Month: April 2010

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Anytime Golf on iPad: First Impressions and Video

Yes, first impressions.  I developed the game entirely in the simulator (and on Windows), but until today I had never played it on the actual hardware it was designed for.

I pre-ordered an iPad but missed the April 3rd window… I thought I was going to have to wait until April 12th or later.  On a whim I decided to run by Best Buy and to see if they had any demo units.  They did.  They also had about 20 left in stock so I snagged one.

First thing I did (of course) was download and try out my game.  Having never played the game on iPad before I was incredibly nervous.. “Could it handle the framerate?”  “Would I get hit with some strange hardware-specific bug?”

Maria played the first while I watched. I was in no condition to play.  But anxiety turned to elation almost immediately–it not only ran smooth, but it looked amazing, far better than I ever imagined.  The color gamut POPS on the iPad screen.

After the first three holes I ripped the iPad from Maria’s hands and she made a video of me playing it for the very first time.

I couldn’t believe how fun it is on the big screen!  I re-scaled all of the UI input
by just guessing what it might feel like on a larger device and I hit it
spot-on.  I was completely shocked that I nailed it having never
touched the device before.  (Oh and I birdied my first hole).

I’m just bouncing off the walls over here.  This is a very proud moment for me.

iTunes App Store Link: Anytime Golf

I should probably take this opportunity to plug my game engine I developed that made this possible without an iPad. If you’re interested in iPhone, iPad, MacOS or Windows cross-platform game development, check out the Bork3D Game Engine. It’s $49 for an indy license. There are a lot more about it details on the website.

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Movable Type FTW

That was almost too easy.  A few hours after I posted Blogger was shutting down FTP publishing, I started looking for blogging software that supported sqlite and importing from Blogger.

No more than 20 minutes after I downloaded MT I had my entire blog imported from Blogger. This plugin connects over the Blogger API and grabs your entire blog and all metadata, including comments. 
The only thing it got wrong were the timestamps of my blog entries, but sqlite made short work of that:

update mt_entry set entry_authored_on = datetime(entry_authored_on,’-8 hour’);

I’m loving this!  I wish I had switched over a long time ago.  I’m gonna miss that old theme though, I had been using it for 8 years.

Thanks for the kick in the pants Blogger!

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Blogger shuts down FTP publishing

This may be my last post for a while. Blogger has announced they’re soon going to be shutting down FTP publishing.

I knew this day would come. I always thought it was kinda ridiculous they allowed FTP publishing. It frequently breaks and it doesn’t generate them any revenue.

I guess I’m gonna have to install wordpress. Figuring out how to import my 300+ posts over the last 8 years will be interesting.