Ugh. Every now and again I run across something that is (now) so trivially obvious that I’m embarrassed by its simplicity and my oversight.
To add a background image to the main view of your UIViewController, you can add a UIImageView at the same size as the UIView, make sure it is the UI element furthest back in the view and then load image into it.
Or you can forgo the additional UI component and simply
[self.view setBackgroundColor:[UIColor colorWithPatternImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"myBackgroundImage.png"]]];
Doh.
Posted
on September 17, 2010, 12:30 pm,
by admin,
under
AWS,
iPhone Apps.
ShortPath 1.0 has been submitted to the AppStore for review. So what’s next? ShortPath 1.1 of course!
I’ve two items that I want to get into 1.1 1) Scoring & Leaderboards via Game Kit 2) Optimize the user experience. I’m going to share a little bit of what I’ve done to address the latter.
Themes
ShortPath is a free iPad puzzle/optimization game. The revenue generated will be through AdMob ads (for now — possibly switching to iAds?) and through IAP of themes that the user can use to change the look and feel of the game. There are screenshots here of some of the awesomeness that Mike Berg (@weheartgames) put together for the Around Town and Dots themes.
Each theme contains several graphics, a few sounds and a longer music track. The themes that are currently (or will be soon) available for IAP are approximately 6MB zipped files. Not terribly large but just enough so that downloads were taking a bit too long in some instances (upwards of 5min in extreme cases!) — long enough that I became concerned that the download time was going to lead to a poor user experience. At first, I blamed Comcast (my cable/internet provider) for the download, figuring that they had somehow throttled my bandwidth in light of all of my IAP testing and multi-MB downloads throughout the day (in addition, there have been the large XCode downloads. Thanks Apple!)
To test this theory, I tried the downloads from various locations around town and found that there were still lengthy download times. Not as bad, but still unacceptable. Next suspect: 1&1, my hosting provider.
Posted
on September 15, 2010, 7:21 pm,
by admin,
under
iPhone Apps.
Cheers: Pocket Frogs
If you haven’t heard anything about this one, you will. Starting Now. Lots of fun raising frogs, taming and breeding them. Nicely implemented social interaction to trade frogs, visit other players habitats, etc. Social interaction requires membership on the Plus network which is only a downer in terms of having YAL (yet another login). Integration with Game Center would have been nice, but in any event you don’t have to use the social features of the game to have fun with it. Awesome graphics. Best of all its *free*. My kids haven’t put it down since I brought it home this evening. iPhone and iPad. Free. AppStore Link
Jeers: Detroit News
Detroit News — Good for the Detroit News to find its way onto another digital avenue — I’m not sure that Admob ad revenue will be enough to save the paper though. The UI is flat and umimpressive. This is a real slap in the face to the Michigan iOS developer community: the ‘About’ page proudly displays that the app was created in Minneapolis, MN. While I’m sure that the parent company of Detroit News is responsible for hiring DoApp Inc to create the app, a bit of sensitivity may have been in order. There are several highly talented and competent iOS development shops right here in Metro Detroit that would have jumped at the chance to create this app. Free. App Store Link
