Stackpack

Posted by on May 4, 2012 No comments
Stackpack is the ultimate puzzle strategy game. It can be played with up to 4 players on a single iPad. The goal of the game is to conquer the map by overtaking all the other players.You choose the number of players before you start by checking the grey box for each player (at least 2). Then you choose a ‘singleplayer’ game (the human player starts, the other players are computer players) or you start a ‘multiplayer’ game (the human players take turns to place a ball on the map).Players can place a ball on a blank square or on a square already occupied by your own balls.

Each square shows a number, this number represents it’s critical mass (two for corners, three for edges, four elsewhere).

When the number of balls on a square reach the critical mass, the ball explodes and scatter in all directions. If any of these scattering balls land on an opponent’s ball, they are captured and become yours. If this scattering causes other squares to exceed their critical mass, then they explode as well, and so on, until either the explosions stop or there are only one player’s balls left on the map. That player is the winner!

A paid version with more levels and more game-types has already been submitted to the App-Store and is awaiting Apple’s review. It will cost just $0.99 and get rid of all the adds as well.
Our next step is to support the iPhone and iPod touch.
Download the Lite version for free!

Cifrix update, now also supporting the iPhone and iPod Touch!

Posted by on October 19, 2011 No comments

Not to long ago I posted a blog post about a game I helped develop and today we launched version 1.2 which adds support for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Everybody who has already bought the iPad version can download Cifrix on there iPhone or iPod Touch since it’s a universal app!

If you haven’t bought Cifrix already you can buy it on iTunes for just $0,99

Youtube gaming channel announcement

Posted by on October 9, 2011 No comments

A few days ago a friend of mine and myself decided to start a Youtube (please subscribe) gaming channel. We will mostly cover Minecraft but we won’t limit us to that game.

A good gaming channels needs a good microphone so we bought two AT2020 microphones. The AT2020 is a excellent microphone that produces high quality audio. We will try to do all of our commentary live instead of after recording the video to give you the full effect.

All our video will be in at least 720P HD since we don’t like low quality  (just like you I guess)

Thank you Steve!

Posted by on October 6, 2011 2 comments

As you might already know by now Steve Jobs has passed away peacefully surrounded by his family.

Thank you for all your great work Steve!

Apple

Portfolio: Forklift Escape (cross-platform)

Posted by on October 3, 2011 1 comment

Not too long ago we decided to make a game for the Ludum Jam competition. The idea was to create a game in just 72 hours which we nearly completed.

At the final moment it crashed to the point of no repair in the final 10 minutes. It was a real bummer but we decided to continue working on it and release it as an actual game outside of the Ludum Jam. When we first made this game we made it just for Mac OSX but there is already a working clone for Windows and a version for iOS is in development.

The only big thing that we need to finish before we release it is the 35 starting levels and full support on all three the platforms.

To give you a little preview of what to come, here are some screenshots.

The home-screen,

Forklift Escape homescreenAnd a level,Forklift Escape level

Portfolio: Cifrix

Posted by on September 29, 2011 1 comment

Cifrix is an exciting and challenging calculation game that stimulates mental arithmetic. Try to make the number giving as fast as possible by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Train your brain to solve simple math problems faster and easier than you can right now. Cifrix is a game that makes you smarter while still having fun!

Buy it here for your iPad for just $0.99

The iPod/iPhone version is in the making and won’t require you to re-buy the game once it comes out!

The home-screen CifrixHow the game looks

CifrixAnd we’ve won a round!

Cifrix

Mac OSX software review: Memory Cleaner

Posted by on September 4, 2011 5 comments

Just a couple of days ago I received 8Gb or Kingston Ram for my iMac and the OS (Mac OSX Lion) didn’t quite handle it the way I wanted it to.

Just within a matter of hours after installing and using the new memory it allocated pretty much all of it but nothing got released which resulted in me having just 10Mb of memory left while only browsing the web. To fix this I went on Google and searched for methods to regain my memory and I stumbled upon an app called Memory Cleaner ($5,99).

Seeing that it would cost me $5,99 I first looked through multiple reviews which were very positive so I bought and it is amazing! I went from having 10Mb of free memory to having 5,9Gb of free memory! Plus afterwards I have yet to encounter this problem of having way to much allocated memory on my system. I rated it a 5 out of 5 stars on the Mac app store and highly encourage you to buy it as well if you run into these kind of problems on your Mac.

If you’re wondering how this app actually works it’s quite simple. When you tell it to ‘clean’ your memory it creates an object and fills it with random stuff until the cap is reached. You might think that would be just up to 10Mb but the way that Mac OSX handles memory usage it’s not. The system will actually release all inactive memory when an app needs it. Once Memory Cleaner can add no more random data to it’s object it releases it and you’ve got your memory back (which in my case was 5,9Gb!).

My thoughts on using HTML5 over Flash.

Posted by on August 10, 2011 3 comments

Everyone who has watched a Youtube video has used the Adobe Flash Player but for how long will that be the case?

The moment Apple announced that Flash would not be supported on any of their iOS devices was the moment when I knew the end for Flash was near. Ever since, Apple has advertised the use of HTML5. Even though HTML5 will not be finished before a good three years from now it is already being used by many company’s including Youtube.

HTML5 offers the ability to do exactly what Flash does just without the Flash Player. Combine HTML5 with Javascript and CSS and you’ve got a Flash clone.

What are the plus sides to HTML5 over Flash?

  • It works right out of the box with any modern day browser like Firefox, Safari or Chrome. No need for any extra download
  • iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch are supported (and all other devices which run HTML5 and Javascript that do not support Flash).
  • No need to create multiple versions to get it to work on different devices (unlike Adobe AIR which need a specific binary for each platform).
  • The Flash Player can’t crash or generate a lot of CPU and RAM usage since it doesn’t exist anymore.
  • Hardware acceleration like OpenGL and DirectX is built in.

What are the down sides to HTML5 over Flash?

  • All games and video players have to be rewritten from the ground up.
  • Developers will have to learn a new language in order to make the transition.
  • The web-application can’t be easily ported to a native desktop application (like Adobe AIR does).

Even Adobe is indirectly admitting that Flash is coming to an end. They are currently focusing on making Adobe Flash Professional (their app to create a Flash object) compatible with HTML5 and Javascript. I’ve seen some demo’s and they are doing a great job at this! Here are two videos demonstrating Adobe Wallaby & Adobe Edge

Even Lee Brimelow, who is an Adobe employee, is posting tutorials about HTML5 on his Flash tutorial website GotoAndLearn.

I hear you ask “What about Microsoft Silverlight and Unity?” and my answer is the same as for flash, they will both seize to exist in the near future. Unity has a bigger change to stay alive since it’s a cross platform application and doesn’t rely on just the browser. But Microsoft Silverlight is pretty much a copy of Flash. It only works in a browser and therefore HTML5 will take it over.

It is inevitable that Flash will seize to exist in the near future. Until then it is good practice to start learning HTML5 and Javascript today. Web developers will stay in the business and in my mind will get a big boost through HTML5 but they will have to do it without Flash.

What is Whatpulse.

Posted by on August 9, 2011 4 comments

Since July 2009 I’ve been using a little piece of software called Whatpulse. Whatpulse is a tool that counts how many keys you press, how many times you press your mouse button and what distance you move your mouse, that it.

You might think ‘Why would I want something like that?’ and its pretty much just just for the fun of it. Whatpulse has no reward and requires barely any effort for it to work. The only thing you could use it for is to brag against your friends or see how productive you are (depending on what type of work you do of course).

I’ve got it currently setup to pulse (send the data to there servers) every time I’ve stroked 5,000 keys. About 3-5 days ago I’ve re-setup my iMac running OSX Lion and I’m already up to around 100,000 keystrokes. The reason why I have so many keystrokes in such a short time is because I am a developer and I’m quite active in social media like Twitter, Facebook (the least active of these three) and Youtube.

You can join teams (click the link to see my team) and refer other users through a simple link.

One of the best thing about Whatpulse to my mind is that it is available on every platform. You can use it on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX just by downloading the right binary.

Of-course there are people saying that this app is a key logger and it kinda is while it isn’t. Locally it records every single keystroke you make and saves it per key. But it doesn’t save it in any order, it just increases the amount of times you’ve pressed that particular key. The data that is send to there servers is just the number of keystrokes you’ve made not which keys you’ve pressed. I’ve been using it for well over 2 years now and I’ve never had any problems with any of my credentials or privacy.

Binary 101: Saving the data.

Posted by on July 15, 2011 No comments

In this post I will explain to you how your computer stores the binary data on your hard-drive.

Before we start you should know that there are two ways of saving the data. You can save your data in Little Endian or Big Endian. The difference between them is the way that the bytes are ordered. In my previous posts I’ve explained everything about binary in Little Endian. You can easily convert this to Big Endian by reversing the bytes.

When you store data on an hard-drive you always store it as a Byte. Each byte consists of 8 bits. By bundling multiple bytes together you can create higher values up to 64 bits (which explains why there are 32bit CPU’s and 64bit CPU’s). Here is a table of values that you can store on an hard-drive.

Name Amount of bytes used Amount of bits used Signed maximum value Unsigned maximum value
Byte 1 8 128 256
Short 2 16 32,767 65,535
Int 4 32 2,147,483,647 4,294,967,295
Long 8 64 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 9,223,372,036,854,775,807

The Signed maximum value is around the half of it’s unsigned maximum value. The reason for this is that unsigned values cannot be negative but signed values can even though they carry the same data.

The reason why there are multiple ways to store your data is that when you only need to save a number like 2,483 you don’t want to waste 32 bits of unused data. You do however have to make sure that when you read your data you read the correct type of data. When you save two Bytes but read them as a Short you will get a totally different value which is most likely invalid for your purpose.

In my table up above I’ve left out two important values that you can store on your hard-drive. These values are called floating point values. They have a special encoding (IEEE-754) since they are nowhere near normal values.

Type Sign Exponent Significant Total bits
Single 1 8 23 32
Double 1 11 52 64

When the sign bit is 1 it means that the value is a negative value. The significant is just a plain binary value. the exponent decides where the decimal should be and is always a negative value. If the value of the significant is 12345 and the value of the exponent is -3 and our sign bit is 0 it means that this value is 12.345

I hope that you’ve found my previous posts on Binary useful.