Dagens App: Tomten

Swedish MacWorld.se reviews Tomten (Swedish only):

“Ditt uppdrag i spelet är att hjälpa jultomten att dela ut julklappar genom att slänga ner dem i husens skorstenar, något som är lättare sagt än gjort. Totalt innehåller spelet 27 olika mini-uppdrag av varierande svårighetsgrad. Med andra ord borde det hålla dig sysselsatt tills julen är slut.”

Read more at MacWorld.se

Download Tomten at App Store
Download Tomten at Android Market

Financial Times Moves from App to Web App

“We’re encouraging our readers to switch immediately to the new FT web app, as many new features and sections will be added over the coming weeks. Make sure you don’t miss out on these updates.”

Financial Times have just announced that they are discontinuing their iOS apps and moving to a web app format. Not only do they no longer have to pay Apple 30% on all subscriptions, they also state the following advantages:

  • Web browser access – No download needed
  • Automatic enhancements – No need to visit an app store for the latest version
  • Reading offline – The latest edition is automatically stored for offline access
  • Speed – Improved performance on most connections
  • Greater range of content – Including video on iPhone

It will definitely be interesting to see consumer reactions to this.

The new Financial Times web app can be found at: http://app.ft.com

Game Development with Unity

Yesterday I presented a longer version of my seminar Game development for iPhone, iPad and Android devices that I held at the Scandinavian Developer Conference, three weeks ago. I did not film it since I already have the Scandinavian Developer Conference version up, but if you are interested you can now download the individual steps to create a game with Unity below.

Download the updated presentation as a PDF document here

You can view and download the individual videos below:

Game Development with Unity 1/9
In this video I will show you how to create a menu background and buttons with Photoshop:

  1. Create a new document 1024 x 768 for iPad
  2. Draw a gradient background
  3. Create normal and touch down buttons
  4. Save background as PNG
  5. Save each button as PNG
    Note: each button is saved as a 1024×768 image
  6. Save image as PSD

Game Development with Unity 2/9
In this video I will show how to create a game level with colliders in Modo:

  1. Zoom to right unit scale
    Unity uses 1 unit = 1 meter
  2. Create game level objects
  3. Set materials
  4. Create colliders
    Prefix with Cn (CX = Box Collider, etc)
  5. Save as Modo object
  6. Use Modo2Unity script to save FBX
    Script removes camera, light, etc

Game Development with Unity 3/9
In the video I will show how to import menu graphics and level data, and set up colliders, lightning, lightmaps and dynamics:

  1. Create new Unity project
  2. Create some standard folders
    Materials, Scripts, Textures
  3. Import Level1.FBX, Menu graphics, Helper scripts
    AssignMaterial.js, BuildColliders.js
  4. Drag Level1.FBX to a new Scene
  5. Save Scene as Level1.unity
  6. Change Camera near / far distance
  7. Add a Directional Light
  8. Create Colliders from meshes prefixed with CX
  9. Create Lightmaps
  10. Add Rigidbody + Sphere Collider to our Ball
  11. Change Project Physics settings (precision)

Game Development with Unity 4/9
In this video I will create a script to control the ball by tilting the device:

  1. Create BallController.cs script
  2. # Get device Tilt values
  3. # Normalize Tilt values
  4. # Add Tilt force to the Ball
  5. Drag BallController script to the Ball in Unity

Game Development with Unity 5/9
In this video I will add script logic to detect if the ball falls down:

  1. Open BallController.cs script
  2. # Store original Ball position
  3. # Store original Ball rotation
  4. # If Ball Y position < 1.0 then reset values

Game Development with Unity 6/9
In this video I will create the menu system with EZ GUI and Sprite Manager 2:

  1. Create a new Scene: MainMenu1024
  2. Set camera to Orthographic
    Size = 384 (half height of 1024 x 768)
  3. Add EZ GUI: UI Manager
  4. Add EZ GUI: Simple Sprite for background
  5. Add EZ GUI: Load Scene Button for Play button
    Set it to load Level1.unity
  6. Add a material for the background
    Shader = Unlit / Texture
  7. Add a material for all buttons
    Material will be created by EZ GUI Build Atlases
    Shader = Unlit / Transparent
  8. Size and position the Play Button
    Using EZ GUI Size Sprites
  9. Add Level1.unity to the Build settings
    So it can be loaded by the Play button

Game Development with Unity 7/9
In this video I will create the end game menu screen with EZ GUI and Sprite Manager 2. The steps in the video are the same as video 6/9.

Game Development with Unity 8/9
In this video I will show how to disable PVRT texture compression on menu textures in Unity.

Game Development with Unity 9/9
In this last video I will show how to add a trigger to our goal object to load the end game menu. I will also switch target platform to iOS:

  1. Add a Trigger collider to our Goal object
  2. Add OnTriggerEnter() to BallController.cs
    Load the level “GameEnd1024” once the ball enter
  3. Add the scene GameEnd1024 to Build settings
  4. Switch target platform to iOS
  5. Play the game!

Unity 3.2 Released

If you develop games for mobile devices, you have probably heard of Unity. If you have not heard of it, you should definitely check it out. We use it in a fairly large-scale production at the moment and we are very pleased with both features and performance of Unity on both Android and iOS devices.

Today Unity was upgraded to 3.2, and it’s an impressive release. Some of my favorite new features include:

  • Major performance improvements in OpenGL ES 2.0 (iOS/Android).
  • Profiler: you can profile standalone player builds from the Editor. This includes iOS and Android builds!
  • Direct import of Modo files (*.lxo). Officialy supported Modo versions are 501 and higher.
  • Direct import from Blender 2.55.1 and later.
  • Support for import of mesh instances from FBX files.
  • Support for Android OS 2.3 (Gingerbread).
  • Android Remote – Remote debugging tool for Android devices.
  • All new Water prefab in standard assets that includes waves, automatically generated foam on shorelines and more.

Check it out and download a trial at unity3d.com

Mobile App Developers: It’s All About the Marketing

Google just posted an interesting interview with Peter Vesterbacka, CEO of Rovio (the company behind the famous Angry Birds game). The game has been downloaded over 30 million times, and Rovio have sold over 10 million copies on the iOS platform.

Some interesting tidbits from the video:

“When we do an update [to Angry Birds] about 80% of the people who ever downloaded the game since December last year do the update, so it’s a pretty high number.”

I found this figure interesting. I thought the number of people upgrading their apps were closer to 100%.

“One thing that we’ve really been starting to look at now is engagement. Take the iPhone version alone, there’s 65 million minutes of play time every single day. So there’s a lot of time spent with our game, with the brand. And that compares very favorable with front-time TV for example. So, what that probably means is that a lot of the ad spending will shift towards this, and we are of course very excited about that.”

That’s some very impressive numbers. It basically means an average play time of 6.5 minutes per sold copy on the iPhone, every day. Finally, Peter’s advice to other mobile app developers:

“Think really, really hard about the marketing and branding. That’s really the key. The App Stores are the most competitive market places out there, so you really need to think hard about how do you stand out, how do you differentiate, and what can you do differently.”

You can watch the full interview below:

The Incident – Now with TV Out

The iPhone & iPad game The Incident was updated today supporting TV Out on the iPad. The way it works is that you play the game on the iPad using an iPhone as controller, and you then watch the game play on your big-screen TV. Kind of like a very expensive game console with a very expensive hand control.

MacWorld just posted a review and gave it a 5 out of 5 star rating.

The Incident at Apple App Store