I’ve received several requests to create a listing of just the open source games on the open source ios apps list.

So, while performing this month’s update of the open source iOS apps list I have created a listing of open source iOS games.

There are 17 games on the list so far including greats like Wolfenstein, and Doom, many different Cocos2D games, and some hits.  If you know of any other games that are available or have been available in the app store that are open source please post about it in the comments below the list.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

It’s no secret that other than being sometimes overly tedious to implement UIAlertView’s are highly obtrusive taking over the entire app, and forcing the user to make a choice.

Recently I mentioned a control for easier implementation of the UIAlertView class which takes care of the tedious part, but not those times when you want to alert the user, but don’t want to tick them off with an intrusive warning.

This new control does a great job of elegantly alerting the user without being too obtrusive providing an alert panel similar to that found in the TweetBot app (among others).

Here’s a quick video of the component in action:

The component is YRDropDownView from Eli Parkins.  As you can see in the video this control does it’s job well, and it’s also highly customizable.

You can find complete instruction and an example on the Github page here.

You can read more about the control on Eli’s blog here.

A very nice, easy to use control.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome back to another edition of the best resources in iOS development listing the latest resources from this site in order of popularity.

This edition features a great tool for viewing the iOS SDk decomentatiion on your iOS device, easy ways to simulate slow and poor connections within your iOS apps, and a guide to easy downloading and caching of images.

Here are the resources:

Tool: Open Source App For Easy (And Beautiful) Viewing Of The iOS SDK Documentation On iPhone And iPad - A fantastic project you can install on your iOS device and easily view/download/search/bookmark iOS documentation with style.

Tip: Simulating Different Network Conditions To Make Sure Your iOS App Doesn’t Screw Up On 3G - Tools for setting up your internet connection to simulate different networking speeds and quality.

Tutorial: How To Download And Cache Images With The MKNetworkKit iOS Networking Library - A tutorial on how to easily download an cache images using the MKNetworkKit library.

Apple Posts New iOS Development Videos Covering In-App Purchases, Open GL ES, And More - Apple has posted new videos for iOS developers covering many of the topics featured at the iOS tech talks.

Open Source: Excellent Easy To Use iPhone Sliding View Control - A lightweight control for creating sliding views with a very nice clean syntax.

Open Source: Great Block Based UIAlertSheet And UIActionSheet Replacement Library - A great solution for quickly programming UIAlertSheet’s and UIActionSheet’s which can be very tedious to code.

Open Source: Excellent Easy To Use Flip (Flipboard Style) Transition Component - A component for applying “half flip” style animations to flip solid colors and dynamic text or images.

Macros Allowing You To Easily Create Code That Works In Both ARC and Non-ARC Projects - Some macros you can apply to your code allowing it to compile when used within both non-arc projects and arc projects (without turning off arc for the files).

Example: How To Update Apps By Downloading Modified Files From A Server - A great example on updating apps by downloading modified files.

Open Source: Sliding View Control For Showing Information Like Folders On The iOS Springboard - A control allowing you to easily apply the slide similar to the iOS springboard, even the mid-view slide used by Newsstand and Folders.

Open Source: Slick Control For iOS That Makes An Interesting Progress Indicator - A control for making a very interesting sprring progress indicator.

Tutorial: Quickly Create A Jetpack Joyride Like Game With Cocos2D, Box2D, LevelHelper, And SpriteHelper - An extensive tutorial on creating a game with using Cocos2d and the LevelHelper, and SpriteHelper tools.

Thanks for reading, please bookmark and share this post!

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Some time ago I mentioned the FlipView component which has since been removed from Github.

I’ve received several inquires about a similar component, and today came across a component allowing you to create similarl styled transitions both horizontally and vertically.  This component allows you to flip with solid colors (you could use a screenshot to create an effect similar to the FlipView component) and dynamic text.

The component also supports several different types of interaction such as tap to flip and page style flipping.

You can see a video demonstration below:

The component is by Dillion Tan and can be found with an example on Github here.

While it’s not quite the same as the previously mentioned component you can see how the flipping is done.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

The sliding effect used by folders on the iOS springboard, and other Apple  apps such as the Newsstand is a great way to display information.  Sliding effects are becoming an increasingly common way to display information in iOS apps.

Recently mentioned the excellent full featured Viewdeck control, and more recently the MWFSlideNavigationViewController component.

This control is a little bit different allowing you to create a doorway effect rather than just sliding the viewcontroller in a specific direction.

Here’s a quick video demonstrating the control in action:

This control is from Jonathan Willing and you can find the Github repository with the library and a demo project here.

Another great sliding control.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

On this site I feature many different open source libraries, and with the addition of automatic reference counting to the iOS SDK getting these projects to work can be tedious.

If you are trying to use a library that is not created to work with ARC enabled projects you can turn off ARC altogether for the library files, or convert the project.

However, if you are working on a project, and wish not to use ARC you’re kind of stuck.

Fortunately John Blanco has written a set of macros that you can use with your code that will automatically make it work with both ARC and non-ARC projects.

For example you’d use the SAFE_ARC_RELEASE  macro in place of your regular release statement and in ARC enabled projects the statement gets wiped out, and acts as a regular release statement in non-ARC enabled projects.

These macros aren’t terribly complex just a great idea.

You can find the macros along with a usage guide on here.

Very handy if you’ve got an open source library and want to satisfy everyone.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Being able to test different network conditions is important if your app performs any networking .  The last thing you want is the user being stuck, or some functionality not working at all because the user is on a mediocre networking connection.

If you’re running :ion there is a built in utility that adds a new system preferences pane allowing you to set different network speeds, packet loss conditions  and latency found under:

/Developer/Applications/Utilities/Network Link Conditioner/.

You’ll need to reboot after setting things up for your  network limitations to take effect, or reload the settings by executing the command:

sudo launchctl load /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.networklinkconditioner.plist

Thanks to Use Your Loaf for the tip.

If you’re using Leopard there is a handy open source tool from Mike Schrag that will add a preferences pane allowing you to simulate different network speeds that can be found on Github here.

You can also directly use the command line you can use the Unix utility ipfw.  A great Quora  answer specifically on simulating different network conditions using ipfw can be found here.

Of course these settings will all only work in the iOS  Simulator, but it’s still a great way to test things.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

In the past I have mentioned Apple’s posting of videos from the WWDC 2011 conference.

Today I found that in December Apple posted several new videos covering content on user interface design, tuning OpenGL ES games, using instruments, in-app purchases, game center and more.

Apparently of the topics of these videos overlap with Apple’s iOS 5 tech talk tour so if you don’t have a chance to attend one of the talks you might find it especially useful.

You can find the videos on Apple’s website here – you will need to be a registered developer, and the download goes through iTunes.

There’s some great iOS dev content out there, but no one does it better than Apple!

[Thanks to Ole Begemann for the tip!]

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the excellent ViewDeck sliding view controller (which btw has undergone a number of updates).  Thanks to the Path 2 and Facebook apps similar sliding views seem to be becoming very popular, and they definitely make for an excellent wya for users to switch between screens.

Recently I came across another excellent sliding view controller which is somewhat more lightweight, but mainly there are differences in usage, and a few small things in the implementation that make this control unique.

Here’s a video of the control in action:

The control is from Mei Wing, and you can find it on Github repository here.

On Mei Wing’s site you can find extensive documentation, and a nice writeup about the control so you can see what makes this control different.

Definitely another one for the bookmarks.

[via @mugunthkumar]

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

This app is just a great idea, and a very nice implementation allowing you to view the iOS documentation on your iOS device.  Especially on the iPad.

The app is from Ole Zorn and is very easy to set up.  Build it in Xcode to your device, and all the downloading of either iOS SDK or Mac OS X documentation is done right in the app.

Since it’s open source if you’re looking to create a similar app for viewing other documentation you can see how it’s done.

The app makes great use of iOS UI components on the iPad and even allows for bookmarking and opening in the browser if needed. Definitely a step above how Apple’s documentation reads online on the iPad, and you don’t have to connect to the internet after you’ve downloaded the doumentation.

Here’s a quick preview of the app in this video:

You can download the app from Github here.

If you want to view the iOS documentation on your Kindle Ole has a Python script converting the Apple developer documentation to the mobipocket format that can be found here.

Very handy for viewing documentation on the road.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.