Firstly, apologies for the lack of updates and posts. I’ve been using Twitter more for blogging, keeping up to date with things more than using this website as my personal blog.
In addition, as this site really hasn’t been updated since 2008, I keep meaning to do a total re-write of my blog using Django, HTML5 and CSS3 but I keep putting it off — mainly because WordPress is so ubiquitous and has so many ready-made plugins.
However, for the past few months I have steadily been moving into iOS development, picking up the different and numerous skills required, and I’m hoping that this month I will finally realize the goal of getting my first iPhone app in the app store.
My app is actually pretty simple, it’s a turn-based game. No social interaction, no Twitter, no Facebook and certainly no game center integration; as such, it’s not meant to be a commercial product and will be released for free.
I actually have a prototype of it, some of you have seen it; others haven’t. My final version will be a cut-down version keeping it as “basic” as possible.
In terms of frameworks, it’ll use Core Data, Quartz2D, and may leverage the famous cocos2d framework; but I haven’t decided on that because I want to use that in my next project.
In terms of Cocos2d it’s very hard to know where to start, there are lots of books, lots of tutorials, lots of courses/workshops; but I feel probably the best is the iphone games kit as its a full 1-month like tutorial that steps you through the entire process.
It is certainly something I will be looking as my next project.
Another area I’m interested in is sports management games. No, I’m not doing a football management game. There’s way too many of them, and besides there’s no way I could compete with Sigames’ budget; rather I’m thinking about a sports management game for alternative sports.
Anyway, I’m hoping over the next month to get my app done, on the app store and then I can start moving on to more difficult, commercial-ready apps and perhaps even take on small freelance projects.
Oh, for those interested in what’s going on with Tony Jaa and why I never update my blog on articles about Hong Kong/Eastern action cinema, I would advise visiting TwitchFilm.net; their articles are great, in-depth analysis.
I may do a follow-up article on Tony Jaa in the future, even though TwitchFilm pretty much covered it in their article, The rise and fall of Tony Jaa.