Before I get to the meat of this post, last night I finished my “early” Mac App Store TODO list. I *COULD* submit it now, but there’s a bug with submissions. My iPad version is called Smiles HD, and so will be the Mac App Store version. Right now the names conflict, so I have to wait until this is fixed. For now it’s “done”. I sent the binary to some friends to double-check compatibility....
Not much to say or show, just that the performance problem was due to the textures being larger than the texture cache. Under 10% CPU usage, much better As it is now, on my Mac mini the game runs at under 8% CPU usage in the menus and Zen, and under 10% in Drop. The largest texture is 1024×1024, DXT5 compressed (4:1, or 1 MB). Before it was 1024×1024 uncompressed 32bit RGBA (1:1, or 4 MB)....
This week I’ve been downloading updates for all my tools. Linux distros, as well as Apple tools and OS updates. Yesterday was spent trying to get a 64bit version of Ubuntu running on my Media Center PC (i.e. my old dual core AMD workstation PC, now hooked up to the projector). My initial attempt of installing it to a USB key didn’t work, but I did eventually get it working using WUBI....
Going through my Smiles HD TODO/Wishlist, one thing I’ve been meaning to add to the game for a long time was a minimize button. The game runs on several multitasking OS’s, but your only option up until now was to exit. Now, if the OS supports it, it can be suspended in to the background with just a click. The Exit and Minimize buttons on Windows and Linux While adding the minimize button, I looked to the Mac to get an idea what it should look like (actually, I was queuing up the latest Xcode when I noticed it)....
Well alright. I agreed to do a little contract gig back during the summer that finally caught up with me, so the past couple weeks were spent on that. Yesterday we finally finished and submitted that, so I’m free to work on what’s really important: Smiles HD for computers! Wait… what!? Okay, well I still do have my new-game scheduling plans detailed in the last post, but I’ll be slightly delaying that start time yet again, but not by much....
It’s now half way through the month, and progress on my “October Game” is minimal to say the least. I suppose that was to be expected, since I did have several things to finish this month. My week-days have been filled with various tasks, leaving only weekends to work on this new thing. Next week I’ll be busy with my “1 more thing”, leaving me the last week of October for a final crunch....
I’ll have to make sure I fix/change the spacing when I do an update. Words got crammed. I quite like the aesthetics of the Zune WP7 Marketplace. It’s hard to see, but the background is this large panoramic image I whipped up. The panorama looks pretty sweet on the phone. Whomever was responsible for the Zune and WP7 phone graphic design, it’s some fine work. Hats off to you sir....
Since the summer I’ve been chatting with Microsoft about bringing Smiles to Windows Phone 7. In early September, I was invited to an event “Windows Phone 7 Blogger Night” in Toronto. Typical me, blurry and in motion. Here I am demoing Smiles on the TV (all of the touch-screen PC’s were taken). Also, note to self: don’t wear shorts to press events… you stand out too much in the after event photography....
So here’s that news: Smiles is coming to Windows Phone 7! Here’s proof. And here’s a snap of the game running on a completely different Windows Phone device, an LG. Photo by Joey… I think he’s in a Starbucks I love it when code runs on many different devices. 🙂...
One of the items on my seemingly infinite TODO list is to write an article about how to port an iPhone game to AppUp. Another item is to rework my blog layout and list all the actually useful content written here. I’ve yet to do either, but I think I have here a good compromise for the 1st. I do a-lot of emailing, and this past week I had a chat with a fellow developer who wanted some advice on porting his game....