Because everyone needs a piece of the Internet…

For the moment, MTG Arcanum is off the App Store.  I am busy over the summer working, and I cannot (legally) work on MTG Arcanum or any other iPhone app.  Because of this, I’ve let my App Development agreement cancel for the summer.  In August, when my internship is over, I will join again.

I haven’t been able to work on it as much as I want to, nor as much as I should.  Depending on what happens in the fall (at school and such), you may see it again.  If not, thank you everyone for your support, and if you have any features, I’ll see what I can do in the future.

Funny, isn’t it?   I haven’t had any time to really work on my iPhone apps, until finals week.  And now, here I am, updating the Magic App.  Should I be studying?  Probably.  I already have a bit.  I just really wanted to push forward with this update.

Why?  MTG Arcanum was my first iPhone app.  I learned a lot building it.  By the time I was done, I was an entire league ahead of where I was. But what did that mean for the code?  It meant that the code I was writing at the end was a lot better than the code I was writing in the beginning.  And by better, I mean “OMFG, how did I write that?”

So what am I doing?  Refactoring.  I have gone back through all my code, and redone many parts of it.  In the end (I’m getting there), I’ve made the code a lot more manageable, useable, and updateable.  I’ve also updated a lot of my own documentation about the app, so future partners can work on it easier.

However, in the processes of refactoring, I’ve had to make some design decisions.  Some of these were easy, like removing single player, and adding a two player instead.  Others have been more difficult, such as my decision to remove profiles.

These decisions I have made in the app’s best interest.  I want it to be more useable, easier for the users, and have more functionality.  I didn’t think profiles were doing enough, and they were too confusing for the user.  In the end, I decided to remove them.  Of course, now I am dealing with the consequences, such as how to reset the game in multiplayer.

This is where I want your opinion.  If you are actually reading this post, and you’ve used MTG Arcanum, and you care enough to send me an email, please do so!  I will personally respond to every email I get (as long as it’s not spam…), and I will be more then happy to discuss features, ideas, or bugs that you want to see fixed or put into a new version of MTG Arcanum.

No, I’ve not been dead.  But close!

School work has come along and nicely bashed my head in a bit.  Rather obnoxious and rude, but I guess I should have seen it coming.  I decided that not failing my classes was important, and have been working hard.  Don’t worry, I should keep my 3.6 GPA.  I hope at least.

But, in this time, I have managed to do some work.  The Innovation Center here at RIT finally got back to me and hopefully I’ll be able to setup an appointment with them.  We’ll discuss the future of StormSoft and maybe secure some funding.  I could really use an iPad to develop on.  (And play with!).

I also pushed out an update for Dot Frenzy.  It entered “In Review” status in less than an hour from being submitted, but has yet to actually come out of that status.  We’ll see how it goes.

My friend and I are working on Refactoring the code for MTG Arcanum to make it easier to update.  We’re also creating a new launch screen for it, and removing Single Player.  In it’s place you’ll have a 2 player tournament mode, as well as profiles going bye bye.  It’ll actually be a pretty big update.  Sorry it’s been taking so long, like I said, school started to rape me.

Next quarter should be better, so I’m excited to get there!  We have started designing our next, next app, and it’s going to be freaking awesome!!  Keep tuned in for the latest and greatest coming out!

As you can probably tell by the new “Available On the App Store Now” Icon to the left, my newest Game, Dot Frenzy is out.  Now there are some things to discuss…

First off, some credit is due.  My friend, Jason has helped design the game.  We originally designed it back during the school year, and I started working on it this summer.  He helped in the regard, but I did all the coding for the game.  I had a graphic designer do the artwork as well, the same one that did MTG Arcanum.

I highly recommend checking the game out, it’s worth the $1 price, and will keep your kids/friends/ and perhaps even yourself entertained when you are cranky.

However, since this was a joint effort (Kinda), it marks a transition.  I’ve been wanting to start my own business, and so this app really is the first release of that business.  Of course, that requires a new website and everything, so I’ll probably wait until school to really get that underway, but StormSoft (yes, that’s the name) will become a big player soon. 

I have sent Apple my second application of the summer, Dot Frenzy!  It’s an interesting small game that will test your reflexes and endurance in play.  You have to hit dots as they appear on the screen as fast as you can.  Sounds simple?  It starts off easy, but gets harder and harder as you go.  The games generally don’t last too long, and there are even three different modes to play.  I think it’s the perfect app to buy your kid (or for yourself, if you are into that sort of thing), and it will entertain them for a awhile here and there.  It’s not the sort of thing you can play for hours like some RPG’s, but it keeps you coming back for more.

It’s OpenFeint enabled, so you can see how well you are doing against everyone else.  I’ve enjoyed playing the game myself, which is a good thing, so I hope you do too!  I’ll get a page up soon about it, I’m feeling a little down at the moment because my next app (It’s gonna be sweet) has a bug in it.  Sadness.

Also titled: One hack to get around UINavigation Controller not supporting orientation changes correctly.

I think this is a well documented bug, discussed here, and here, and here.  Basically, if you are using a UINavigation Controller in your app, the controller completely ignores all of your orientation preferences.  This isn’t an issue if you only use portrait, or if you only use landscape, or if you support both in all your views, but if one of those is false; you’re in trouble.  In MTG Arcanum, Multiplayer (for now) is strictly landscape.  It gives us more room left to right, which I think is important.  I’m working on enhancing Multiplayer, but for now, it’s Landscape.

So, in version 1.2.0, where I include a UINavigation Controller, my app went all wonky.  Multiplayer loaded Portrait, and that did not look good at all.  So, what did I do?  First thing off, in the Multiplayer

- (void)viewDidLoad

I put the line:

[self.navigationController setNavigationBarHidden:YES];

That got rid of the Navigation bar, which was taking up too much room.  But then, instead of using “Push” with the UINavigation Controller, I fell back to some old code to get the new view onto the screen.  One that, you know, respected my orientation preferences.

MultiPlayerViewController *controller = [[MultiPlayerViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@”MultiPlayerView” bundle:nil];
controller.delegate = self;
controller.modalTransitionStyle = UIModalTransitionStyleFlipHorizontal;
[self presentModalViewController:controller animated:YES];
[controller release];

Basically, this makes the controller, assigns the delegate back to the view that calls it (which you then use to get rid of the Multiplayer view, as shown in the Utility app), makes the transition, and then shows it.  This causes the Multiplayer view to be loaded in a different way, one that actually correctly orients it.  So now the rest of the app lives with the UINavigation Controller, while Multiplayer is free!  It’s wonderful!

The next update of MTG Arcanum is being worked on.  I’ve been busy with some other projects, but those are having some issues, so I decided to concentrate on getting MTG Arcanum of to speed.  There are some things that bug me about the app, mainly I can’t get to the “Tools” menu from Multiplayer.  But that has been changed!!

This new update will allow you to access the tools menu from multiplayer, and I am completely  (more or less) redesigning the home screen.  It now looks much more like the Facebook application, which means when I put in new options, it will be a piece of cake.

Speaking of new options, I’m also finishing up the Game log feature.  This will automatically record the damage dealt in a game to the players, so you can look it over.  It also stores the game logs, so you can look them over after the fact and remember awesome games you’ve had.  Or terrible losses, up to you.  But this next update will really move MTG Arcanum toward the top.

Question for anyone who actually reads this; would you be interested in a dedicated “Tournament” mode?  It would basically be Single Player on Steroids, meant for players using this app in Standard Tournaments.

Nothing too special, and you already knew it was coming, Apple finally just got around to saying “Oh yeah, this guy can code.”  So now it’s out and you can get the juicy updated awesomeness!  iOS 4 compatibility is really sweet.  Not really.  I mean, unless you have an iPhone 4, you probably won’t even notice a difference.

But, it paves the way for me to get working on the next update… which I already have almost done!!  Some juicy awesome?  I think so.  Mainly fixes that bug me, but hopefully I’ll get something sexy in there for all you.  I’ve done some under the hood changes which make my life easier, and there are some bugfixes and then some usability changes.  Nice stuff, you’ll like it.

Stay tuned!

It appears Apple is slacking pretty hardcore on the “Approve my update” for MTG Arcanum.  iOS compatibility is not that hard to ask for, I mean, it probably should have been there in the first place, but not having it allowed the app to go through the approval process a lot faster.  Oh well, at least the app is out there and some people are seeing it.

Anyways, the next update (after iOS compatibility) is going to be useful.  I’m working on getting the Tools into the Multiplayer, and simplifying the options.  Instead of having the 4/5 buttons in the middle of the screen, there is only one, which launches a popup.  The popup will have the remove/add/reset buttons, as well as all the other options you will want (Coin flip, dice, with more to come).

Also… A ferocious frenzy ‘f fantastic fanatical freaking (awesome) dots are coming!

This next release which I submitted to Apple is mainly for iOS 4 compatibility.  I finally got around (and Apple’s tools looked stable enough) to making sure it worked.  For the most part, everything was fine.  There were some small issues in Single Player mode, with the Pickerwheel getting called twice (how does that even happen?), but I was able to fix those with some awesome hacks.

So, with everything going well, the update should be on the market in a week or so.  I also updated some images, so the download size is up to 5 mb (Oooo, scary).

If you have any comments, please let me know on the forums!

P.S.  Long live the Dev Team!