Liviu's blog

Sorry for not updating as often as I use to latley.

I recently changed my work place and after 5.5 years at Check Point in the QA Security area I moved to develop for the iPhone at a nice company called Applicaster.

Soon I will get back to speed with free time and updating the blog.

About this month’s games:

Killzone 3 – FPS for the PS3.

BulletStorm – Duke Nukem over the top style FPS.

Dragon Quest 6 remake for the DS.

My opinion? Save your money for next month – Lot’s of good titles are coming.

Liviu

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I know more then one of these guides is out there and most of them are saying about the same stuff, but what the hell – I’ll write one myself giving my insights and my recommendations.

A bout two month ago I decided to broaden my knowledge a bit by picking up a subject that interested me for a while – iPhone Programing.

Along the way I used a few sources and decided to make a short list of what would you need to start getting into this.

Lets begin with what you must have:

A Mac:

Always surprises some people for some reason. iPhone’s IDE runs only on an Apple computer. Doesn’t really matter which (assuming it’s an Intel based computer).

Even the most basic Mac Mini will run it properly without any problems.

Regarding a Hackintosh or a Virtual machine – It’s nice to play with it around a bit, don’t count on it for being a normal solution. There are a lot of little issues with this (except the being illegal part).

An Apple Developer account:

Well Basically there are 3 options to chose from here:

• Free Account – Allows you to develop, compile and run in the simulator. Practically – all you need to study and practice programing for the iPhone is here. The tools are in no way limited or partial – Just the same as any other company or developer uses.
• Paid Developer’s Account – 100$ a year will get you on top of the tools and being able to run the simulator, the option to test your applications on a real iPhone (or iPad) and submit apps to Apple’s AppStore (two words on the model – Apps are hosted for free, if they are paid apps – 30% goes to Apple, 70% to you)
• Company Developer Account – A few extras – out of this post’s scope

Download X Code:

After you opened a developer account (or before – you can create it there) go to Apple’s iOS Dev Center and Start Downloading the latest xCode with iOS sdk.

Development Knowledge:

This is one that is in my opinion a must. Most information sources I found assume you know how to program and that the term design pattern does not sound like a curse to you. You might be able to do well without it, however for an entirely new developer learning this as a first language – I think most will get lost pretty fast.

Your still reading? Good, now is time to learn.

There are many good places to start from, in fact – enough to confuse you. I’ll give a few that I found useful.

The Book Option:

APress released a very good book regarding iPhone development – Beginning iPhone 3 Development.

The book gives nice examples and walks you through creating a couple of nice projects. The book is however light on the technical details. At the code level – if you don’t understand what the code is doing – you’ll mostly be copying it and not really understanding a lot of the technical underlaying of the platform (in terms of code , types , memory management, function types etc.). If you already know Objective-C – that probably wont pose a problem. For the rest of you – it might.

Here is a link to the revised version of the book (for iPhone 4 which should include iPad specific chapters as well) : Beginning iPhone 4 Development. Note the book is Due to Jan 31st.

iTunesU – The academic Option:

iTunesU is a great platform for academical knowledge. Stanford University is giving a course – CS139P – iPhone Application Development.

The good news – you can view all the lectures (even in HD) simply by downloading them from iTunes store – Just search “developing apps for ios” and get all the lectures.

For the lecture slideshows you can go to the course’s site and get all the PDFs of the slideshows and the homeworks.

Do note – the course is pretty hard and technical and at times – just runs with the material at a crazy speed. Also the Interface Builder is barely used and the templates are hardly touched which might be a bit nice to know how to use them better for real world applications rather then coding everything from scratch.

The level of the knowledge that can be drawn from the course though is very high and even the small things are must knows when you really want to understand what’s going on.

(Do note – that every year or semester this course is re-done so by the time you read this – there might be a running, more current version of the course).

Apple’s Documentation:

Will suite you better when you know what your looking for but double clicking a command inside xCode with alt/option will let you see Apple’s Documentation. Also you can go to iOS Reference Library for guides and code examples.

WWDC Sessions:

Each year Apple has a developer convention where some of it’s developers give classes on various topics. This year’s videos have been uploaded and are available for free to registered developers (even free accounts) – just log in from the Session Videos Page.

In plus of these data sources many sites and blogs are out there covering iPhone development from various angles (also a lot of technical forums have sections on iPhone development) so it’s always a good idea to look around.

I’ll be glad to here some of your insights on this and learn about new places to learn from if I missed any (and I’m sure I did).

Liviu

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After making a revolution in the smart-phone world – Apple’s App Store is arriving to all Snow Leopard Macs with 10.6.6 update that was released today. What started at the iPhone might just come and change the way we purchase software on the mac.

It is still early to tell if it will have the same impact it had on the iPhone when it was released (in my opinion – it was one of the iPhone’s best features, in fact – it still is). No doubt it will increase the accessibility of mac software around the world and give an easier buying method for mac users. I encountered this problem more then once – Trying to get a mac version of a software. Now that a unified mechanism with an already trusted pay model will exist – I have no doubt it will increase my purchases on this platform.

On the developer side – Releasing a program on the mac holds the same costs as a developer as the iPhone – meaning it will be a 100$ a year annual subscription. The profit model will be kept as well – meaning – Hosting of the applications will not cost you, and from the price of the application – 70% goes to the developer and 30% to Apple.

I also believe it will become a significant platform for new developers to reach a lot of target buyers and mac users easily. In general it is a bold step forward towards digital distribution as the main software purchasing method at a major scale that has not been done before for a personal computer platform (that goes beyond games).

Take a look here – Apple’s App Store Page.

More updates and perhaps a short review hopefully soon,

Liviu

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A new year has began and with it news of some new games (well one of them is new).

Both games are coming out on the 18th (in the US) and specifically on the PS3.

Mass Effect 2: After a long time, this long awaited RPG series is coming to the PS3. What started as a Microsoft exclusive franchise is finally coming to the PS3.

For those of you who haven’t had the chance to get in on the action – The game follows the story of commander Shepard following the events of the first game and starts with him being killed by a strange alien race called the collectors, or is he? The Game is an RPG / Shooter mix in the style of Knights of the Old Republic (not surprising when you look at who developed it). It is very conversation heavy and very cinematic and for me – was definitely the game of the year last year.

So why should you pick it up? Well – first of all – if you didn’t play it – Get it! Second, it contains all the DLC and add-ons since the release and it’s running on the new Mass Effect 3 engine (upcoming later this year or early next year). Maybe it’s not up to par visually with a strong computer – but better then the Xbox 360 version as far as I could tell. A definite must.

LittleBigPlanet 2: Media Molecule kind of took me by surprise with the first title in this franchise. I have to say I pretty much ignored the hype around this previous iteration of the game until it was out. Once I picked it up though – it was a different story. Me and my wife spent lots of hours on this game by ourselves and more importantly – together – finishing the game and story.

For those of you who didn’t get a chance to play it – LBP is an puzzle platform game with a strong emphasize of doing original things with the engine. Everything almost is customizable to some extent and the community levels are absolutely amazing sometimes.

So that’s it for this month (unless I forgot something – which means – I’ll add them ),

Until next month, enjoy.

Liviu

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As of this morning – iPhones all over the world are experiencing problems with their alarm clock functionality.

Due to a software bug (which will return to normal from the 3rd) – non-reoccurring iPhone alarms do not work!

This means that if you are using your iPhone to wake up – Be sure to set the alarm to repeat itself (by choosing days when setting the clock)

Source and more info can be found in 9to5Mac.com.

Make sure to set your alarm clocks properly so you won’t be late

Happy New Year,

Liviu

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A year has come and gone.

It has already been 1 year since I started this blog as well so this is a kind of a double celebration.

At the blog level – I wish myself to continue updating this – hopefully more frequent then I got to the past 2 month.

At the personal level – All I have to say is change is coming and more updates will be coming on that soon.

So to all of my friends, family and just random readers – I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope your upcoming year will be the best one so far. May all your wishes come true. May this be a year of peace and prosperity.

Have a great one,

Liviu

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The time of the month has come again to cover the games coming out this month.

First of all – a game already released on the Xbox 360 Live Arcade and on the 1st of December on the PC – Super Meat Boy.

Super Meat Boy is an indie game that takes pixel art aesthetics combined with old school platforming and a hell of a difficulty level and turns them into something great. You play as Meat Boy who is trying to save his beloved bandage girl from the evil Dr. Fetus. The difficulty level is insane – so be prepared to get pissed, and a lot. But the game has a certain charm in it that reminds me of old platforming games where we didn’t mind dying a 1000 times and felt a great satisfaction from finishing another level.

Currently available mainly through Steam for 15$.

Second title coming out this month manages to be even more nostalgic. Super Mario All Stars is coming out to the Wii on December 12th.

This compilation celebrating 25 years of Super Mario collects the same classic 4 games the original Super Mario All stars collected on the SNES:

• Super Mario Bros.
• Super Mario Bros. 2
• Super Mario Bros. 3
• Super Mario Bros. – The lost levels

In plus – the bundle comes with a 32 page history book of the Super Mario Franchise. The main downside of this is the fact that at the end of the day – its the SNES game on the Wii. nothing new and the content is (in my opinion) too slim.

Worth a mention:

Two other releases are worth a mention and perhaps will turn out to be as major as the 2 I just noted:

• Fallout New Vegas – Dead Money – Coming out at December 24th on the Xbox360 only (at this time), this is the first DLC introduced to this great game. Hopefully it is coming very soon to the PS3 as well.
• Back To the Future – Telltale games – the guys behind the current iteration of Sam & Max and Monkey Island are starting a new series based on the same quest engine for Back to the Future. Looks promising, but after the last Sam & Max which was pretty bad (and the unimpressive closure of the Monkey Island titles – I’d rather see how it starts).

Till next month – have fun – and spend it wisely (Time and Money),

Liviu

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It’s finally out. Perhaps racing game’s most promising title was released today.

Gran Turismo – a symbol of the Sony Playstation consoles, a racing simulator developed by Polyphony (Internal Sony game studio) is now out in the 5th game in the franchise.

Originally announced a full year ahead of the Playstation 3 – this title for me is one of the reasons I bought the Playstation.

Due to the delays and date changes – I decided not to write about it until it’s out and released, and today it happend.

Further more – Today I already got my copy and will be spending more time with it – some further impressions – next week in the upcoming games article.

First impression is very good. The game includes a lot of game modes , 1000 cars and over 70 tracks. It also looks amazing and the driving is very fun. Also there – 16 players online , 2 players local split screen , kart racing , weather , damage model and night time racing.

I hope it holds the same depth previous titles in the franchise were known for.

More details on the ever updating Wikipedia page.

So until next time – Get it!

Liviu

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Today Apple released the new iPhone iOS update.

For those of you caring about your jailbreaked stuff – Do Not Update Yet!

Few steps to take:

• Install AptBackup from cydia – What it practically does – is back up your cydia installation list. This way when you re-install Cydia after an update and Jailbreak – You can restore all your Cydia Stuff with one click. (Just backup now, JailBreak in the future, Re-Install AptBackup and click restore)
• Connect your iPhone to your PC and right click Get Purchases through iTunes.
• Sync your device (but do not upgrade).

Major changes from previous versions:

• Complete iPad 4 firmware with all the shticks (multi tasking, folders, game center etc…
• AirPrint – print from iOS device with no need of computer in the way.
• AirPlay – Stream video between iOS Devices
• Find my phone functionality for free.

For More Details – Apple’s 4.2 page.

Liviu

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This month is big on titles that for me mostly are not that interesting, but I’m sure some of you will disagree, so here we go:

Call Of Duty: Black Ops – Nov 9th – PS3 / Xbox / PC

This years iteration of perhaps the biggest FPS game franchise ever.

This time coming from Treyarch is definitely bound to make some noise and sell millions of copies and spawn an online madness.

This time the story is set in the cold war era  as (you guessed it) a Black Ops soldier.

The Sly Collection – Nov 9th – PS3

Sly cooper is returning in an HD remake of the 3 games that were originally released for the PlayStation 2 platform. Sly is a 3rd person view action platformer with stealth elements and a comics / film noir kind of aesthetics. Although it’s not on my radar and didn’t mean a lot to me as a PS2 game – I’m happy to see this kind of things happening so maybe more good games I like would be updated.

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood – Nov 16th – PS3 / XBOX / PC

A direct sequel to Ezio’s story in the second iteration of the series. This 3rd person action adventure will bring more of  the loved action. This time a big emphasize was put on the multiplayer side with all kinds of new game modes and an expirience system.

NBA Jam – Nov 17th – PS3 / Xbox 360

Another classic franchise returning to the consoles. NBA Jam is perhaps one of the more fun outrageous basketball games and it just got remade. Originally coming out as a full game for the WII and a partial version bundled as a download code in NBA Elite, EA Sports decided to make it available as a full 50 dollars game to both HD consoles. In my opinion this is kind of a steep price point for what should have been a 20$ downloadable game.

Disney’s Epic Mickey – Nov 30th – WII

A Mickey Title? Yup – and a really good looking one.

Seems like our favorite mouse made a huge fuck up causing the world of the things forgotten to become a ravaged wasteland when playing with the world created by the sorcerer Yen Sid. Oswald the lucky rabbit (Mickeys brother and the first on that world) tries to fight the blot Mickey created but fails and his world is turned dark and sinister and he is forced into hiding. Many years later Mickey is pulled into the world of forgotten things and he has to stop the blot, earn Oswalds trust and save the land.

It’s a platformer action adventure game that looks great – If only it would have came to an HD console as it deserves…

Notable mentions:

Splatterhouse – Nov 26th – PS3 / Xbox

A remake of an old Beat Them Up game with the same name – Lots of blood, Jason like protagonist – what can go wrong?

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom – Nov 23rd – PS3

Third person action adventure game that looks really nice in it’s design and upcoming videos on the PSN network.

Featuring the player accompanied by a huge creature (Majin) as an action platform adventure kind of game.

Although it seems like a lot of titles are coming out this month – I am really disappointed that GT5 was postponed to sometime next month probably, but I’m sure most of you have at least one “Must Buy” title on this list.

Till next month (or untill I remember titles I didn’t include in the list)

P.S.

Found another list on GamesRadar with a bit longer summery of the games this month – Check it out.

Liviu

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