I receive e-mails every few days from people who tell me they’ve bought a book or number of books on Amazon or at the local bookstore.  Unfortunately most of the “Beginner” material is meant for experienced developers who are new to the iPhone or iPad platform.

If you’re a real beginner without any program experience you might need to take a step back and look for teachings from a different perspective.

A friend of mine told me about a book that they’d been using by Dr. Rory Lewis, in his book he mentions some screencasts that he has used to help teach students at the University of Colorado.  They look great for the absolute beginner and if you’ve been struggling and just want to get your foot in the door I suggest checking them out. These don’t get into very advanced material, but are very accessible and high quality. You can find the screencasts here.

The book Dr. Lewis mentioned these screencasts in (although he does mention on his website you don’t need to buy it) is available here.

Thanks for reading, if you liked this please share it.

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

While some of those libraries are good, I love it when someone comes up with something even easier.  I found out on Twitter the other day about a great new open source library called Seriously which appears to be a very promising library for easy communication with web services and JSON parsing (XML parsing coming soon).

Just take a look at this code to grab the background image url from a twitter account:

    NSString *url = @"http://api.twitter.com/1/users/show.json?screen_name=probablycorey";

    [Seriously get:url handler:^(id body, NSHTTPURLResposne *response, NSError *error) {
        if (error) {
            NSLog(@"Got error %@", error);
        }
        else {
            NSLog(@"Look, JSON gets parsed into an dictionary");
            NSLog(@"%@", [body objectForKey:@"profile_background_image_url"]);
        }
    }];

Looks pretty good to me, short and sweet.

You can download Seriously on Github here:
http://github.com/probablycorey/seriously

If you liked this, please share it!

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve been asked since then when I would come out with the tutorial.   I was finally able to get around to completing the source file, and I’ve added line by line (well pretty close) comments in plain english to make it easier to follow.

The above video utilizes the exact source code from this tutorial running in the iPhone simulator.

Following the suggestions of a friend of mine who is just starting to learn this I’ve used as few methods as possible, and made extensive use of autorelease objects to make the flow easier to follow for beginners.

The tutorial features:

• Loading/Placing Images
• Animation
• Touch Events
• Text
• Sound Effects
• Background Music
• Buttons
• Resetting The Game

Coming up next week I will be posting a more comprehensive tutorial, but I am posting the source code now.  If you look through this code and the comments you should be able to grasp what is going on, and I hope that the upcoming tutorial will fill in the gaps. Be sure to come back next week when the full tutorial is posted!

I recreated this from scratch using Sparrow Framework and Objective-C because in my findings it was easiest to follow for a beginner looking to create an action game.

Things could change a little as I haven’t really looked through it myself.. just quickly coded it and wrote line by line comments. If you open it up, and are wondering which files to look at to understand things go to the Game.h and Game.m files.. the app delegate files were created automatically with the Sparrow project and I didn’t comment those.

Update! I have modified the project to remove an error that occurred on some systems due to a recursive search being done in the project for already included files.  Please re-download if you encountered this problem.

You can download the source with music/sound effects here:
BalloonGameTutorial

Graphics are included so the example will run but are slightly different because I am using graphics similar to those in the video in my own game.

As far as licensing goes feel free to use this in your own apps, and if you do send me a message or post a comment about it, and I’ll mention it on this site. You may not use any portion of this project in your own tutorials, books, etc. (and definitely don’t submit it to a site buying tutorials.. you know who you are!) without permission.

Please be sure to check back next week when the entire tutorial is posted which will give you a much better idea of how to extend/use this source code and utilize the Sparrow Framework.

If you have any questions as to why I did something or have any suggestions for the tutorial then please post them below — it will help to make the final tutorial better.

Also, if you could share this post that would be great too and help motivate me to make more!

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

It’s no wonder as many web services distribute data using the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format.  A few libraries have been created for the iPhone, but good examples are difficult to come by.

Something else that I’ve also seen people search for one this site is translations, and with the use of one of these JSON frameworks it is possible to gather data from Google Translate, and parse that data without to much trouble.

On that note, Ray Wenderlich has created an excellent How To Translate Text With Google Translate and JSON on the iPhone tutorial which goes through the process of using the open source JSON-framework in a step-by-step manner to translate data wihin an iPhone application.

So if you are looking to figure out how to get this done I highly suggest checking out this Objective-C JSON tutorial.

Thanks for reading, if you found this useful please share it!

[Source: Ray Wenderlich]

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

What I don’t like about multiplayer games is handling all the small details such as building a lobby for the players to find each other through, and making sure all the small details work.  And in the end with an indie title you may not even know if there will be players who will play it multiplayer.

Fortunately OpenFeint has made this considerably easier when they added turn based multiplayer to their already extremely popular social gaming platform on iOS devices.

Kwigbo, developer of the open source game Artifice (listed in our open source iphone app listing) has created a straightforward tutorial showing the code that he uses within his game which you can find here:
OpenFeint Multiplayer In Artifice

The tutorial features code showing you how to use OpenFeint in order to:

• Create a new game
• Find open games
• Challenge friends
• Take turns
• And More…

Some details about OpenFeint’s multiplayer capability are stated here:
http://www.openfeint.com/ofdeveloper/index.php/kb/article/000074

This looks like a very nice and easy to add turn based multiplayer into your games.

If you liked this, please share it with others!

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

Having to create these buttons was something I was doing at the time, and it surprised me that many others seemed to be doing the same thing.

I was asked by a couple of people if that class was really safe to use, and it was because all you were doing was saving the buttons, and then using them in your own apps — it is perfectly alright since you would just be using png files, but Hwee-Boon has submitted an even easier solution.

The solution is a set of classes that utilize core animation to create the buttons so that no private APIs are used.

What makes this solution easier is that you can just use interface builder and then add in one line of code to set up how you would like the button to look.  No need to export png’s, and load them in.  You can also set them up using code.

The solution along with sample code can be found on Github here:
http://github.com/hboon/GlassButtons

1. In the interface builder declare the buttons as IBOutlet UIMOButton as opposed to IBOutlet UIButton.
2. Create your buttons with the UIRoundedRect type, and link them to the UIMOButtons you declared making sure the class identity is set to MOGlassButton.
3. When the xib is loaded execute the appropriate method for color and size ie. setupAsGreenButton setupAsSmallGreenButton.

Overall the code is very easy to follow, and looking at the demo project you can easily see exactly how things are done.

You can see in the screenshot below how things can easily be laid out in interface builder and the results including some buttons layed out using code:

Be sure to check out Hwee-Boon’s Posterous for further details (or to just say thanks):
Glass Buttons in iPhone Apps Without Using Image Files

If you like this then please share it with others.  Thanks!

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

You may have heard that there is an undocumented API in the iPhone sdk known as UIGlassButton which allows you to create buttons, and there’s been some pastie code floating around to save those buttons.

I recently needed to make a few of these buttons, and when I went around to find the code again I stumbled upon something even cooler, someone had hacked up a UIGlassButton button maker with sliders allowing you to tweak the button size, and color, screenshot below:

Overall not the most complicated project, but one that is tremendously useful and since it’s open source you can add in more parameters if you like.  I hope you like it – this is the Github where the files can be downloaded:
ButtonMaker

Just compile in Xcode and run in the simulator, the files will save to the which is shown when you hit the save button even a highlighted version of the button is saved.

Enjoy – I hope you find it as useful as I am.

[Source: Tapadoo]

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

Playing sounds using Apple’s AVAudioPlayer is pretty simple, and there is quite a bit of instruciton on how to do that.

OpenAL is another story as most of the documentation and wrappers come from other platforms, and while there are a few libraries out there that wrap OpenAL commands into an easier to use library I’ve found a new one that I really like.

The librar is from Karl Stenerud and is known as Object-AL-for-iPhone.  What’s great about it is that he’s included some terrific demos so you can easily figure out how to do things such as pan multiple sounds, and change pitch with ease (see the picture above for the list of demos included).

The syntax is great, and changing the position of a sound source is an absolute breeze.  Karl has done a great job of documenting things and there is even a PDF file included with the Github project that lets you step right in and use it.  It’s very simple to just take the library, drop it into your project and get started.

Check out the github project here:
ObjectAL on Github

Btw, if you’ve created an open source library and need some exposure submit information about it here and I’ll be glad to check it out, and put it in front of the 2,000+ daily visitors to this site.

[Source: iDevGames]

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

The eBuddy success story comes to mind, but for most of us it’s a tough way to earn money, and to earn the most money we’ve had to put a price tag on things.  It’s really been an up or down thing, and since the early rush from advertisers the payouts went down dramatically and stabilized.

Apple has added their iAds platform into the mix which is supposed to create ads so engaging that the end result for developers is suppose to be much higher ad revenue when compared  previously provided. We’ll see if that’s true and how long it lasts.

All over the forums right now I see posts form people having trouble getting iAds to work properly.

Fortunately Ray Wenderlich has posted a complete tutorial and project with actual working iAds.

So if ou’re interested get those iAds into your app fast… if it’s like when the previous platforms first appeared the initial payouts should be at a high CPM rate.

[Source: Ray Wenderlich]

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

There are several iPhone game engines available, and of course Cocos2D is extremely popular in the development of 2D games on the iPhone and has a considerable community beside it.

That being said, if you’re just starting out, or you just don’t like how things are done with what’s out there I’ve found a great looking alternative.

While I’m not entirely sure of the direction this framework will take, I can tell you that it appears to be one very different from the Cocos2D philosophy to include everything that developers will ever want in a 2D game engine.

That alternative is the Sparrow Framework which is an open source game framework from Incognitek.  From what I’ve seen from looking at the framework it is very lightweight, and easy to use with all the core features you’d need to be able to create a good 2D game.

You can find the framework here: Sparrow Framework
Read about the features here: Sparrow Framework Features
And the philosophy behind the engine here: Sparrow Framework Philosophy

If you’re not sure about the alternatives, check out the Open Source iPhone and iPad Game Engine Comparison.

[Via: Nick Vellios]

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.