Ping!

Hello dear readers (yes, the two of you)! Well I'm still around and kicking as you may have seen if you follow me on Twitter. I'd like to said that I have been über busy with making cool iPhone apps, but it will not be exactly accurate. I'm working on a couple of apps, that is true, but the reason that I haven't posted since June as more to do with the lack of interesting things to said (can't always blame Twitter ...). I'll try to improve this over the coming weeks (year right ...) even though idiotic rambling on this blog have never stopped me before ;-)

So, let's talk a bit about one of the project I'm working on: an iPhone game. Yep that's right, a video game. Now, this is my first game (I'll skip the lame ones I wrote in BASIC back in the days or the ones for my pocket calculators) so this is a brand new experience for me and so far I'm loving it :-)

Since I suffer from the NIH syndrome, I'm building my own game framework to support the development of this game (and others to follow hopefully!), when I could have just use one of the existing framework, such as the widely popular Cocos2D. My needs are pretty simple really as I'm making a 2D retrogaming style game (using OpenGL). I could have save myself the trouble, but since I thrive for challenges and enjoy learning stuff, I though it'll be more fun that way. And it is! :P

Yeah now, I'm not totally insane, so I have integrated Chipmunk physics into the engine, instead of spending the next months banging my heads on complex math&physic problems. Here again, there is a lot of physics frameworks to choose from, like Box2D, but I wanted something simple and in C (so that it'll be easier to integrate with my Objective-C based engine).

Anyway, things are looking good at this point although I'm mostly working on the game engine, while the game concept is maturing in my head (with some great inputs from experienced game developer @madgarden). Unlike many other iPhone developers, like Owen Goss, I'm a little hesitant to reveal too much about the game itself, at least until it is well advanced. It's not that I'm working on a revolutionary game (far from it, really!), but the competition is fierce on the App Store! Since I have no idea how long it is going to take me to complete it, I rather not be beaten to the store if you see what I mean (even though there's already similar game in the store) ;-)