Andys Blog

Not too much happening quite yet

Not much is happening just yet. Cube Runner has been submitted so just waiting to see if it gets accepted. Plus just getting the work app submitted (can’t say any more about that yet though).

Decided to be a sado and take a day off to get the 3G iPhone on the 11th - well, owed a lieu day and can’t face LegoLand again just yet :).

Also, trying to think of what to work on next. Hmmmmm.

Also, just started to buy music through iTunes (rather than buying CD’s). Partly because we’re running out of space to put the CD’s, and partly because I actually only like maybe one or two songs on most CD’s (with some exceptions) and also I don’t listen to CD’s much anymore - easier and more convenient over the media center. However, I will say that big/bloated/flawed (in some ways) iTunes is, it does make buying music a pleasant and easy (possibly too easy) experience. Find the song, click buy, enter your password and in under 6 seconds the song has downloaded and this is over wifi on my Touch. You really can’t get much easier that!

Cube Runner

Getting ready for the release of Cube Runner - now have a place holder for the details - check out the Cube Runner page.

Not much there yet for obvious reasons but more to come.

Small Update

Well, played around a bit and managed to knock almost 30 seconds off the generation time! Now takes just under 9 secs rather than the 37 it was before.

Not sure if I can get it much faster now - but will try.

Also, I have a small python script that generates the stereograms so can post pictures of them now

Stereograms - I love them!

I can still remember the first time I managed to see a sterogram properly. I’d bought two posters - one f Bugs Bunny and one of and eagle against a mountainous landscape - or at least thats what they claimed they were. All I could see was a lot of coloured dots - no pictures.
Those posters were hung up on my work office wall and to my total disgust, various work collegues would casually stroll up, look at the picture and take great delight in telling me how amazing it looked. But could I see them - could I heck.
However, after about 3 months I wandered over, and looked at one slightly differently and it just suddenly came into focus and I was totally blown away. They still fascinate me and over time, I’ve written a few variations of them, but a couple of days ago I stumbled across the simplest algorthym to generate them I’ve ever seen (from Sarahs’ blog). I’ve shown the relevant bit of code below (C#) just in case I lose the bookmark or the page goes offline.

void RDS(Bitmap bitmap,int stripWidth)
{
    Random rnd = new Random();
    int rndDotColour;
    float scaling;
    int width=bitmap.Width;
    int height=bitmap.Height;

    // This makes sure full white (high points are white and
    // have a value of 255) are always 1/5th the width of
    // the image strip.
    scaling=((float)stripWidth/(float)5)/(float)255; 

    //Draw the random strip
    for(int y=0;y<height;y++)
    {
        for(int x=0;x<stripWidth;x++)
        {
            // Random number,either 0 or 255
            randomDotColour=rnd.Next(0,2)*255;
            bitmap.SetPixel( x, y,
                     Color.FromArgb( 255, rndDotColour,
                           rndDotColour, rndDotColour));
            }

    //Create the RDS
    for(int x=stripWidth;x<width;x++)
        for(int y=0;y<height;y++)
            bitmap.SetPixel(x, y,
                  bitmap.GetPixel( x-stripWidth+
                     (int)(scaling*bitmap.GetPixel(x,y).R), y ));

    //Send the picture back to the browser
    Response.ContentType = "image/gif";
    bitmap.Save(Response.OutputStream, ImageFormat.Gif);
    bitmap.Dispose();
    }

Call it using something like:
Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap("c:/shark.png"); // http://rdc.untamed.co.uk/rds/shark.png
RDS(bitmap,90);

Now thats pretty amazing. I’ve also started to make it into an iPhone application (why not) and the plan is to be able to draw and create your own. Why? why not I say. Note, its somewhat more complicated on the iPhone as bitmap drawing is pretty much non-existant, but its working.

Slight update - its now working with images as well as dots (Single-Image Stereogram)

Downside - its very slow (36 secs on the iPhone to generate an image). Booo - not the iPhones fault here note - most certainly my lack of Cocoa drawing.

As always, screenshots once the NDA is lifted.

iPhone Stuff

Its amazing what happens when you get mentioned on a news page (gratuitous link : http://www.tuaw.com/2008/06/22/iphone-app-news-roundup-june-22-2008/). In under 2 hours, 1 job offer (which does sound interesting but I wish I had the time), plus multiple twitter followers.

Just can’t wait until the NDA is lifted so I can put some screenshots up.

iPhone Apps

Well, Cube Runner and iCave are pretty much complete now. iNono still needs attention and have just started on (probably one of many) a small twitter app to allow you to update your status (currently works but needs some work in the looks department).

Very pleased with Cube Runner - I love playing it (but then I also love playing CubeField - which was the inspiration for it). Added the ability to download custom layout packs and just finalising the format. The plan is to allow users to be able to design their own layouts. This does add a bit of complexity and also some sadness though. In these times, whats to stop someone creating files designed to break the app (and yes possibly causing some form of exploit)? Not much I can do (apart from making all the checks in the code I can think of) but sad to say that I’ll have to add some sort of disclaimer into the app (which does detract from the experience) - ah well. I’m sure people would prefer that to not being able to add extra bits.

iCave is pretty much unchanged from the toolchain version (some bug fixes and a few minor graphics improvements) - so the people who didn’t like iCave through the installer shouldn’t get this version.

But I’m enjoying developing for the iPhone/Touch. Is been a huge learning curve but a good challenge

I can’t believe it!

Yeah, I really can’t believe that I’ve jumped ship and joined the ranks of the Mac.

It started off after I got an iPod Touch which I hadn’t planned on getting at all but caved in (a sucker for gadgets). This lead on to starting to play with the toolchain and to learn Objective C. The when Apple released the SDK (Mac only), I decided to get a Mac Mini as a cheap way of playing with a new platform and seeing first hand what the MAc was all about (having never used a Mac before).

To be honest, I was really expecing to not really get on with it and slag off some friends who own Macs saying how rubbish it was, however I couldn’t. It arrived in a nice small package, plugged it in, it did its stuff, connected straight to my network and just worked.

Anyway, this was back in March and I haven’t used my Windows or Linux PC’s much since then. OSX isn’t without its faults (it does crash - but I think that this is mainly due to the Beta of XCode (development environment) that I’m using) and takes a little bit of getting used to (Why did Apple put the keys on a UK keyboard in different places? and don’t mention Page Up/Down!), but its very nice to use and things do just work.

Anyway, since then, I’ve been doing a fairl bit of development fo rthe iPhone/Touch both for work and personal and plan on releasing things onto the App Store when its available.

A couple of games that hopefully will appear are:
iCave - My first game and a port of my standard SFCave game.

CubeRunner - This is my current game (based on CubeField) and uses the accelerometer to steer the ship through a levels of trecherous blocks littered around a landscape. It uses OpenGLES for the graphics engine and is pretty much complete. I’m just tidying the last bits up now and am hoping to include the ability to download levelpacks - both from me and user developed.

iNono (working title) - A puzzle game based on Nonograms (like DSPicross for the Nintendo DS). This again is fairly complete just working on what puzzles to include. Again may include the ability to download more.

Unfortunately I don’t think I can put screenshots up yet (because of the Apple NDA thats currently in force for the SDK) but I will as soon as I am able.

Relaxing after a hard day. Why…

Relaxing after a hard day. Why can’t softplay areas be a *little* more adult friendly? Some of those gaps lets just say - ouch!

Getting ready for a morning of…

Getting ready for a morning of softplay followed by more sheep feeding - baaaaaaaaa

can’t believe how rammed Coral…

can’t believe how rammed Coral Reef was! A little rain and everyone wants to go swimming!