Categories
iphone programming

Touch interfaces: Help for new users (any app)

I’m writing an iPad game that’s designed to be self-evident and trivial to use.

Today, I made a re-usable “tell the user how many fingers to use” animation that would work well with any app. So, I decided to open-source it and stick it on github.

Screenshot from my current app (NB: you need to photo YOUR fingers – not mine! – if you want it to look like this)

Usage

Instructions are in the source code, but my intention is for this to be ULTRA SIMPLE for you to use, so here goes:

[code]

// Add this to the main UIViewController for your app – the one that displays
// when you’re ready for user interaction
-(void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
VFingersHelp* helpView = [[[VFingersHelp alloc] init] autorelease];
/** This will position the helpview in bottom-left corner. Bottom left/right corners are where
users prefer to "touch" (c.f. Disney’s style guide for toddlers).
While they’re watching the help, we don’t want them touching, so we deliberately place in bottom corner.
(feel free to move to top corner if you prefer).
NB: it’s easy to take a photo of your fingers and display at bottom of screen…
*/
helpView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleTopMargin | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleRightMargin;
helpView.center = CGPointMake( 0 + helpView.bounds.size.width/2.0, 2.0 + self.view.bounds.size.height – helpView.bounds.size.height + helpView.bounds.size.height/2.0);
[self.view addSubview:helpView];
}
[/code]

Categories
fixing your desktop

OS X: Make your Mac load web pages 1000x faster

Apple’s core networking for OS X (Lion, Mountain Lion, etc) is famously poor. One of the (many) unfixed bugs is this:

“I go to a webpage (e.g. google.com) and my browser displays a message saying ‘Server not Found’. If I keep hitting Refresh, it never works. If I wait a few minutes and try again, it works”

This is entirely Apple’s fault. They aggressively (and incorrectly) cache “failed” lookups. And … because it’s Apple … you can’t turn it off. It’s been broken for at least 5 years now, which suggests they have no intention of fixing it.

But: you can “flush” it. Since it’s a cache (which are designed to auto-flush anyway), there’s no harm in doing this.

Solution: restart Apple’s DNS cache

  1. Open a Terminal window
  2. type: “sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder”
    • (you’ll need your admin password, annoyingly, because you’re ‘forcing’ Apple’s code to behave itself)
  3. Reload your webpage – works immediately

After the first time, you can repeat the command frequently without typing your password. Simply hit the “up” arrow (to re-type previous command) and Return to run it.

Categories
advocacy computer games Dare 2 Be Digital education games design games industry GamesThatTeach iphone programming

Teenagers learn to program, write own 3D game, in 3 weeks

Background

Last year, Pearson ran the first ever Innov8 competition, giving tech startups a chance to make their own innovative new product/project. The grand prize was £5,000 towards building the product.

Most of the teams were adults (even: real companies), but a team of students from Blatchington Mill School won, with their idea for an iPhone/iPad app: “My Science Lab”.

Team: Quantum Games

The three students named themselves “Quantum Games”: Jon, Nick, and Oli. All three of them have been studying for their GCSE’s in parallel with this project.

They’ve been supported by Mark Leighton, Assistant Head / ICT Director at the school.

For mentoring and game-development expertise, they had me – Adam Martin – previously CTO at MindCandy and NCsoft Europe, now an iPhone/Android developer

Previously

The students chose to focus on a game that would help other students revise the “Momentum” part of GCSE Physics.

In summer/autumn 2012, they learnt the basics of game design and development. We didn’t do any formal teaching – they simply had to pick up the skills they needed as we went along. YouTube videos, and “trial and error”, were our primary techniques…

In particular, they learnt 3D-modelling and texturing (using Wings3D and Photoshop) and game-programming (using Unity3D and Javascript).

By the end of 2012, they’d written their own physics engine, some basic gameplay, and a simple simulation of an exercise/problem in Momentum.

Last month

The big thing this month has been BETT. Pearson had a large stand, and asked the students along to talk about the project. They gave an excellent presentation to an audience of approx 30 people at BETT, covering the background and some of the things that went well, that didn’t, and what they’d learnt from it.

Leading up to BETT, they worked hard to squeeze in a new build of the game, with a rethink on the interactive sections and how they hang together. Unfortunately, we hit what seemed to be a major bug in Unity’s camera-handling, and none of us could fix it in time (nor could we get an answer from Unity support in time). But the students managed to invent a workaround at the last minute which worked fine for demoing at BETT.

The game isn’t finished yet – GCSE’s and schoolwork left too little time to complete it before BETT – but we’re very close now. The students are aiming to finish it off this month and next, and I’m hoping I might even be able to take a copy to the GDC conference in March (taking place in San Francisco, GDC is the commercial games industry’s main annual conference).

In the meantime … you can sign up now on the Quantum Games website (http://quantumgames.co.uk), and we’ll email you as soon as the game is ready – or sooner, with a private beta-test!

Categories
iphone photos

London … from VERY high up

Courtesy of Gareth, I got a surprise trip to the Shard on opening day, just after sunset.

Tragically, I had my DSLR with me and *left it behind* 10 mins before Gareth phoned me, so all this is from an iPhone 4 (gasp!). Even so, it’s impressive. The Shard is so tall that you get a view of London without the typical “squashing” from perspective. Even from airplanes, flying in to Heathrow for many years, I’ve never seen quite such a decompressed view of London at night…

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