Data Points for Indie Devs

Being a mobile game developer (well, part time, at least) is a pretty daunting challenge. It helps to get a real world view and here is a great one, with lots of useful links and plenty of facts about independent developer stats:

• http://thegamebakers.com/money-and-the-app-store-a-few-figures-that-might-help-an-indie-developer.html

Corona SDK Goes Windows

Corona SDK, the multi-platform development kit for iOS and Android had a major update this week. There is now a Windows SDK allowing the same lua language apps which can be compiled into iOS and Android Java apps on the Mac to be developed for Android on Windows.

To accompany this Ansca have included a slew of new features, all announced on their blog:

• Windows SDK:
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/01/corona-sdk-is-now-on-windows/
• Masking, In-App Purchase and Asynchronous HTTP:
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/01/but-wait-theres-more/

This is a really big step and one I believe will lead to some very interesting developments. Personally, I'm hoping for a lot of developer interest, to help bolster the Corona community and Ansca Mobile themselves, as well as WP7 builds.

Finally Developing For iOS

Here's a little post I made a while ago (which languished in draft for some time):

• http://springboardpillow.blogspot.com/2010/06/developing-for-iphone.html

And here's some links I've found recently, now that I've chosen a development platform for iOS - having decided that, essentially, re-learning ANSI C++ with a new IDE (that I can't find any straightforward videos for [the latest version of XCode works slightly - but importantly - differently to that demonstrated in all the online tutorials]) is not my cup of tea...

• GameSalad - no-code game builder:
  http://gamesalad.com/
• Appcelerator - javascript/HTML based apps for utilities, not games:
  http://www.appcelerator.com/
• Corona - 'lua' based 2D development, for 2D games and utilities. My weapon of choice:
  http://anscamobile.com/
• Cocos2D - Objective-C games framework for 2D games:
  http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/about
• Unity3D - full 3D gaming development system, producing some awesome results:
  http://unity3d.com/
• Rhodes - for a mix of things, closest to Corona, I think. Ruby on Rails:
  http://rhomobile.com/products/rhodes/
• Sparrow - open source development for those who know a little Objective-C:
  http://www.sparrow-framework.org/
• Some very useful links if you're looking for a broad range of programming info:
  http://iphonedevdepot.com/tiki-index.php

I've found that for ease of learning the new language and a solid output, Ansca Mobile's Corona platform is performing well, has plenty of good tutorials and material and after the Apple iPhone Developer 1 year license ($99 in the USA, £59 in the UK), the Corona or Corona game license isn't too pricey. Though that might change soon...

Developing For iPhone

There's plenty of info out there about writing for iOS (as it's now called) the operating system which runs on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, so here's my list of stuff for writing Objective-C and non-Objective-C code for iOS:

Objective-C:

• http://itunes.stanford.edu/
• http://developer.apple.com/videos/

Non-Objective-C:

• http://www.saurik.com/id/5
• http://phonegap.pbworks.com/
• http://building-iphone-apps.labs.oreilly.com/ch07.html

Useful blog pages et al:

• http://dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/
• http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/scottcreynolds/archive/2009/02/05/beginning-objective-c-for-the-c-guy.aspx

Relevant Stackoverflow.com posts:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/objective-c+C%23
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1369078/how-does-objective-c-compare-to-c

Stuff You (I) Should Know

The following is a list of APIs and tools which I consider the current state of the art in .NET development (though not exclusively .NET) and that I really should know a lot more about. This should pretty much be complete right now, though I have a nagging feeling I missed one.

• OpenRasta
  http://trac.caffeine-it.com/openrasta/wiki/Doc
• ASP.NET MVC 2
  http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc/
  http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/matthijs/ASPNET-MVC-2-Ninja-Black-Belt-Tips-by-Scott-Hanselman/
• SparkView
  http://sparkviewengine.com/documentation/syntax
• Castle
  http://www.castleproject.org/activerecord/documentation/v1rc1/index.html
  http://gojko.net/2008/11/04/dependency-injection-with-castle-windsor-video/
  http://using.castleproject.org/display/IoC/Home
  http://using.castleproject.org/display/IoC/Fluent+Registration+API
  http://www.castleproject.org/castle/download.html
  http://api.castleproject.org/
  http://blog.coreycoogan.com/2009/11/06/castle-windsor-tutorial-in-asp-net-mvc/
• NHibernate
  http://nhforge.org/
  http://community.jboss.org/wiki/NHibernateforNET
  http://www.nhforge.org/doc/nh/en/index.html
  http://blogs.hibernatingrhinos.com/nhibernate/archive/2008/04/01/your-first-nhibernate-based-application.aspx
  http://www.ayende.com/hibernating-rhinos.aspx
  http://nhforge.org/wikis/howtonh/your-first-nhibernate-based-application.aspx
• MvcContrib
  http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/Wikipage
  http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/releases/view/43560
• NUnit
  http://www.nunit.org/
• Ruby On Rails
  http://ironruby.net/About
• Fluent Programming
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface
• NerdDinner
  http://nerddinnerbook.s3.amazonaws.com/Intro.htm
  http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExtendingNerdDinnerExploringDifferentDatabaseOptions.aspx
  http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExtendingNerdDinnerAddingMEFAndPluginsToASPNETMVC.aspx
  
• Managed Extensibility Framework "MEF"
  http://mef.codeplex.com/
  http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/mef
  http://blog.maartenballiauw.be/category/MEF.aspx

The following list is not complete, won't be for some time and may require time travel to keep reasonably accurate - list of best practice advice/docs:

• http://weblogs.asp.net/rashid/archive/2009/04/01/asp-net-mvc-best-practices-part-1.aspx#prg
  

And some videos which I hope will be helpful:

• MVC
  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6197789949116343290#

Footnote: This needs reorganising into a list of tech, each with a list of links and FAQ/Quickstarts.

Google Wave - Developer Preview

At the latest Google IO conference Google announced their new Wave application, currently hosted on a sandboxed Google Apps for the (very) priveleged 4000 devs at IO. See the best Dev Conv video since the iPod launched here:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ&eurl=http://wave.google.com/&feature=player_embedded

And, a bunch more links - the places I've been reading/watching -up on Wave...

• http://lifehacker.com/5272048/google-wave-is-what-email-would-look-like-if-it-were-invented-today
• http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-drips-with-ambition-can-it-fulfill-googles-grand-web-vision/
• http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/exclusive-video-interview-with-the-google-wave-founders/

I'm completely blown away by the Developer's Preview video on Youtube already - not even half way in - and I can imagine people connecting, editing, reviewing and mashing up conversations in all forms - web, mobile, tv, everywhere! It's so easy to picture someone picking up the Wave service from a blog page, news article page or (what will used-to-have-been) SMS and just deciding that because they can leave text, photos, videos (live and recorded), maps, snippets of anything etc, that they just begin considering it "the way I communicate with anyone who isn't just in front of me right now." Even if they are, it's easier to share photos or any media with those around you, without needing anything more than a wireless connection (forget bluetooth or even peer-to-peer wifi, etc) simply because adding people to your Wave gives them all the content you've got - along with your messages to them (both open and private!)