It can gets expensive if you don’t read the small print =/

31/01/2009 by admin.

Hello everyone,

  This will be a really quick message this week I’m afraid as I have a lot to do and I’m falling a sleep at he keyboard here.

  Been a pretty bad week for me and very expensive.  I’ve basically been prototyping up GoGo Digger for the iPhone.  I know you wouldn’t think that there was that much work to do on it to convert it across, but just working out how to display everything correctly on screen (you are going down to 320*480 instead of 640*480, so you are losing half your screen) and you have the control system to think about and what’s the best way to do it.  I also want to clean up and update the gf/x a bit for the game.

  So with this in mind, I spent most of the week downloading all the latest versions of TGB, iTGB, X-Code and the iPhone SDK.  I also went out and bought the latest version of the MAC OS (Leopard), as I know that you need that to run the iPhone SDK.  The one thing I didn’t know was that I also need an Intel based processor in the MAC or else you can’t install the iPhone part of the SDK.  After about an hour of cursing, swearing and punching the desk (I’ve got a really bad temper when it comes to computers (people I can keep calm with unless I don’t like you in the first place, but computers, I soon see red)), I calmed down and know I had to bite the bullet and buy another MAC.  After a lot of web surfing, I ended up buying the base model of the 20’ iMAC, and I’ll upgrade the memory myself up to 4 gig as it should only cost me about £50 quid.  This iPhone development thing is really costing me a fortune now and I just hope I can earn my money back from it with the iPhone version of GoGo Digger.

  Next week I’m off to Canada for a month to visit the wife (we have been marred for 16 months and we have only been together for a single week, so I’m really excited about this trip even if it is -40 there), so I’ve been trying to get the laptop ready, which means basically rebuilding it again from scratch, which is taking ages.  It’s a real pain trying to find all the CD’s and manuals / serial codes for every thing, not to mention all the Window’s updates and video codec’s again (I really hate computers with a passion).

  Also on another random note, I just bought the new MicroSoft Blue Laser Explorer Mouse (DUH!! I’ve just almost blinded myself looking under the mouse for that name of it, that blue light is really bright!).  Its suppose to be the all new, singing, super duper mouse that you can use anywhere (including a “Park Bench” (they keep mentioning the park bench which just seems a little strange to me, maybe there’s a niche market of people that sit on park benches with laptops that need ultra fine control where the touch pad just isn’t good enough, but I’m betting there’s more people with shinny black desks that don’t want to have to use a mouse mat)).  Well it’s pretty poor when I try using it on a pure black desk.  It jumps around constantly.  Stick it on top of a magazine and it’s really, really nice, but on a dark, shinny black desk and you can forget it.  Maybe I need to swap my nice comfy chair for a park bench?

Weekending 30/1/09

Lucky Seven:

  I’ve been doing a couple of little sketches for the robot character, which I’m still not happy with.  Every time I draw it, it just doesn’t feel right.  It’s either to high tech looking or not evil looking enough.  The basic graphical idea / theme for all the games is to have a kind of steam punk / cartoon feel style feel to them.  Everything is powered by steam / gears / pistons and mechanical contraptions and weird flying boats and stuff (yeah I know, a bit strange, but it gives me plenty of freedom to do what ever I want, yet gives it a fairly fresh feel to it at the same time).

  Isaac has been really ill this week so there’s not been much happening really.  I warned Isaac to take it easy and get better before he starts working on the games again as your health has got to come first. 

Shuffle Blocks:

  Tommy has done another track for the game which is really nice.  I wasn’t totally sure about it at first, but I kept listening to it for well other an hour while I was working and it actually works really well, it’s not in your face at all, but once you start listening to it you start to hear other melodies in there which I didn’t pick up on before (if that makes sense).

  Dave has been working on the engine so he can port it across to other platforms if needed, basically making everything modular so it can be slotted into later projects and the like, at least I think that’s what he was explaining to me (it’s late and my head hurts).  Dave has also been trying to build an iPhone development kit as well from spare PC parts (a MAC clone?), but doesn’t seem to be getting that fair and it sounds like more trouble then it’s worth.

  Right then, it’s getting late and I need to be up early for the iMAC to come (I’ll be gutted if I miss it) and at least I can use the old MAC G5 as a Linx test machine and port the games over for Linx as well (may as well make the most of it I guess).

  I’ll still post about the same time again next week, but don’t really expect a lot of progress next week as I’ll be travelling for over 40 hours straight to get to Canada, so that’s going to be almost two days lost (planes and the Grey Hound and a lot of waiting around).

  Any way, have a good week and I hope I’ll see you next week and before I forget, thank you to every one that has been signing up to the blog and it’s okay to leave comments or ask questions if you want to.

Thanks,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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