MobileBits Blog

Wir sind drin! #offizieller iPhone Entwickler

Endlich ist es vollbracht – nach wochenlangem warten (insgesamt hat es nun fast einen Monat gedauert) und zahlreichen emails hin- und her konnte ich gerade endlich unseren Account aktivieren und wir sind nun stolzer offizieller iPhone Entwickler!

Dann wollen wir mal hoffen, dass die bisher entwickelten Sachen nicht nur virtuell sondern auch real auf dem iPhone laufen …

iPhone Development Application Process

… über den darf ich nicht schreiben – ich habe nämlich gerade keinen Überblick was für NDAs wir schon alles unterschrieben haben

Deshalb rege ich mich einfach mal über einen völlig anderen und ausgedachten Prozess auf. Wir nennen ihn mal den “Zune-Developer-Prozess”

Warum muss das immer so lange dauern? Im Internet anmelden, dann wird man angeblich angerufen (passiert aber nicht), dann muss man seine Gewerbeanmeldung hinfaxen (die aber angeblich nciht ankommt) und dann muss man komische mails beantworten, die für “Documentation” fragen.

Zum Glück kommen unsere Proggies auch ohne den “Zune-Zugang” gerade gut zurecht und voran. Aber so langsam könnten die mal vorankommen. Dauert schon >2 Wochen …

Can’t get used to a Mac?

So can’t we.

While being used to a windows environment, it’s really awkward to get used to how a Mac actually gets things done.
Minimizing the window on double clicking the titlebar, programs which are still running though you (thought you) quit them, and where the heck is the friggin’ menubar.

Here, however, are some helpful articles to ease the introduction to your brand new Mac.

Top 30 mistakes made by new Mac users
It applied to me for two thirds of the issues

10 things every new Mac user should know
Good to know…

10 Applications every new Mac user should download
I havent actually tested those, since i try to use the Mac as little as possible. (But who wants WMP on a Mac anyways?)

Official list of Mac OS X Keyboard shortcuts
For those who are hardcore keyboard shortcuts users or just get confused about how they completely do things differend.

Good luck, you really might need it.

Why cheap SSD sucks for Visual Studio

My new PC at work has a 64 GB SSD (Solid State Drive) hard disk and installing and using it went pretty ok. Installing Windows 7 and Windows Vista was pretty quick. Most benchmarks, tools, games and programs run also fine and reading a lot of small or big files is also fast. Even extracting big archives goes quickly. But the one thing I wanted to use the SSD for does not perform very well: Compiling in Visual Studio. Our project at exDream is pretty huge (17 GB, about 30k files) and recompiling everything takes quite a while. Reading small files is working well and it seems like opening and working with files in Visual Studio is also good enough. But once the compilation starts (also happens sometimes when installing programs with lots of little files), the performance goes way down. Once more than 50 files per second are being opened and written to, it takes up to 1 whole second (usually you have access times of <0.1 ms with SSD) to open new files. This is obviously very bad.

For now I’m just using the SSD for Windows and the Program files, but store all the code and projects I want to compile on a normal hard disk, plus I also moved the temp folder to D (the normal hard disk). Now things are pretty good again, but I did not gain the performance improvement I was looking for with this

The SSD is the OCZ 60 GB SSD V2, which still has a JMicron controller, which just plain sucks for many IO operations. Its specifications say that it can do 170 MB/s reads and around 100 MB/s writes, the truth is more like 130 MB/s reads and around 100 MB/s writes for sequential data. The problem is other when copying files I never have those cases.

My brother has a Patriot Warp v2 SSD, which has similar issues because it also uses a JMicron controller. It is a little slower for sequential reads/writes, but a little faster for writing smaller files.

BTW: I tried using 2 Raptor Hard Disks with a Raid-0 configuration 2 years ago and it was a similar issue, the stupid software raid controller from the mainboard was slower than just using one single hard drive without any raid. Reading data was way quicker, but writing stuff to the raid was just way slower!

It seems only expensive SDDs like Intel’s X25-M 80GB SSD (costs around 400 bucks) have a really good controller and can do many reads/writes with small files without any problems.

iDome and Unity3D

I was just browsing the shmup-dev.com forums when I read about an algorithm to create and morph shapes dynamically developed by Paul Burke.

Curious as i am i followed the link to discover a vast collection of interesting articles.

The article that got most of my attention was about the iDome and the implemention with the Unity3D engine.
showcase
Unity3D implemention

I think the idea is ingenious, and possibly the most innovative thing since tilt sensitive game controllers.

He also composed a FAQ  for you guys that are trying to rebuilt that thing. If i had the space and a projector, i sure would give it a try.

Also, if you are into game development or just curious by nature, you should check out his other articles. Theres some really interesting stuff covered.

Sound SDK on the iPhone

Hekkus Sound System recently added support for Mac OS X and the iPhone, which is kinda useful if you want to play OGG files and do some better sound effects. It also has a OpenAL interface and supports many other platforms including cell phones, windows, even .NET and so on. Check it out if you need more advanced sound support.

Cleaning up Vista and make it faster

I was just cleaning my new Vista PC a little with some helpful tools and websites:

• vLite Very useful to reduce Vista’s size, but kinda advanced to setup, you need Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows Vista SP1 | 1375.9 MB for it.
• Reclaim Lost Disk Space in Windows Vista: http://www.winvistaclub.com/t73.html
• Clean MORE with the Windows Disk Cleanup Utility: http://www.winvistaclub.com/t6.html
• Reclaim Disk Space after Windows Vista SP1 install: http://www.winvistaclub.com/t49.html
• Disktective, cool tool to see which directory eats up how much hdd space: http://www.disktective.com/download/
• How To Make Vista Start, Run and Shutdown Faster: http://www.winvistaclub.com/t1.html
• Exorcise Your New Windows Vista Computer: http://www.winvistaclub.com/e19.html

.. and I came across this video (Mac vs Bloated PC):

Tutorial zum Schreiben von Scipte für das Programm Unity3D in Visual Studio

Unity3D benutzt C# Scripte, die man sehr gut in Visual Studio programmieren kann.

In diesem kleinen Tutorial möchte ich euch kurz erläutern, wie ich das gemacht habe.

Voraussetzungen:

• Unity

• Visual Studio

• Mac

• Windows

• FTP-Server für den Mac

1.

Zuerst habe ich ein neues Projekt in Unity3D erstellt, mit dem Namen „UnityTest“.

2.

Man muss den FTP-Server auf dem Mac einrichten, so das das Root Verzeichnis im aktuellen Projektordner ist, bzw. ,wo die Scripte liegen sollen.

Bei mir liegt das Rootverzeichnis unter „…/UnityTest/Assets /Scripte/“.

3.

Um die UnityEngine.dll und UnityEditor.dll zu bekommen, müsst ihr nur in der Mac Konsole Folgendes eingeben:

(für Unity3D)

cp /Applications/Unity/Unity.app/Contents/Frameworks/UnityEngine.dll /Users/yourusername/
cp /Applications/Unity/Unity.app/Contents/Frameworks/UnityEditor.dll /Users/yourusername/

(für Unity3D iPhone)

cp /Applications/Unity\ iPhone/Unity\ iPhone.app/Contents/Frameworks/UnityEngine.dll /Users/yourusername/
cp /Applications/Unity\ iPhone/Unity\ iPhone.app/Contents/Frameworks/UnityEngine.dll /Users/yourusername/

anschließend findet ihr die beiden Dateien im euren Benutzerordner wieder.

4.

Als nächstes kopiert ihr die soeben erlangten Dateien auf euren Windows PC in einen Ordner eurer Wahl.

5.

Nun habe ich ein neues Konsolen Projekt in Visual Studio erstellt und es „UnityScripte“ genannt.

Darauf hin muss man die beiden dll-Dateien zu den Verweisen hinzufügen.

Nun muss man nur noch einen neuen Ordner im Projektverzeichnis mit dem Namen „Scripte“ erstellen und dort werden alle Scripte gespeichert, die wir auch in der Unity Energy benutzten wollen.

6.

Als letztes hab ich mit in diesem Projekt ein kleines Tool programmiert mit dem ich die Scriptdateien per FTP auf meinen Mac transferieren kann.

Es muss nur noch die IP mit dem Port und den User so wie das Passwort in der Program.cs eingetragen werden.

Beim Ausführen des Tools (drücken der F5 Taste) werden alle .cs Dateien und Unterordner aus dem Script-Ordner in unsren Projektordner von Unity3D kopiert, danach muss noch kurz die Appeltaste + R (Refresh) in der Unity Energy gedrückt werden und die Änderungen werden aktualisiert.

Dieses Tool stelle ich euch zum downloaden bereit: UnityScripte

Sehr interessante Insights über iPhone Apps

Thanks for sharing PinchMedia

Today we visited Exit Games

Hi Internet,

I will post everything in English and I will also mirror all my entries on my personal blog at BenjaminNitschke.com
The other guys can still post their stuff in German if they want (but that would be strange, most of the world not understanding whats going on here ^^).

Whatever. As Karsten just blogged yesterday, we founded this new company and we are working on some cool iPhone games. Hopefully everyone will introduce himself here soon. Currently we are still at the concept phase, but as soon as we have something concrete, be sure I will spill it out and everyone will punch me for it. We will not only show here the iPhone games we are working on, but also involve everyone in the process of creating iPhone games from the perspective of professional game developers, who usually work in Windows and .NET plus some neat tricks and great engines.

BTW, while we are at the topic of great engines: Today we visited the Exit Games guys in Hamburg, which do middleware for multiplayer games, including support for the iPhone SDK. This sounded interesting for us because we just started with all this iPhone doodeling and they wanted to meet with us too, so it was a pretty nice and relaxing meeting with a lot of information flying back and forth.

In the meantime if you are bored, check out this great looking golf game (flash based), which the Exit Games guys are involved with too (has nothing to do with the iPhone, but who cares?):

http://www.wgt.com/