Archive for the ‘iPhone Dev Meetup’ Category
IGDA Discussion: iPhone Gaming – Aug 13
Monday, August 10th, 2009
I’m back from my vacation feeling rested and relaxed…so let’s jump right into things!
This Thursday, August 13th, the local Toronto chapter of the IGDA (Internation Game Developers Association) will be running a meeting and discussion on iPhone games development. I will be moderating the discussion. If you’re a local iPhone dev, or are interested in iPhone game dev, come on out and take part in the discussion. From the IGDA website, here is the description of the event:
Are you a local iPhone developer? Are you interested in creating games for the iPhone? Do you think iPhone games are swell and want to learn more about how they’re made? Come out to the Toronto IGDA’s next meeting and discussion, focused on iPhone games development! We’ll talk about the state of gaming on the iPhone, business strategies, past experiences, and lessons learned.
The meeting will consist of several short presentations from local developers, followed by a discussion moderated by Owen Goss, from Streaming Colour Studios. Presentations will be given by:
Jason MacIsaac and Keith Makse from Cerebral Vortex Games Dave Wood from Cerebral Gardens Harry Mack, Audio Designer The meeting will take place in room 313 Metro Hall (55 John Street, M5V 3C6) . Doors open at 7:00pm and the meeting will start at 7:30pm.
Around 9:00pm we will head across the street to the Elephant & Castle (212 King Street) for drinks and delightful conversation. We will meet in the back room
A big THANK YOU to the City of Toronto for providing the space and refreshments!
So come on out and take part in the discussion! Hope to see you there.
Owen
Toronto iPhone Dev Meeting – July 8th
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
Sorry for the short notice, but the next Toronto iPhone/Mobile Developer meeting will be next Wed (2nd Wed of the month), July 8th, 2009.
We will be, once again, at the Rich Media Institute in Kensington Market. We have one presentation lined up for the 8th, but I’m looking for one more person to give a 15 minute talk on the subject of your choosing. Note that this meeting is actually for all mobile developers, not just iPhone, so if you want to talk about other mobile development topics, that’s also encouraged. A projector will be available to use for your presentation.
If you want to give a talk, please email me at: owen dot goss at streamingcolour dot com
Details:
Group: Mobile Developers and Designers of Toronto
Date: Wed, July 8th, 2009
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: FITC / Rich Media Institute
Address: 156 Augusta Ave, Toronto, ON (MAP)
Facebook Page: July Meeting – Mobile Developers and Designers of Toronto
After the presentations and any discussion, we’ll probably head up the street to the Embassy Room for a drink or two.
So, if you want to give a short presentation, please let me know as soon as possible.
Owen
August Toronto IGDA Discussion – iPhone!
Friday, June 26th, 2009
I meant to post this earlier this week, but got side-tracked with the whole website hacked thing.
At the August IGDA (Internation Game Developers Association) meeting, I’ll be moderating a discussion on iPhone games development and iPhone gaming. I’m looking for other Toronto iPhone game developers (or just iPhone game lovers) to come to the discussion and share your thoughts with the group.
There’s a lot of interest in iPhone in the gaming world right now, so I want to share, and want you to share, some experiences with other local game developers. If you want to present your game to the group, that’s great. If you want to present some work in progress, that’s also great. We should have a projector there if you want to show something from your computer (for example, your game running in the simulator). We’d also love it if people were willing to present other findings/lessons learned/conclusions they might have about game development on this platform.
There’s a post at the IGDA forums about the discussion:
- August IGDA Meeting (www.igda.org)
If you want to present something (and not just take part in the discussion), please let me know as soon as possible. Send me an email to: owen dot goss at streamingcolour dot com
The meetings are being held at Metro Hall at King & John. After the discussion we’ll be heading over to the Elephant and Castle for some drinks, as usual. Hope to see you there!
Owen
Beginning iPhone Dev for Rubyists in T.O.
Friday, May 29th, 2009
Dan Grigsby, over at Mobile Orchard, is going to be running a two day course on Beginning iPhone Programming for Rubyists in Toronto in July. He’ll be in Toronto for the FutureRuby conference and he’ll be running his class just prior to the conference. You can find out details here:
- Beginning iPhone Programming for Rubyists (www.mobileorchard.com)
Dan’s the guy who interviewed me on the Mobile Orchard podcast. Dan seems like a cool guy, so if you’re a Ruby developer in Toronto with an interest in iPhone development, check out the web page and see if the course might be something that’s up your alley.
Owen
Meet-Up Thoughts and Dapple Update
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Is everyone (in Canada) ready for the long weekend? I know I am! I thought I’d write a post before I head up to my parents’ cottage for the weekend, where I won’t have a computer, let alone access to the internet.
Wednesday night we had the 2nd Toronto iPhone Developer Meet-Up, which was a great success in my mind. We had two great presentation by local iPhone devs. James Eberhardt was able to secure us space at the Rich Media Institute, which turned out to be perfect. There was beer that could be bought, and we had a great conference room with a projector for the presentations. I’m extremely pleased with where the meet-up seems to be heading. I think everyone who came, that I talked to, enjoyed the format. I think we’ll try to stick with the format of two short (15 mins or less) presentations, followed by socializing and drinks.
If you missed the meet-up, the presenters have graciously posted their presentation slides on their sites.
- Rules You Should Break in the App Store (www.xinsight.ca – PDF) – Jason Moore from xinsight gave a presentation on tips and tricks for making the most of the App Store.
- iPhone + Box2D (blog.zincroe.com) – Luke Lutman from zinc Roe Design gave a presentation on using the open source Box2D physics engine with iPhone. He has posted his short presentation slides (that we saw) as well as a longer presentation and an example source code project.
A big thanks to both presenters! It was a great way to kick off the new format for the meetings. I think everyone enjoyed it.
If you haven’t already, please join the Facebook group for the meet-up. It’s called Mobile Developer & Designers of Toronto. I look forward to seeing you in June!
As I mentioned previously, I had be writing a chapter for a book on iPhone development. I’m pleased to say that I submitted my first draft to the publisher this week. As such, I was able to do some coding towards the end of the week. Yay!
I started working on stuff for the Dapple 1.2 update. The biggest new feature will be the inclusion of world-wide leaderboards for the game. I’ve decided to use Google’s App Engine as the server-side technology, as it scales nicely and it means that if I did somehow introduce some kind of server-side security flaw (which I don’t think I have), it’s not running on my own web server.
I’m two days into things and I’m quite impressed with the App Engine stuff. Sure, I had to learn Python pretty quickly, but at this point the server-side stuff is pretty much done. I’m sure it will need some tweaking once I actually hook the game up to it, but all my tests are working. I can add high scores to the database and I can retrieve them in a few different ways. Today I’ll be starting to work on the game-side implementation, which will probably be more work than the server-side. I have to make a few UI changes in the game to support local vs. global high scores and handle all the error cases around connecting to the server. I’m hoping to have something I can send out to testers by mid-late next week.
It feels good to get back to coding again. There are a few other things I want to put into the 1.2 update as well. I’m hoping to submit to Apple by the end of the month. After that, I’ll actually be able to start working on my next project. Shocking!
Have a good (long) weekend everyone!
Owen