iPhone Top Tips for Games and Application Developer

cocos2d supports both TTF (True Type Fonts) labels, and texture atlas labels. (Please note that from cocos2d Version .7+ on, the label is added to it's layer via addChild: and not add: e.g. [self addChild:myLabel];) Pros and Cons of TTF labels: ( CCLabel ) * + All the pros of TTF fonts: any size, kerning support, etc. * + Easy to use. No need to use an external editor. * - The creation/update is very slow since a new texture will be created Pros and Cons of texture atlas labels: ( CCLabelAtlas, CCBitmapFontAtlas ) * + The creation / update is very fast, since they don't create a new texture. * + Fonts can be customized (shadows, gradients, blur, etc) * - Depends on external editors: AngelCode / Hiero editor, GIMP / Photoshop Creating labels: Simple way The easiest way to create a label is by using the CCLabel object. Example: CCLabel *label = [CCLabel labelWithString:@"Hello World" f...

One of the widely anticipated features of the new iPhone OS 3.0 is push notifications which allow messages to be sent directly to an individual device relevant to the application that has been installed. Apple have demoed this as useful for news alerts, or IM notifications however it fits in perfectly with the nature of our server monitoring service, Server Density. As part of the product, we have an iPhone application that includes push notifications as an alerting option so you can be notified via push direct to your iPhone when one of your server alerts have been triggered. This is useful since our app can then be launched to instantly see the details of the server that has caused the alert. Apple provides detailed code documentation for the iPhone OS code that is needed to implement and handle the alerts on the device but only provides a higher level guide for the provider server side. As a provider, you need to communicate with the Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) to s...

Freeware engines These engines are available for free use, but without the source code being available under an open source license. Many of these engines are commercial products which have a free edition available for them: * Adventure Game Studio — Mainly used to develop third-person pre-rendered adventure games, this engine is one of the most popular for developing amateur adventure games. * Cocos2d— A 2d game engine for making iphone games. * DikuMUD and derivatives — MUD engines * dim3 — Freeware 3D javascript engine for the Mac (although finished games are cross platform). * DX Studio — A freeware 3D game engine with complete tools for 3D video game development. Upgrading to paid licenses would unlock extra features. * Game Maker Lite — Object-oriented game development software with a scripting language as well as a drag-and-drop interface. * LPMud and derivatives (including MudOS and FluffOS) — MUD engines * MUSH — MU* engine * M.U...

Here are some good videos about tilemap editor and game development which i like most.

I tried looking for some online resources that could be of some help but did not find any. I was not able to find any good tutorial that explains how can an address be shown on a map with the application. Therefore, I decided to write one and here it is. Hope it will be of some help. Lets create a simple application which displays the address entered by the user on the map within the application. We’ll call it MapApp. 1. First, create a Window based application and name the project as MapApp. 2. Add the MapKit framework to the project. (Control + Click Frameworks folder -> Add -> Existing Frameworks) 3. Create a new view controller class and call it MapViewController. Add a text field, button and map view to it. #import #import @interface MapViewController : UIViewController { IBOutlet UITextField *addressField; IBOutlet UIButton *goButton; IBOutlet MKMapView *mapView; } @end 4. Now create a xib file named M...

First you need to set self.isTouchEnabled = YES; in init method of your layer. The three approaches are: 1.Dumb input management. This isn't dumb in the sense of stupid, but instead is dumb in the sense of a dumb missile that will keep flying straight until it hits something. A more precise description would be ignorant of global state. While usually not usable as-is in non-demo applications, this approach underpins the other two approaches, and is thus important. Simply subclass CocosNode and implement any or all of these three methods (you don't have to define them in the interface, they're already defined by a superclass). -(void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { UITouch *touch = [touches anyObject]; oint location = [touch locationInView: [touch view]]; [self doWhateverYouWantToDo]; [self doItWithATouch:touch]; } -(void)touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(U...