When loading an application on an iPhone or iPad, a launch image can be shown to provide feedback to the user that the application is loading. On the iPhone a Default.png was used, with the iPad we need to anticipate the device being started in any orientation. Filename Dimensions Default-Portrait.png * 768w x 1024h Default-PortraitUpsideDown.png 768w x 1024h Default-Landscape.png ** 1024w x 768h Default-LandscapeLeft.png 1024w x 768h Default-LandscapeRight.png 1024w x 768h Default.png Not recommended * If you have not specified a Default-PortraitUpsideDown.png file, this file will take precedence. ...

This had me scratching my head for awhile. At first I thought that glGetRenderbufferParameterivOES would properly detect Retina screen at 960×640 but it keeps returning 480×320. A little explanation on Retina screen first. Older devices have 320×480 screen resolution. With new iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G the screen has 640×960 but on the same physical area. This means that each pixel is 4 times as small. To properly simulate older games resolutions iOS will replace each of your 320×480 game pixel by 4, this way your game will look identical. ...

I decided to compile all iOS devices specs here so we can get a better glimpse on their hardware and what we can expect from them. This covers iPhones, iPod Touches and iPad. iPhone/iPhone 3G – 412 MHz / 128MB / 320×480 iPhone 3GS – 600 MHz / 256MB / 320×480 iPhone 4 -~800MHz / 512MB / 640×960 iPod Touch 1G – 412 MHz / 128MB / 320×480 iPod Touch 2G – 532 MHz / 128MB / 320×480 iPod Touch 3G – 600 MHz / 256MB / 320×480 iPod Touch 4G – 800 MHz / 256MB / 640×960 ...

Even tough it’s not mandatory to support all screen orientations it’s always nice to support at least 2 of them. Let’s imagine your game is landscaped, by some reason the user may want to use either with the home button on the left or on the right. Most games support this, if you flip the device, the game will too. I’ve been using OpenGL to support the device orientation, most people on forums want an automatic solution, but belive me, it’s best that you have control on this. ...

It’s been awhile since I last updated this, I’ve have my hands full with Vizati iPhone. Ever since I got an IPod Touch 2G it was easier for Rita to get a sense of the screen size (although we knew to be 320×480) it’s different when you are testing on the real thing, text looks smaller, other stuff looks way too big. Here’s a picture she took after a few adjustments. ...

Just a quick post. GamersGate is having a Summer Special and Vizati is with a 50% discount, costing $4.47 / €3.72 during this week only Buy your copy here and check out other awesome promotions here This deal end up this August 15th

I think the first game I ever played was Tetris on a 286 if my memory isn’t failing me. My father worked at restaurant nearby a small apartment rental office, one of the dudes that worked there occasionally would let me play. I remember one day he had this new game, Prince of Persia, my chin just fell, awesome, I thought games couldn’t get any better. I remember always asking him to “type the code to play” as I called it, since it was DOS based. Probably something like “cd /games/prince~” =P I spent hours playing that game, I do know I never managed to see the end thought. ...

I decided to run a little poll to track what platforms do you target as a game developer. I think this should be interesting. Please share this post link or the direct link to the poll (http://twtpoll.com/dar51l) so that we can have more accurate results. The poll closes in about 6 days and you can select various options of course.

I ran into this issue a couple hours ago working on the iPhone sdk: See the darker borders around the image? It’s a png image and that’s was supposed to be a gradient of alpha. So why am I getting this strange stuff around it? Well that’s because that alpha isn’t 0 or 1 or 0 or 255. The first thing I found out is that XCode grabs the png images and multiplies the RGB component with the alpha. So you can understand now why only 0 or 1 works right? Everything in between get’s changed. This is why Apple recommends using PNG over JPGS, although they consume more space they are altered for speed. ...

One of the things that was probably forgotten but the dudes who made C++ standard were callbacks, there’s no out of the box solution for Instance based Callbacks, just for functions. When I moved to C# I was really happy with the way delegates work, it’s simple, easy and most of all, it works. On game development one of the things callbacks are usually used is for Buttons, you have a menu and want to attribute a function to each button. Sure you can point it to the same one and make a bunch of if’s and then point to a Global var which does the correct action, but this is not elegant and sure as hell not easy to add/modify stuff. ...