ran into is that when you add a UITableViewCell .h/.m to your project, it doesn't allow you to create a .XIB with it. You need to create the .XIB separately. Then, the thing I've learned, is that you need to set the class for the VIEW to be the new .h/.m class name you selected. Do not set the File Owner to be the new class - leave it as UITableViewCell.
If you don't do that and leave the view as the UITableViewCell or if you set the File Owner to be the new class, you're likely to run into a dreaded "this class is not key value coding-compliant for the key XXXX" error. This is not terribly useful but some searching on slashdot and other places guided me in the right direction. If you've come here because you searched for that and you're using UITableViewCells, then here is likely what you're seeing as a problem.
This is one of those problems that I continue to stumble upon as I work through things only periodically. I forget some of the tricks and tips I've learned previously. But as my spousal unit and I have decided that she will not be returning to her job at Lockheed-Martin (as they have recently changed their leave-of-absence policies denying her the ability to take a second year off to watch our illness-prone son), I need to start getting some more titles in the App Store - and quickly. Given that, I will be working more feverishly to get things completed and released and will be sharing far more on this blog than I have been of late. And I will hopefully be retaining more of this forgotten wisdom.
Wish me luck!

Care when posting from the web

I've been working on a new application (Electronic Detective for my daughter) which will be the basis for a longer-term game effort and ran into a strange thing. I decided that how I was going to be doing the UI for a particular portion of the game was just incredibly clunky. I had remembered a piece of information that needed to be included and rather than shoehorn it in, I decided to take a step back and see what made the most sense. In this case it was changing things from a static UIView to a UITableView. This opened up a lot of potential real estate and made it possible to do some things I was struggling to fit on the screen before.
I was searching to find the best way to get UITableViewCells working with the new Xcode (4.5) since they've sort of changed how they operate since last I'd done one (a long time ago - in a galaxy far, far away). I found a good sample from a blog post and decided to just copy/paste and modify the sample code. And things were fine - until I got a very strange build error - "unexpected '@' in program". Um, whiskey tango foxtrot was that? I searched a bit more and the answers proposed didn't seem to really address my particular error. Here was the offending code (from a code blog I found):

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath

{

 static NSString *CustomTableCellIdentifier = @”CustomTableCellIdentifier”;

 UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CustomTableCellIdentifier];

 if(!cell)

 {

   NSArray *nib = [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@”CustomCell” owner:self options:nil];

 if(nib.count > 0)

 {

   cell = self.customCell;

 }

 else

 {

   NSLog(@”failed to load CustomCell nib file!”);

 }

 }

 

There didn't really seem to be anything wrong. The highlighted lines were the ones causing the problem and I couldn't really see a problem. Each of the literals was perfectly correct. What the hell was going on with this code? Then I stumbled upon a stackoverflow question and answer that provided a little insight. What was weird about the editor was that it wasn't showing the text formatted as "text" - it was just showing as black text, not the typical red you'd see. Then I read the part about the "smart quotes". I replaced the first "quote" with a regular "quote" and the text higlighted. That's when I realized I must have pasted in smart quotes and that's what was causing the problem.
I replaced all six quotes and things started working the way I expected. So, as a word of caution, Xcode apparently will maintain some special characters when you paste code from other sources. Make sure that if you're pasting that you double-check the characters. If things don't look correct to you, they probably aren't. It may be a bit weird, but it may be worth your effort to retype some of it manually in the editor to see if it's a problem with the paste or with the code. You could save yourself a little mental anguish by trying a couple of simple things. Good luck and happy coding.

Maya Long Count Updates

It has been a pretty busy couple of months. The first thing was that I ran into the problem with the glyphs. I got all of the new glyphs redrawn, scanned, cleaned up, and integrated into the application. That took about a month to sort out. I did get everything integrated and here's the screen shot from the main screen. Once that was done, I then submitted to the App Store. It was the first application that I've published into the App Store (link here). Given that it was a total "stealth launch"it's been doing a bit better than I expected. Last night I tweeted:
"This is cool. I've earned $3.50 US, $1.26 Australian, $0.70 Canadian, €1.08, and ¥60 from my app. Taxes should be interesting."
Overall there have been 17 sales in 6 countries. I'm interested to see what happens after the end of this b'ak'tun - whether there will be additional interest or if I'll see my sales drop to zero.
I decided to do a free, ad-supported version as well. Hooking up the iAd banner was surprisingly straight-forward. It took very little time to get the banners installed but when I started looking at doing the full-screen ads I've seen in other apps I found out quickly that the iAd network doesn't do it for iPhone - just iPad.
I've been playing with the idea of using Greystripe at one point and this provided the opportunity to get it integrated. With iAd's lack of full screen ad support on iPhone, Greystripe was the solution. The was a problem, though, in that the test ID that they provided failed to work properly. I "violated" the terms a little a turned on the ads while I was testing. Given that I had done most of the work already around the testing, going with "live" ads wasn't a gigantic hit on the volumes (I think I used 7 impressions for testing).
I did get the free (lite) version submitted to the App Store on December 12th and it sat in review for a few days. I did get a notification yesterday that it was being reviewed and very quickly went from "In Review" to "Ready for Sale". Here is the timing on that:

 I was amazed that it was less than 2 hours from start to finish. Overall it was pretty amazing to see how quickly they got it squared away. Admittedly there was already one there that was practically the same thing but it was a different application. My original app took almost 2 days in review. This was 2 hours.
Anyway, both apps are now officially available for sale and Otto Von Productions, Inc. has published and sold its first applications. Now I just need to get the other 41 ideas I've got swimming in my head completed and published. Maybe I'll end up making this whole thing work after all.

New glyphs are done!

So I spent a little time finishing off the glyphs for the app. I think they look "okay". At least "okay" enough to be in version 1.0. And, for me, they're "freakin' amazing". *sigh* As I said, my graphic artist skills leave MUCH to be desired. Anyway, without further ado, here are the glyphs I made for the app.

The glyphs for my app

Not bad, eh? Yeah, I think they'll suffice. I did spend quite a bit of time making them and hope that they'll be met with approval by the community. It was definitely not something I felt at all comfortable doing, but sometimes it helps to get out of your comfort zone.
I'll point out that these are the original drawings - I haven't cleaned them up at all. I will be extracting the individual glyphs and improving them before incorporating them into the application. From personal experience with other graphics exercises, this will take several hours. I just hope I'll be able to get enough time strung together to make it happen. I also need to get the description written for the application, so that's something else I need to get a block of time to accomplish.
So, there we are. Hope you like the preview here. Once I'm done and submit everything to the App Store, I'll post a link.

SLIGHT delay on Maya Calendar App

So as I was going through the submission process to get my Maya Calendar application onto the App Store (yes, that was actually happening!), I needed to create a description of my application. I decided to go see some of the other applications in the space to see what they had crafted for their descriptions - check for inspiration, really, not plagiarism. No, seriously - no plagiarism. I think I might just like typing that word...

Mine on left, theirs on the right

Anyway, as I was going through looking at "maya calendar" (as opposed to "mayan calendar") I stumbled upon an application - using the exact same graphics. In fact, their icon was the same idea (with a different glyph - see right for comparison). Well, *(^*&!@. And AS I WAS SUBMITTING MY APP! I found that the website I'd "borrowed" the glyphs from was the same site that had the application I found. *facepalm* O.M.G. Bad me for thinking they wouldn't be used somewhere else.
So what did this mean to my calendar app? It meant that I needed to have some new glyphs. I asked my daughter if she'd be inclined to draw them (there were 44 required) and she agreed. Then she drew the first one and decided "um, no thanks - that was HARD". So it fell to me to draw some new ones. I used some different sources to get ideas for what they looked like (including the ones that I can't use now), but I've redrawn all but five of them. Next will be scanning them in, then cleaning them up, then integrating them into the app. The nice thing is that integrating them is a piece of cake - I just need to replace the existing files with the new ones. Also, I'll have higher-quality ones to use for an iPad app (if I do that). While they will be similarities to other glyphs on the web, they're hand-drawn (by yours truly) and lacking the funding to fly to Central America to tromp around Maya ruins looking for samples, I have to do it virtually. Which means other peoples' pictures.
So I'm close to having that app in the store. I'm really hoping that I'll be able to get it done by the end of the weekend. We have a very busy time planned, but here's hoping that I'll have a little time during those two days to get this sorted out and submitted. In the meantime, I'm working on getting a description put together so I can just copy/paste it into the submission page and go from there.
Fingers crossed for a successful submission. Then it's the waiting game for approvals. I'll post more on that as we go through that process.

Nearing completion

Current launch screen for the app

So I've been working a few hours every night trying to get closure on the Maya Calendar application - and I'm almost there. Except for a marathon Bejeweled Diamond Mine session this evening (I didn't want to quit until I'd topped 200k) I've pretty much been working on finishing up the application. I've got the backgrounds all changed - they look very nice now - and am working on the final touches. I was going to do a universal application - both iPhone and iPad - but the size on the app was making it ridiculously large. Like 60 MB large. Wow. Um - no.
What's left you ask? Well, I've got some "about" kinds of things to finalize. Need to get the application version information in there as well as information about HOW to use the app. Plus I wanted to put in some text about the long count calendar - where did it come from, how was it used, etc. Once I get those things in and working as expected I think I'll be ready to build it for distribution. I don't have an iPad version yet at all. I think while I'm waiting for the App Store approval process to complete I'll work on the iPad version. I've got all of the graphics and logic - just need to change up the display. I think.
Things have been coming together over the past few days. I feel that I've been productive - moreso than in weeks past. In order to get things finished I need to do something I haven't ever done before, so I do still have a little more work to do, but I feel now that I'm closer than ever to having something completed that can be submitted to Apple. And that will be a huge boon to my self-esteem these days. I also made some adjustments to the graphics that, for a non-graphic artist, I feel pretty good about.
Anyway - just a quick update. Looks like things are getting close. Now to sprint to the finish line and be done with this.

Oddness with the Maya Calendar

So I've been reading up a LOT on the Maya* calendar over the past few months. There are two different calendrical systems - the Long Count (which is what we hear about when people talk about the end of the world in 2012). The current date in Long Count (as of this post) is 12.19.19.12.0. There's another calendar is called the Sacred Round and uses what are called Tzolk'in and Haab dates. This calendar was more religious in nature and had a full cycle of about 52 years. When doing calculations for Long Count or Maya calendars it's common to include both the Long Count and the Sacred Round dates.
One thing that seems clear is the basic calculations to get the Sacred Round dates. The Wikipedia article describes pretty clearly the arithmetic required to derive these. The regular Sacred Round cycle is 360 days and there are 5 Wayeb days (that were considered unlucky) to make the calendar 365 days long. Close to the 365.2422 days our tropical calendar is, but it means that the Sacred Round shifts one day forward compared to the tropical year every 4 years.
One problem is that I would like for my application to work for dates all the way back to 9999 BCE (and forward to 9999 AD/CE). Most calculations are done using Julian days as a baseline, but the Julian dates start in 4730 BCE, a little later than my 9999 BCE desire. What's a developer to do? Well, one option is to try to address the negative values that come from going before the start of the Julian dating scheme, which is what I initially thought of doing. Then I realized that since there is a higher-order cycle above the currently accepted five values, I could add what's called a piktun worth of days to the count, in essence moving back the Julian calendar about seven thousand years. I did this and it worked great for the Long Count calculations - I just subtracted out a piktun if it was past the beginning of this cycle or not - it all worked out. The Sacred Round, however, was a different story.
The reason is that the Sacred Round starts at specific values for tzolk'in and haab. Moving back a whole piktun, though, means I needed to recalculate the tzolk'in and haab values. I figured out what the new offsets were and after resolving some oddness with displaying the correct glyph for the tzolk'in and haab I seem to have gotten everything working.
The only things I have left to do to get this thing out the door is finish the polish for iPhone and get the iPad version looking reasonable. All of the testing I've done to date is solid. I still have a few things left to validate, but I actually have a high confidence that it will work pretty well. Then two versions - one free and ad-supported and one for $0.99. Then I'll have broken my 3.5 year drought of getting apps into the App Store. Yay?

* You'll note that I'm not using "Mayan" anymore. I learned that Mayanists (scholars who study the Maya history) use "Mayan" for linguistic elements (the language) but use "Maya" as an adjective for "things that are from the Maya culture"). I will bow to their superior expertise and understanding in this particular matter.