Twinkle - THE Twitter Client for Mac

As many people are currently using Twitter to stay in touch with

friends, or just to brabble stuff on the internets, I considered

testing Twinkle, another Application from Tapulous.

After creating an account (this has to be done via internet

on the Twitter Homepage) and installing Twinkle on my iPhone,

I was ready to go.

No, wait: Twinkle urges you also to create a Tapulous ID

(which you might already have, when you installed Tap Tap Revenge).

The reason is: In case that the Twitter Service is down (due to outage) 

you could still post your messages and also, 

this service from Tapulous is providing the storage for your pictures

you attach to your messages.

Additionally it serves for the purpose of the “near location messages”.

The first thing I noticed was that the Application is well polished

graphically.

My first tests were a little bit disappointing (with Version 1.0)

due the fact that the message postage lagged a little bit while writing

and also due to some problems Tapulous had with their S3 Servers.

Those things are fixed in the latest Version 1.1 which can be

downloaded over at the iTunes Store.

The Display of the messages is clean and clear,

yellow bubbles for the people you follow, blue ones for your posts.

The “proximity” function is pretty neat and a great feature of this App.

Due to location services (same used as for Google Maps Application)

you can select to see Messages by people near to you. 

A very interesting function which gives Twinkle a real advantage

over Twitterific for iPhone.

And last but not least, it is important to note that this application

is completely free, so when you are already and avid Twitter Service user,

you might give Twinkle a chance and try it out before purchasing

the Twitterific Premium Software - I personally consider the free

Twitterific Application ad-ware.

You maybe will not pay the Application, but getting “Adds” on it is

kind of disturbing.

I can guarantee if you like using Twitter you will enjoy doing

your Twittering on your iPhone through Twinkle.

Definitely an Application worthy to be installed on the iPhone.

The iPhone a good platform for game developer ?

July 11th 08. We've just witnessed the emergence of a brand new platform. The iPhone now plays alongside Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. What really makes a platform is what developer can do with it. With its SDK, Apple clearly wanted to change the game of mobile development. Forget about Java ME, the Carrier dictatorship, Apple is about to change the rules of mobile game development.

Hardware

With its smooth user interface, full of animation, the iPhone seems to be a pretty decent platform. We will compare it with the two leading portable gaming platform: The Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP. So how does it stack-up?
Of the two leaders, the PSP is clearly the most powerful. With its gorgeous screen of 480 x 272 pixel, its 333 MHz MIPS R4000 CPU (previously 222MHz) and a pretty capable custom graphic chip, the PSP is an excellent playground for the creative developer.
By comparison, the Nintendo DS, the market leader (despite modest hardware spec) sports two ARM processor clocked at 67 & 33 MHz. The two LCD screen can display graphics at 256 x 192 resolution. One of the two screens is touch capable (with a stylus), which enabled an entire new line of games, often targeted at casual gamer. This, in part, explains the success of the console.
iPhone main CPU is a Samsung ARM9 clocked at 412 MHz. The phone also has a PowerVR MBX 3D GPU, the mobile version of the GPU that powered the regretted SEGA Dreamcast. So clearly, the iPhone seems to have what it takes to make visually stunning games. The screen is spacious, offering a comfortable 480×320 pixels resolution and is multi-touch. The multi-touch screen is something unique to this platform, we have yet so see new Gameplay ideas based on this feature, and I’m sure there is room for creativity here. The iPhone features 3 accelerometers that might, again, open new Gameplay opportunities (Wii anyone?).
Mobile game developers have historically been limited by carriers in terms of file size. The iPhone and it's generous storage space (8 or 16 Go models right now) and it's distribution model (game under 10Mo can be downloaded on the cellular network, over wifi otherwise) breaks yet another barrier.
One of the problems of the iPhone hardware, when seen through game developer’s eye, is the absence of physical button. Clearly not all game will be portable on the platform. Another problem is that if the phone is handled horizontally with two hands (like PSP), chances are that no sound will come out from the speakers.
Judging solely on the hardware spec, the iPhone seems to be a pretty solid gaming device with plenty of room for creative developers. Its connected nature adds up even more to an already rather spicy mix.

Software

What about tools for developers ? IDE, debugger, simulator, profiler, etc…anyone with background in handled console development will find Apple offering pretty generous. What about the API’s ?
On the Graphics side, there is access to OpenGL ES, the mobile version of the established 3D API. Supporting PDF rich drawing model, Quartz bring unprecedented level of quality for a 2D API on a mobile platform.

Open AL provides positional audio while Core Audio give access to a simple sound playback, sound manipulation as well as recording.

The iPhone SDK also provide video playback capabilities.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Coming from the desktop version of Mac OS X, those API's are deep and rich, and should cover a great deal of developer's needs.

But the iPhone is a pretty odd platform too. Not every game developer is familiar with Mac OS X set of API's. As opposed to the PC/XBOX360 couple, the Mac has never been a huge gaming platform.

You can code in C and C++ on the iPhone, but Apple promoted language is Objective-C.

This is probably the biggest barrier to entry. Of all developer I've talked to, this point always comes back on the complain list.

The smalltalkesque syntax is for most people a curiosity on it's own. I’ve shown the most basic Cocoa example from Apple developer web site to a few fellow developers and nearly none of them were able to tell me what this very trivial piece of code was doing. Objective-C just looks odd to a developer used to a C style syntax.

So not only you have to be up to the game programming challenge, which would be enough to keep you busy, but you have to fight against the API's and, most importantly, the language.
Don't get me wrong, Objective-C has some very interesting aspect to it, but it seems like a rather stubborn and anachronistic choice for an otherwise modern platform.

Free SDK

The thing that is really huge about the iPhone is its free SDK. You don't need to buy pricey hardware development kit to work on the iPhone. Download the SDK, and you are set to go. Indie game developers will appreciate for sure. And the distribution deal is pretty good too. You pick the price, and Apple keeps 30%. That, for me, looks like an ideal environment for innovation. I wouldn't be surprise if the most creative games of next year were released on the iPhone.

Market & opportunities

The iPhone is a fast growing platform. Apple has a target of 10 millions iPhone by the end of 2008. Most people, including me, think Apple will over achieve this target by large. Just look at the momentum of the iPhone 3G currently has. It's sold out pretty much everywhere. It's the new big thing, the Wii phenomena 2.0 if you want. People are buying it like crazy. And I’m not accounting for iPod touches. More over, when you look at the demographics, people spending that kind of money on a mobile phone and an associated plan, those people are no kids. They have money to buy your games. You can look at PS3 sells figures to give you some perspective. There’s currently about 14 millions PS3 sold in the world. Sony expect to reach 20 millions by the end of this year. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more iPhone/iPod Touch than PS3 pretty soon. And because of the Apple deal, the fact that there are no physical medium, no resellers, etc… The games are pretty cheap too. Currently, the average price is $10. When you compare this to a PSP or a DS title...Of course the few real commercial games released so far may not be as deep or as long as a $60 PS3 title. But not every game needs to be that complex, something hard to achieve on a classic portable system because of games price tag, and therefore customer expectations. But with a $10 price tag you have to make volume, that's for sure.
With the iPhone you also escape the carrier hegemony. They used to make the rules, but with Apple the game is changing. Some might argue that you escape a dictatorship to fall into another, but as we've seen, it could be worst.

Gaming Platform ?

With its frequent updates, the iPhone hardware spec could evolve too.
Nobody knows how Apple will handle this, but that could potentially brakes the console style of development of fixed hardware, making it harder for developer to fine-tune their game. Something that would be closer the PC or Mac game market with minimum hardware spec...not really sexy.
The potential is clearly here. There are few glitches here and there. It is impossible to provide a game demo that can be upgraded to the full game when purchased. The battery might be a problem too. With 3G and OpenGL 3D graphics the device's autonomy is clearly reduced.
But overall I see great opportunities for game developers on this platform.

Some links:
EA Vet Young Reveals iPhone Publisher Ngmoco
Is The iPhone A Major Opportunity For Game Innovation?

Watching DVD on your iPhone

So you have a bunch of DVD that you would like to be able to watch on the go, on your iPhone. In this little guide I'll present you HandBrake, a DVD converter for Mac OS X that will transform your DVD into a video that is playable on your iPhone.

But before we start, DVD ripping might be illegal in your country. Please check your local legislation before using Handbrake.

Handbrake is a free application for Mac and PC initiated by french developpers Eric Petit and Laurent Aimar. It is an Open Source project and the list of active developers is already pretty impressive. Looks good for the future of the app.



A quick glimpse at the presets will show you that handbrake support a wide variety of output devices. AppleTV, PS3, PSP, you name it. But we will focus on settings for the iPhone or iPod Touch.


When you insert a DVD a launch the app, it will analyse the disc to find the available audio tracks, subtitles, chapter layout, ect... And the great thing about Handbreak is that it will be able to export those informations to the iPhone video player.

So on the iPhone it is possible to switch languages.

...and choose a chapter.

And select subtitles...Just like a movie purchased on the iTunes Store.
The great thing is that you no longer have to re-buy a video on the store that you would already owned in DVD.

I'm not totally convinced by the "iPhone/iPod Touch" preset. It seems to be targeted to hight quality video in order to output on a TV with a video cable plugged on the iPhone. But I have the DVD for this, I more interested in adapting the video for playback on the iPhone, looking directly at the phone screen.

First, to save battery it is better to have a video resolution that matches the screen resolutions. It is Ok to have black stripes but if the iPhone has to scale the video it will consume more processing power either on the CPU or/and the graphic chip, and so drain power. Even if the iPhone has some hardware scaler support it might consume more if active, that's clearly not what you want in a mobile usage scenario.



The iPhone screen has a resolution of 480x320, pretty dense for such a small device. So if you want to be battery friendly try to choose an output resolution that matches it closely.

I've choose to use x264 encoding over regular MPEG4. The video quality/file size ratio is clearly better. Unfortunatelly the encoding process will be longer with this setting. I still need to do some testing to find out if H264 is battery friendly on the iPhone. I'll give an update on this blog as soon as I find out.

The default bitrate is clearly way too high for such a small resolution and will produce large files. Again on a 16 Go iPhone you may not want to spend 2 Go just for a single movie. Setting the bitrate to 350 seemed to be a good compromise between video quality and file size. I've choosed to allocate aproximativelly 4 Go for videos on my device, with a 350 bitrate, I can store about 8 movies on my phone. Just reduce the bitrate if you want smaller file size.

The encoding itself takes about an hour on my MacBook. Good news, Handbrake take advantage of a multi CPU machine.


On Mac OS X you can see the encoding progress on the Dock icon. A pretty nice detail.

Spinner Prologue Review

On the AppStore since day one, Spinner Prologue is a funny game developed by Fuel Games. The game is free, and it is just a prologue, a glimpse of what the full version will be, so it is very hard to be harsh with it. Dammed! You know how much I love doing harsh review…

Gameplay

You play as an arrow that is irretrievably moving into the direction you are pointing at. Instead of controlling the arrow directly, you tilt your touch device around and the game will detect the movement using iPhone’s accelerometer and change the direction of the arrow. While tilting your phone in front of you, the world looks pretty much stable on the screen. A vertical line on the screen will be almost stable. No matter how you tilt your phone, it will stay vertical.

Good good good, good vibration…

People familiar with LocoRoco will see a pattern here, except that instead of rotating the world using left and right trigger, you tilt your phone to give a direction to the arrow, and the world stays stable. Pretty neat. Using an accelerometer as a Gameplay element isn’t something new. It is one of the ingredients of the insolent success of the Wii receipt. But when you turn your WiiMote, the TV does not turn with you, only the picture. And this is what is so special about this game. The world is visually stable, when you tilt right, the word is not turning right, but the arrow will always point toward the bottom of your touch device. It’s hard to explain but it’s a refreshing sensation, it’s immersive and easy to pick up. Never saw that Gameplay on a gaming console before.

Spinner Prologue successfully pass the throwTheDammGameIntoYourGirlfriend’sHandWhoByTheWayHadNeverPlayTheGameBefore test. The Gameplay is very intuitive, almost natural.

The prologue

So you make your way through the first couple of levels and at first everything is just pure fun. At first the Gameplay overcomes all the problems. At first…

Act I: And here comes the troubles…

There are various problems with this game. First thing on my list: the beginning of levels. The levels are designed in a way that you have to reposition your touch device in the normal position before you start to play. If you don’t, you just lose. That’s it. Pretty frustrating. It wouldn’t be that bad, you are at the beginning of the level after all, but people really hate to lose, specially when it comes from a flaw in the game. Which lead me to my second grip: the messages. Every time you lose or start a new level, you get a little tip in a standard dialog box, which whatever tilt you gave to your iPhone, will always be displayed as if your device was straight. Let me tell you, when you play that game, especially in the dark, your device is being rotated so much that you are completely lost if you are asked to straighten the iPhone. It is Ok to ask the player to straighten the phone but you need a visual anchor of some kind and the game should be paused until the phone is in the expected position. I don’t think the message dialog thing does the job right. And please, stop repeat the same message again and again…

Act II: The message strikes back, and back…

When you loose, you get a little hint. That’s nice.

When you loose 20 times, you get the same hint, 20 times.

Nice at first, those hints soon appear to the frustrated player as taunts, it’s like the game is making fun of you. And yes you die a lot in this game. After some very easy levels, the game difficulty suddenly peaks at some very specific spot on the map where you have to do the perfect move; there is not a single pixel of tolerance. It would be Ok if I could restart just before the damm difficult turn, but noooooooo, you have to do the all maze all over again. And you have to remember the correct path, otherwise you’ll restart from the begening…again. I always hated those brain training games :).

Another problem is that you have no choice but to fail in order to succeed. BUZZZ, WRONG ! Common guys, that’s Gameplay 101. You never force your player to lose just because you took the wrong path. I mean in a maze the odds are pretty high that at first you take the wrong path, right? Sometime the corridors are large enough so you can do a U-turn, but even then, you have to turn your phone so fast that it is not easy to be accurate after that.

Personally I’m not convinced about the maze aspect of the game. Trying to find my way into this daedal is not what made the game fun to me. Trying to avoid touching the wall was the fun part, unfortunately there wasn’t much variety in the level design here. Kuru Kuru Kururin shares the same Gameplay roots. You have to make it through a maze without touching the walls, but the situations, the different maneuvers, the speed variations, contributed to make the Gameplay very rich (hint hint).

Epilogue

I’m not fair. I’ve just reviewed this game as if it was a full retail version. But it is because I enjoyed so much at the beguining that I really expected much more. They call it a prologue. The name is maybe unfortunate (Polyphony digital took the same name scheme for Grand Tourismo. GT5 prologue is just an appetizer on the content, but the engine and the Gameplay is pretty much there), it’s probably more of a tech demo, or a Gameplay prototype if you like.

It’s my favorite free game on the AppStore so far. A Gameplay experience that you get only on the iPhone right now. I really would like to encourage the developer. You have the idea, it’s working.  I think you could do an amazing game with it. I’m looking forward to play the full game !

Tap Tap Revenge

Tap Tap Revenge is an awesome rhythm game created by Mike Lee and his Team over
at Tapulous, a company he founded after leaving Delicious Monster where he worked together
with Wil Shipley on the release of Delicious Library 2.

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The game itself is quite simple: you have 3 lines on which glowing orbs are “falling” down.
You have to tap on them at the right moment to the right rhythm of the song playing when the
orbs reach the bottom line.
Additionally (if set in the menu) there might be arrows instead of orbs falling down, indicating
that you have to shake your iPhone/iPod Touch either left or right.
Talking about this “shake” thingy: I found it a little difficult to play shaking while tapping and I have to admit that I turned this off in the options.

Also, the Game can be played by two persons at the same time on one device (which is the greatest game up to now for 2 players sharing one device).

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For starters, I would like to recommend to play through the tutorial, to get a feeling on how to
play on on how to do some wacky combo points.

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The one player mode has 4 difficult levels selectable (Easy, Medium, Hard and of course Extreme).
For even a longer gaming experience, the game has the possibility to download new tracks (as soon as there are some released) from the Tapulous Website.

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Overall, the game is just great. It has stunning graphics (for a rhythm Game) the concept of 2 players on one device is well made and great to play.
I enjoyed playing up to the normal level and trying to get some nasty high scores to be published on the Tapulous Leaderboard.

Currently, they are heading a Tournament on their website.
The Songs are well made, but again, there will be soon new ones to be released and hopefully,
there will be songs available for everybody’s taste.

I would strictly recommend this App to be the first one you install on your new Firmware 2.0 device,
as not only it is a freebie, but also a great and polished game.

You can download the game via iTunes Store or via this link: Tap Tap Revenge

Let the Tapping begin!

UPDATE: Tap Tap Revenge is now available as V1.1.

                   After installation of the Update, it is now possible to

                   download new songs!