Paul Jones

A code-monkey with a taste for Drupal and Mobile Development

Things aren't looking good for my 35 day game

Just over a month ago I posted that I was going to build an iPhone game in just over 30 days. Things haven't quite gone according to plan, but luckily I have several excuses reasons for why I won't be making my App Store millions just yet.

Objective-C

Objective-C is a superset of C. I though that meant that I'd be able to use my knowledge of C/C++ to jump start my iPhone game creation. I was wrong. While technically you can take any C program and compile it in objective-C, that doesn't mean you'll be using much C in your app. Even the the basics like strings and integers have been replaced by NSString and NSInteger. Basically I was back to square one when it comes to the syntax and basic functions. Learning an entirely new language in the time I'd set myself was going to be difficult as it was.

New Xcode and SDK

Xcode updated to version 4 recently. It's definitely a lot better than the version 3 that I've seen in all the tutorials on the web. At the same time iOS 5 has come along with it's new features and deprecation of functions. Half the tutorials I've found on the web throw up countless errors when I attempt to build them. This wouldn't be a problem, except I'm still learning my way around the language as it is. Being unsure if an error is because of something I've done or something Apple changed since a tutorial was written is frustrating to say the least.

App Store Millions

I don't want to release a free app. I want to release an app that I can sell. This requires me to go through all the hassles required to accept international payments, which is made more difficult by my bank refusing to give me an IBAN in a reasonable amount of time. More than that though, a paid app demands a certain level of quality that I don't think is possible to achieve building an app whilst still learning the ropes. I wouldn't feel right taking payment for an app I know full well isn't as good as it could be.

As it stands I'm running through the excellent lectures that are available from Stanford on iTunes U. They also provide free access to all of the course materials, so it's like I'm a student again, which is nice. I'll be building a few free apps first, maybe with iAds if my bank gets it's act together, and saving my first game until I know I can do it some justice.

Building an iPhone game in just over a month

I've just bought myself a new MacBook Pro, and one of the main reasons for that is to get involved in this App Store gold rush that seems to be going on at the moment. So I'm going to build myself a game, and I'm going to set myself a deadline to finish it on the same day I decided to make it. That deadline is October 31st 2011. It's a Monday. 35 days away. So let's get cracking!

Choosing an engine

I've played a few games built in Cocos2D, a free engine for building 2D games. It seems to be the most popular and has tons of community support available for when (not if) I get stuck. That's that settled then

Choosing a game

I've got a pretty good idea of the game I want to build. It's essentially a port of a game I built in Uni, but with more fabulousness. It's a game I've wanted a decent version of on my iPhone for some time, so scratching my own itch and learning as well! God I'm efficient.

I'll be blogging as I go, so go ahead and subscribe if you're interested.

Update: Things aren't looking good for my 35 day game.

Companies that lost my details in the last year

There's been an awful lot of companies losing my personal details recently, so I decided to write up a little recap of all the big multi-national companies that can't seem to keep a hold of my information.

Gawker Media, December 2010

Gawker was the first big breach, and it was a big one. Passwords were hashed, and not salted, so people that got hold of the passwords (and they were leaked publicly) wouldn't have too much trouble cracking them. Gawker screwed up, waited a few days before letting anyone know, and ended up being beaten to emailing affected users by several companies hoping to cash in on the publicity. At least they didn't have any bank or card details though.

Marks & Spencer, April 2011

Technically M&S didn't lose my details. They gave them to a company called Epsilon to manage ther email newsletters, and then Epsilon lost my email address. Big deal? Probably not, but this was the only case of someone losing any of my details without me actually giving them the details in the first place.

Sony, April 2011

Sony is the big one, they got breached completely. Attackers had full access behind the scenes of the Playstation Network. Although credit card details were encrypted, they were still lost, and could eventually be cracked by hackers with far too much (CPU) time on their hands. Luckily I've never given Sony my credit card details, a perk of being an Xbox fanboy I suppose, and Sony is giving everyone affected free stuff, so that's nice.

Codemasters, June 2011

The latest one, and the breach that caused me to write this article. Codemasters lost my name, address, email, encrypted passwords, phone numbers and order history. At least their payments were done through another company, so I don't have to worry about my bank details this time!