Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Lead a project to success and avoid the pitfalls; an actual tangible formula for success http://bit.ly/9hvwr8
Friday, August 20, 2010
GameSalad iPhone game released - what we learned along the way
Well, I believe I am officially at the end of my first mobile game building experience. What a journey it has been. I started the project in January and now nearing the end of August, Bucky Challenge version 1.4 is out and ready for download in the iTunes App Store.
You may have noticed that I wrote version 1.4. It is true we did have corrections and it lead to four versions of our app being released. Much of it because we had great difficulty loading the game in an external device for testing. I have made the point of testing in the previous entry and I do know better than to release a game before testing it. However, we were under a time crunch because we had a news article about the game approaching publication.
Now as I look back over the eight months, I have some final thoughts regarding the things we learned while building the game.
1. We did choose to use command buttons to control actor actions in three of our levels. I believe this to be a less effective use of the iPhone environment. I would not recommend placing command buttons within a game for iPhone for several reasons. (a) Buttons eat into the screen real estate. The size of the buttons need to be large enough to accomodate fingertips of all sizes. (b) Buttons are a bit difficult to navigate on the device. (c) iPhone uses touch and accelerometer features that do work best on the iPhone, thus buttons seem antiquated. (d) The use of the buttons did cause in one case the iTouch device to turn off because of the location of the power button on the device being where the user places her hands. While holding the device, the player can accidentally click into a black screen saver mode, thus interfering with the game play. We never considered the possibility when we made the app and it didn't show up during the testing of the game. Fortunately, it is rare.
2. It is extremely important that all PNGs be "save for web" to reduce their size. Actors and elements should be less than 100kb with backgrounds no more than 300kb.
3. DO NOT build the game on several computers. We hade five team members each building a level on their own computer believing we could migrate to one computer and stitch the game together, but that does not work. GS provides original actor ID numbers for each element individually dedicated to one project. These do not copy over into a new project. We had to REBUILD each level and import all images into a new game to stitch them together.
4. GameSalad has its quirks and acts much like a beta, so do plan to experience some delays, crashes, and frustration. It takes a while to understand the game building psychology behind the program. Whereas, the GS forums do provide fairly quick responses to questions, the forums are not organized in a concise way by topic, issue, problem or error. It's time consuming navigating the forums for answers addressing specific problems. GS does have a number of tutorials (print and video), but there is no book on the software and many issues are difficult to find answers for. Beware, some answers provided in the forums are obsolete due to GS upgrades and may no longer be relevant or accurate, but they are still listed among the entries.
5. Do test your game on a device before publishing it because the game will not necessarily work according to the computer simulator generated version. It may work perfectly on the simulator, but not on the external device during testing. Furthermore, we experienced tremendous difficulty getting our game to play on an external device. Initially, we thought it was due to the Mac OS and Xcode versions not agreeing with each other, however, after considerable time installing Snow Leopard and the latest version of Xcode we were still unable to get the game to play. As a work-around we uninstalled Xcode and reinstalled Xcode several times. Eventually, it worked, but we never understood how it corrected itself or what was truly the problem.
Ultimately, we are very pleased with our game. It is the first of it's kind (sports game)for our University. Each team member can take pride in the knowledge they have contributed to the great iTunes App Store. There is a true sense of accomplishment seeing the game on display in the store, watching other people playing it, and learning from people we don't know that they downloaded it. That's so exciting. I believe it was a successful project, well worth the effort, and GameSalad was a good program choice.
In addition, we want to thank the people at GamesSalad, especially Jonanthan Samm, for helping us through some tricky issues.
We encourage and do hope that you, the reader, will download our game and provide feedback at iTunes or here on this blog. Just plug in Bucky Challenge in the search bar and Viola!. Please, cull through this blog's past entries when building your GS game for some troubleshooting advice and examples of challenges we faced. I truly hope this blog is of use to others.
As I turn my attention to the future, I have decided to build another app. I am looking at building a social network game for Facebook. Yep, you read that right. Initially, I spent some time looking for a SDK program specifically designed for or by Facebook, however, it is woefully sparse. That came as a shocker. Let's not forget, I am not a programmer by trade and the primary point of this blog is to document my experience as a Novice App Builder, using turnkey programs to build apps.
I have found one program. The Appainter program at http://www.appainter.com looks promising. If I choose to use that program it will become the next focus of this blog. I believe Facebook apps are extremely interesting to people and there doesn't seem to be a lot of straightforward information. (I could be wrong.)
So, onward and upward.
You may have noticed that I wrote version 1.4. It is true we did have corrections and it lead to four versions of our app being released. Much of it because we had great difficulty loading the game in an external device for testing. I have made the point of testing in the previous entry and I do know better than to release a game before testing it. However, we were under a time crunch because we had a news article about the game approaching publication.
Now as I look back over the eight months, I have some final thoughts regarding the things we learned while building the game.
1. We did choose to use command buttons to control actor actions in three of our levels. I believe this to be a less effective use of the iPhone environment. I would not recommend placing command buttons within a game for iPhone for several reasons. (a) Buttons eat into the screen real estate. The size of the buttons need to be large enough to accomodate fingertips of all sizes. (b) Buttons are a bit difficult to navigate on the device. (c) iPhone uses touch and accelerometer features that do work best on the iPhone, thus buttons seem antiquated. (d) The use of the buttons did cause in one case the iTouch device to turn off because of the location of the power button on the device being where the user places her hands. While holding the device, the player can accidentally click into a black screen saver mode, thus interfering with the game play. We never considered the possibility when we made the app and it didn't show up during the testing of the game. Fortunately, it is rare.
2. It is extremely important that all PNGs be "save for web" to reduce their size. Actors and elements should be less than 100kb with backgrounds no more than 300kb.
3. DO NOT build the game on several computers. We hade five team members each building a level on their own computer believing we could migrate to one computer and stitch the game together, but that does not work. GS provides original actor ID numbers for each element individually dedicated to one project. These do not copy over into a new project. We had to REBUILD each level and import all images into a new game to stitch them together.
4. GameSalad has its quirks and acts much like a beta, so do plan to experience some delays, crashes, and frustration. It takes a while to understand the game building psychology behind the program. Whereas, the GS forums do provide fairly quick responses to questions, the forums are not organized in a concise way by topic, issue, problem or error. It's time consuming navigating the forums for answers addressing specific problems. GS does have a number of tutorials (print and video), but there is no book on the software and many issues are difficult to find answers for. Beware, some answers provided in the forums are obsolete due to GS upgrades and may no longer be relevant or accurate, but they are still listed among the entries.
5. Do test your game on a device before publishing it because the game will not necessarily work according to the computer simulator generated version. It may work perfectly on the simulator, but not on the external device during testing. Furthermore, we experienced tremendous difficulty getting our game to play on an external device. Initially, we thought it was due to the Mac OS and Xcode versions not agreeing with each other, however, after considerable time installing Snow Leopard and the latest version of Xcode we were still unable to get the game to play. As a work-around we uninstalled Xcode and reinstalled Xcode several times. Eventually, it worked, but we never understood how it corrected itself or what was truly the problem.
Ultimately, we are very pleased with our game. It is the first of it's kind (sports game)for our University. Each team member can take pride in the knowledge they have contributed to the great iTunes App Store. There is a true sense of accomplishment seeing the game on display in the store, watching other people playing it, and learning from people we don't know that they downloaded it. That's so exciting. I believe it was a successful project, well worth the effort, and GameSalad was a good program choice.
In addition, we want to thank the people at GamesSalad, especially Jonanthan Samm, for helping us through some tricky issues.
We encourage and do hope that you, the reader, will download our game and provide feedback at iTunes or here on this blog. Just plug in Bucky Challenge in the search bar and Viola!. Please, cull through this blog's past entries when building your GS game for some troubleshooting advice and examples of challenges we faced. I truly hope this blog is of use to others.
As I turn my attention to the future, I have decided to build another app. I am looking at building a social network game for Facebook. Yep, you read that right. Initially, I spent some time looking for a SDK program specifically designed for or by Facebook, however, it is woefully sparse. That came as a shocker. Let's not forget, I am not a programmer by trade and the primary point of this blog is to document my experience as a Novice App Builder, using turnkey programs to build apps.
I have found one program. The Appainter program at http://www.appainter.com looks promising. If I choose to use that program it will become the next focus of this blog. I believe Facebook apps are extremely interesting to people and there doesn't seem to be a lot of straightforward information. (I could be wrong.)
So, onward and upward.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Boom! It works! GameSalad success.
Our previous entry addresses the difficulty we had, and our conclusion that we would not be able to test our game on an external device. It was so frustrating. We had installed and reinstalled Xcode, but to no avail. James Hernandez, our technical engineer, picks up the thread from here...
With some help from Jonathan Samm at GS, today was a new day and another attempt at getting Gamesalad's viewer to install on our iPhone device and get it to talk with the GS creator.
I consulted with John about our issues. He wanted to make sure all our software and devices were updated. I assured him that Xcode had been reinstalled numerous times, new networks created, and no luck. After confirming that everything was updated, the next step was to once again build and go to see if anything had changed.
The GS viewer installed onto our device but, once again, the device could not locate the GS creator on the network. We confirmed that our device and computer were recieving Wi-Fi from the same campus network, but the two machines would not talk to each other. We tried to get the simulator to work, but some errors were found. NOTE: The simulator had been working fine the day before, so these errors were odd.
Jonathan then suggested we install Xcode again. The next step was to delete all Xcode and the GamesaladViewer.xcodeproj files and re-install them. This is important, I can't stress it enough to reinstall Xcode when the device reads, "Waiting for Connection" for a while then displays the following error: "Gamesalad Creator not located on network."
After this was completed, our provisioning profile was re-downloaded and installed into Xcode. I clicked "build and go" and the simulator was up and running. Now it was time to try the device again. After the Xcode drop-down menu was changed to device from simulator I pressed build and go and the viewer was installing onto our device. After the viewer was "waiting for connection" for a few seconds the "GS creator was not located on the network" error displayed again!
John then asked if I tried creating a network within the computer for the device to connect to. As you all recall from yesterday's post, we tried unsuccessfully to create a network which I let John know. I tried once again to create a new network. BOOM! the network connection worked! A new day brings new surprises.
NOTE: It is important to note that nothing had changed about the process from one day to the next. These were all the same steps taken previously, but for some reason they worked today whereas they had not before.
I pressed build and go and the viewer on our device located the GS creator and we were off playing our game on the device.
Our game played through with minor issues that we could not see in the simulator, but showed up on the device. This is important: The game you build in GS will not behave perfectly in the device. There are subtle differences that affect the game in the device.
The lessons of the story would be, if all else fails clean the slate and start fresh.
With some help from Jonathan Samm at GS, today was a new day and another attempt at getting Gamesalad's viewer to install on our iPhone device and get it to talk with the GS creator.
I consulted with John about our issues. He wanted to make sure all our software and devices were updated. I assured him that Xcode had been reinstalled numerous times, new networks created, and no luck. After confirming that everything was updated, the next step was to once again build and go to see if anything had changed.
The GS viewer installed onto our device but, once again, the device could not locate the GS creator on the network. We confirmed that our device and computer were recieving Wi-Fi from the same campus network, but the two machines would not talk to each other. We tried to get the simulator to work, but some errors were found. NOTE: The simulator had been working fine the day before, so these errors were odd.
Jonathan then suggested we install Xcode again. The next step was to delete all Xcode and the GamesaladViewer.xcodeproj files and re-install them. This is important, I can't stress it enough to reinstall Xcode when the device reads, "Waiting for Connection" for a while then displays the following error: "Gamesalad Creator not located on network."
After this was completed, our provisioning profile was re-downloaded and installed into Xcode. I clicked "build and go" and the simulator was up and running. Now it was time to try the device again. After the Xcode drop-down menu was changed to device from simulator I pressed build and go and the viewer was installing onto our device. After the viewer was "waiting for connection" for a few seconds the "GS creator was not located on the network" error displayed again!
John then asked if I tried creating a network within the computer for the device to connect to. As you all recall from yesterday's post, we tried unsuccessfully to create a network which I let John know. I tried once again to create a new network. BOOM! the network connection worked! A new day brings new surprises.
NOTE: It is important to note that nothing had changed about the process from one day to the next. These were all the same steps taken previously, but for some reason they worked today whereas they had not before.
I pressed build and go and the viewer on our device located the GS creator and we were off playing our game on the device.
Our game played through with minor issues that we could not see in the simulator, but showed up on the device. This is important: The game you build in GS will not behave perfectly in the device. There are subtle differences that affect the game in the device.
The lessons of the story would be, if all else fails clean the slate and start fresh.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Impossible for us to test our GameSalad game before releasing it
We are still in throes of publishing our game without errors. In my last entry, I fully acknowledged the need to test a game before its release to avoid issues, but despite our best efforts we have not successfully tested our game before releasing it. Below is our account of our efforts and the surprising conclusion we arrived at for why we have been unsuccessful. The following post was written by our Technical Engineer, James Hernandez, recounting the trials and tribulations of our efforts to test the game before its release...
After our second publish to the App store, and after Apple's OS 4.0 migration, our Gamesalad game once again had issues. Some of our images were replaced by white blocks (later we attributed the problem to an image sizing issue). We knew we had to get our game tested on a device and not just the simulator, but Xcode Base SDK did not support our iPod Touch version 3.1.3.
To solve this problem we purchased the Snow Leopard upgrade and installed it along with Xcode 3.2.3 and IOS SDK 4.0.1. After all this was completed and our iPod Touch was connected, Xcode did recognize the device and had no options for version 3.1.3 device support. We made sure that Xcode was properly installed and was located in the MAC HD/Developer/Applications.
We then knew that we needed to get a hold of an iPhone with OS 4.0 installed. Once an iPhone was obtained, we registered it in our iPhone Provisioning Portal under DEVICES. Once this was completed, we then navigated to PROVISIONING and clicked on the Development tab. We modified the provisioning profile we created for testing to include the new device. The profile was then downloaded onto our computer. We double-clicked the downloaded profile which opened in Xcode.
Once Xcode opened, our new iPhone device was recognized and displayed in the Xcode Organizer window. We clicked on the button asking us if we wanted to use the device for developing and then selected the provisioning profile we just downloaded. We closed the Organizer window and opened the GamesaladViewer.xcodeproj file we downloaded from Gamesalad.com. The GS viewer opened within Xcode where we then had to make a few changes in the Info.plist category listed in the Gamesalad Viewer folder.
Note: The Bundle identifier within Info.plist needs to match the Bundle identifier that was created in the provisioning profile in the iPhone Provisioning Portal.
We right-clicked Gamesalad Viewer listed in the left column of Xcode and selected Get Info. Once in the project info window, we made sure that the Base SDK listed matched that of the device or simulator we were testing our game with. We scrolled down to Code Signing/Code Signing Identity/Any iPhone OS Device and selected the developer profile we created in the iPhone Provisioning Portal.
Once back into the main window of Xcode, we made sure that the Overview drop down menu showed that Device - 4.0 was selected and clicked Build and Run. The GS viewer was then successfully installed on our device and was waiting to connect with the GS creator.
However, after al of this preparation to connect the device to the computer for testing, our game couldn't be tested. It opened within the GS creator, but our device never connected with it. Our device stayed at "Waiting for Connection" for a while then displayed the following error: "Gamesalad Creator not located on network." WHA?!
We were so close yet so far from getting our game tested on a device. After upgrading the Mac OS to Snow Leopard, after locating an iPhone with 4.0 installed, after connecting the device and setting up the requirements to "Build and Go", we achieved nothing.
We searched the net and GS forums for help, but ultimately we concluded that the issue might be with our University's wireless network. Our computer and device were both connected to the same wireless connection, but somehow the GS viewer did not recognize the GS creator on the network. The device did not have phone service, but could still access the internet through Wi-Fi.
We tried a numerous options. We created a network from our computer, which the device recognized, but could not connect to the internet. We tried to connect the device through the Bluetooth function, but the device refused to be "discovered." After reading a few more GS forum posts, we concluded that the issue might be with the University's router and/or firewall settings.
In the end, our game is awaiting its third review for the App Store without it being tested on a device despite our best efforts.
After our second publish to the App store, and after Apple's OS 4.0 migration, our Gamesalad game once again had issues. Some of our images were replaced by white blocks (later we attributed the problem to an image sizing issue). We knew we had to get our game tested on a device and not just the simulator, but Xcode Base SDK did not support our iPod Touch version 3.1.3.
To solve this problem we purchased the Snow Leopard upgrade and installed it along with Xcode 3.2.3 and IOS SDK 4.0.1. After all this was completed and our iPod Touch was connected, Xcode did recognize the device and had no options for version 3.1.3 device support. We made sure that Xcode was properly installed and was located in the MAC HD/Developer/Applications.
We then knew that we needed to get a hold of an iPhone with OS 4.0 installed. Once an iPhone was obtained, we registered it in our iPhone Provisioning Portal under DEVICES. Once this was completed, we then navigated to PROVISIONING and clicked on the Development tab. We modified the provisioning profile we created for testing to include the new device. The profile was then downloaded onto our computer. We double-clicked the downloaded profile which opened in Xcode.
Once Xcode opened, our new iPhone device was recognized and displayed in the Xcode Organizer window. We clicked on the button asking us if we wanted to use the device for developing and then selected the provisioning profile we just downloaded. We closed the Organizer window and opened the GamesaladViewer.xcodeproj file we downloaded from Gamesalad.com. The GS viewer opened within Xcode where we then had to make a few changes in the Info.plist category listed in the Gamesalad Viewer folder.
Note: The Bundle identifier within Info.plist needs to match the Bundle identifier that was created in the provisioning profile in the iPhone Provisioning Portal.
We right-clicked Gamesalad Viewer listed in the left column of Xcode and selected Get Info. Once in the project info window, we made sure that the Base SDK listed matched that of the device or simulator we were testing our game with. We scrolled down to Code Signing/Code Signing Identity/Any iPhone OS Device and selected the developer profile we created in the iPhone Provisioning Portal.
Once back into the main window of Xcode, we made sure that the Overview drop down menu showed that Device - 4.0 was selected and clicked Build and Run. The GS viewer was then successfully installed on our device and was waiting to connect with the GS creator.
However, after al of this preparation to connect the device to the computer for testing, our game couldn't be tested. It opened within the GS creator, but our device never connected with it. Our device stayed at "Waiting for Connection" for a while then displayed the following error: "Gamesalad Creator not located on network." WHA?!
We were so close yet so far from getting our game tested on a device. After upgrading the Mac OS to Snow Leopard, after locating an iPhone with 4.0 installed, after connecting the device and setting up the requirements to "Build and Go", we achieved nothing.
We searched the net and GS forums for help, but ultimately we concluded that the issue might be with our University's wireless network. Our computer and device were both connected to the same wireless connection, but somehow the GS viewer did not recognize the GS creator on the network. The device did not have phone service, but could still access the internet through Wi-Fi.
We tried a numerous options. We created a network from our computer, which the device recognized, but could not connect to the internet. We tried to connect the device through the Bluetooth function, but the device refused to be "discovered." After reading a few more GS forum posts, we concluded that the issue might be with the University's router and/or firewall settings.
In the end, our game is awaiting its third review for the App Store without it being tested on a device despite our best efforts.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
New iPhone, iPod Touch game features mascot
http://www.panamericanonline.com/new-iphone-ipod-touch-game-features-mascot-1.2283873http://www.panamericanonline.com/new-iphone-ipod-touch-game-features-mascot-1.2283873
Ever wonder what it would be like to suit up as a school mascot? Now, anyone with access to an iPhone or iPod Touch can take on the role of Bucky, The University of Texas-Pan American’s mascot, when they download the UTPA-themed application from the iTunes app store.
The application, which was created by Reel to Red Productions, is a sports-themed game called “Bucky Challenge,” in which the user guides Bucky through a series of athletic challenges by using the touch screen.
Chelse Benham, the director of Reel to Red and the game’s creative director, led five Reel to Red team members along the journey of creating the game.
“It’s actually a marketing tool to expose the youth to the University,” Benham said. “The idea of doing a game app became interesting because The University of Texas at Austin had a utility app that was popular. It was number seven on the most popular free apps in the iTunes App store. I wanted an iTunes game that could be used to market UTPA.”
The idea behind the app is to expose the public to the University behind the mask of a fun game free to download.
What is novel about “Bucky Challenge” is the entire game takes place on the UTPA campus.
“‘Bucky Challenge’ is a multi-level sports game where we literally took photos of the campus and incorporated those into the game,” Benham explained. “We figure that if it takes someone anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to play the game, what they’re seeing are the real University buildings and signage all that time. At the end of the game, the University’s website is displayed. It’s a new way to market to the youth on their terms.”
Not only are users exposed to images of the campus. A few familiar faces will be present in the game as well.
“The game has humor. It’s meant to be funny. I and our other graphic designer, Hilda Del Rio, made the Reel to Red team into bubblehead characters that can be seen in the game,” said Alexis Carranza, graphic designer and assistant director for Reel to Red. “We also arranged a photo shoot with Ricardo Gonzalez of the Visitors Center who plays Bucky. We did a one-hour photo shoot with him dressed in costume and posing in different sport poses. That was a lot of fun.”
Designing the game was no easy task. The group had no coding or app-building knowledge, and learning the software development kit from Apple to create an app that functions with the iPhone was an enormous undertaking.
“It required learning everything from the human interface guidelines for Apple to trying to learn Xcode, which is C++ and Objective-C-based coding. That’s almost impossible trying to learn overnight and still put a game together,” Benham explained.
After about six weeks of trying to figure out Xcode, Benham’s son assisted the group by informing them of a program called GameSalad, created by Gendai Games. The Austin-based company’s freeware seemed perfect for the team, but it came with software glitches that were almost impossible to solve.
“GameSalad is freeware, but it’s a beta and it’s constantly having problems. It’s hard to work with. There are quirks about it you have to figure out what is causing the problem,” explained James Hernandez, the game’s technical engineer. A beta is software that is in the second stage of testing and is used as a prototype, or preview for potential buyers. It is often free or at a discounted price because it typically contains glitches. “I’m sure it’s much easier on a second game. Mind you, our game is one of the very few being built with GameSalad that’s multi-level.”
Despite the trouble brought on by working with a beta, GameSalad turned out to be a simpler program to work with than Xcode.
“We were kind of discouraged at first working with Xcode, but once GameSalad came along, the game building went from some impossible idea to being a real product in a short period of time,” Del Rio said.
Ultimately, the project was started as a learning curve for the members of Reel to Red.
“There was a lot of trial and error on trying to fix the movements of our characters, especially in the editing portion when we put the levels together and how those levels would interact with each other. It was challenging,” said Hernandez, who initially underestimated the amount of physics that went into the creation of a game.
“It’s just another creative product from Reel to Red where we expand the skill set of the team and showcase the University in a unique way,” Benham said. The group recently won state-wide and international awards for exhibiting the University in a documentary, website, and commercial campaign including a Lone Star Emmy, a Webby People’s Voice Award, and a Telly Award.
Benham documented the entire process of creating the game app in a blog called “The Novice App Builder,” with the hope of aiding others who would like to create a game using GameSalad. The blog can be found at noviceappbuilder.blogspot.com. Screenshots of “Bucky Challenge” are available at www.reeltored.com.Reel to Red Productions website The app is free to download from iTunes.
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