Gimmie AR

You’re moving to a new place and are concerned that your furniture won’t fit.  That king size sleigh bed that you purchased and just can’t live without now seems to eclipse the space of your bedroom that reminds you more of a dorm minus the smell of stale pizza.

Instead of going for your measuring tape while crying inside over leaving behind a bed the size of your first car, you whip out your phone confident that if it’s physically possible, you’ll bring all your items.

With a simple scan of your mobile device around your room you’re able to take accurate measurements, place furniture, and get a 3D rendering of what your room will look like with all of your actual furniture.

In the nutshell, this illustrates what augmented reality is.

[caption id="attachment_297" align="alignright" width="150"] An example of Augmented Reality[/caption]

For the analytical mind, it can be defined as a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.

The abridged version - a view of reality (what you see) modified (augmented) by computer generation.

Augmented Reality “AR” has been around for years although many aren’t acquainted with its application.  Hollywood has been using the technology in the creation of countless movies.  What use to take millions of dollars and months of work can now be done with a computer and just a few minutes!

You may not be familiar with augmented reality but you’ve probably heard of its counterpart, virtual reality.  Difference being virtual reality replaces what you actually see, while augmented reality enhances it.  This technology will change how we view the entire world. 

Envision a world where a surgeon has at their disposal their patient’s vital signs and full medical records.

Or a navigation system that goes beyond providing just directions but gives information on weather, terrain and even traffic patterns all on your windshield.

No longer will your business card only encompass your contact information, but now can include a 3D reproduction of your product or even a video of services offered.

AR is not some gimmicky technology like “flying cars of the future” but is already being implemented by some of the top companies in the world.

Phones with the Android and IOS operating systems already contain applications that feature AR in a more embryonic version.

We have truly only scratched the surface of what may be the next revolution in technology.

A Word Game That Does Not Try to Save the World

So what makes our products unique?  One of the rules of marketing is to know your product and be prepared with an elevator speech.  You know, a 30 second pitch prepared, the time of a typical elevator ride about your product and what sets it apart from all others.

So here goes:

Introspectively speaking, due to experiences in life unique solely to us, our acuity is shaped causing anything we create to be different from anyone else.  And blah…blah…blah…

So now that we’ve cleared the air and have identified on a cosmic scale what makes our product unique, looking on a more rudimentary scale, what motivated the creation of Word Crank?  Put simply, a desire to find a word game that we would actually play.

We’re not intimating that there weren’t any good word games out there, because there are.  We were simply looking for a game that combined elements of Word and Arcade style gaming that we both would be interested in.

You see although being siblings, we have two different backgrounds and stakes in our product.  Here comes the very exciting history lesson: 

Our CTO is a computer programmer by profession, and has single-handedly coded all of our projects. Her objective when creating a game centers on playability and usability.  The code has to work and memory allocation is central around enhancing the user’s experience.

The CEO’s experience with coding begins and ends with formulas for excel worksheets.  With a background in business and an avid “gamer”, for him it just has to pop and be fun.  “No chipped paint” as Walt Disney articulated around his reason for creating Disneyland.  It just has to look good!

Combine these and you get Word Crank our very first release.  A word game that’s not buggy, has a very expansive dictionary and does what it’s supposed to do (in our developer voice).  But then it does something else.  It creates an atmosphere with a beautiful UI (User Interface).  A word game with elements of grunge, hip hop, pop, and action!  (Guess whose voice added this)

You see, both voices played a major role in the creation of Word Crank.  We combined programming principles which allow our game to play smoothly and feel effortless.  We also brought arcade to our game by not just allowing you to make the word C-A-T and get 50 points, YAY *sarcastically* but we brought engaging music, cool animations, and some serious themes.

We thank all of our 5k+ downloads on the Android market and are excited that overall reception has been positive with only 6 users rating below 4 stars (send us a message on what you’d like to see to change that to a 4/5) We’re going to keep making cool apps that people like and promise to never take ourselves too seriously but remember it’s just a Word game that doesn’t try to save the world.

A.A.R.F.!! Another Amazing Review Finished!!

Sorry for the dog bark but we @ Sivart Technology are so excited that another review for Word Crank has been done.  Check out the YouTube video done by macrover180:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6KcGrzcPXI

Such an awesome Camera btw!!  A complete facelift of Word Crank is coming to try to keep up with it's siblings on the way (3 more games in the works!!)

SOLUTION: Apple Mach-O Linker Error When Compiling iPhone App

Recently encountered the following error when compiling an iPhone Application, "Apple Mach-O Linker Error".  After some digging I realized that I had included the same file twice in the application.  After removing the duplicate file the error went away.  Hope this helps someone else that has a similar error.

Read more about iPhone Development

Download Word Crank on Android for FREE!

Word Crank now Available on iPhone!

Just got the thumbs up from Apple, so go and check it out all you iPhone users! Word Crank on iPhone

Take a chance on Android

Have you created an Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, or Cut the Rope game?  If so let me start by saying congratulations and may I borrow $20?   

For any other indie developer looking to break into the ever-growing mobile application market understand that competition is fierce, in particular on the iPhone.  With developers spending in some cases an estimated 100,000k + dollars (Angry Birds) it is very difficult to keep up with development companies when your typical indie developer is on a shoestring budget.  So what’s the antsy aggravated atypical developer to do?

Here comes the Android operating system with its open source indie roots.  Android has taken fire by critics for the “lack of quality apps” as well as the difficulty in making money with paid apps.  This leaves some developers scurrying to IOS with its safer
yet overcrowded marketplace.  I suppose the glass can be seen as half empty or half full?

For the developer looking to gain experience that has a vision they would love to share with the world, Android may be the best platform to use.  The market is growing exponentially and figures show that the sales of android devices have outpaced that of the iPhone.  As more developers create projects for the Android market, the quality of the app store is sure to increase as well.

Why not take the less beaten path and try your hand on the android market?  Depending on the type of app that you’re developing, the free model which lends itself to the android market may bring you more success.

Adding Touch Events to a Custom Cocos2d Sprite

In creating our game Word Crank, we decided that we would make the clickable block objects handle the touch events themselves instead of using the CCScene object. In order to do that we had to implement the CCTargetedTouchDelegate.  A sample of the code can be found below:

Inside the Header File:

[sourcecode language="objc"]
@interface CustomSprite : CCSprite <CCTargetedTouchDelegate>
[/sourcecode]

Inside the Implementation File:

[sourcecode language="objc"]

- (void) onEnterTransitionDidFinish
{
[[CCTouchDispatcher sharedDispatcher] addTargetedDelegate:self priority:1 swallowsTouches:YES];
}

- (void) onExit
{
[[CCTouchDispatcher sharedDispatcher] removeDelegate:self];
}
[/sourcecode]

iOS App Submission == "Headache"

So for the past two days I have been attempting to upload our Word Crank Application for iOS to the iTunes Store.  I have been completely unsuccessful.  I constantly receive this error message, "Error communicating with iTunes Store." Now, why is there an error? I have no idea and apparently neither does anyone else.



I have read several, and I mean several blog posts and everyone says something different.  My favorite post is "I just used another machine, and it worked."  Thanks a lot!  I just need to buy another computer and then magically it will work, GREAT!

I have sent an email to Apple to try and get some answers on this issue.  Until then I guess I have to wait, unless anyone out there has any other ideas:-(

Adding Pause/Play Buttons to your iPhone Game using Cocos2d

In developing the iPhone version of Word Crank it took me a while to figure out how to add the pause/play buttons using Cocos2d.  One post that I found suggested using the CCMenuItemToggle class of Cocos2d.  That is exactly what I used and after some playing around with the code I finally was able to get the the pause/play buttons to function properly.

I'm sharing the code below to assist others from going through the endless search that I made.

Source Code

[sourcecode language="objc"]
CCSprite *pauseButton = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:@"pause_button.png"];
CCSprite *pauseButton2 = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:@"pause_button.png"];

CCSprite *playButton = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:@"play_button.png"];
CCSprite *playButton2 = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:@"play_button.png"];

pauseBtn = [[CCMenuItemImage itemFromNormalSprite:pauseButton
selectedSprite:pauseButton2
target:nil
selector:nil] retain];

playBtn = [[CCMenuItemImage itemFromNormalSprite:playButton
selectedSprite:playButton2
target:nil
selector:nil] retain];

CCMenuItemToggle *toggleItem = [CCMenuItemToggle itemWithTarget:self
selector:@selector(pausePlayButtonTapped:)
items:pauseBtn, playBtn, nil];

// Create a menu and add your menu items to it
CCMenu *pausePlayMenu = [CCMenu menuWithItems:toggleItem, nil];
pausePlayMenu.position = ccp(300, 56);
[self addChild:pausePlayMenu z:10];
[/sourcecode]

Source Code Notes

One thing to notice is that I had to create 2 Sprites for each of the pause and play buttons because Cocos2d doesn't let you add the same Sprite twice to create the MenuItem object.

Download Word Crank on Android for FREE!

Word Crank on iPhone

We continue to trudge along with iOS and cocos2d in order to bring you Word Crank on the iPhone.  The iPhone release should be out by the end of August.  We are very excited and look forward to feedback.