This weekend I decided to challenge myself to write an app and release it in a single weekend.

I wasn't too fussed about polish (I wanted it to be free) but I wanted it to work well. It uses mainly standard controls (i.e. buttons etc...)

It was also a learning exercise as I hadn't used the new storyboarding feature available in XCode yet and wanted to see how it worked.

I wrote a Conway's game of life sim as it's somehting I have wanted to do for a while. I've actually thought of a way to massively optimise each iteration and cut down on CPU usage which I will try to write tonight. (or maybe I'll have a polishing weekend this weekend).

I could put a gray background on it as well to make it look a bit nicer? Maybe have the front screen inside a grouped table with colour swatches to choose from instead of text and a pop up picker thing that it uses atm.

Anyway, it's here... http://itunes.apple.com/app/game-of-lif ... 39315?mt=8

Enjoy

Congrats on your 2nd game. Still in Germany so can't download it yet but will check it out when I am back.

C

this app is a blatant ripoff from the "primordial life" game

Very marketable IMO, are you sure you have the correct rights for it?

There are no "rights" required AFAIK.

The app is the app, the rights (if any) would be on the idea of cellular automata but that would be like the babylonians copyrighting all calculators because they invented addition (may not be true but you get the idea).

It's more of a technical exercise than a game.

There are also thousands of other examples on all platforms that you can download and run.

The name Conway refers to the guy (John Conway) who first studied this cellular automata simulation on a GO board years ago.

@Bratty: Not sure what that game is but it doesn't look like a cellular automata sim to me?

OK, I knew my new algorithm would help but blooming eck!

I've changed a couple of other things also. Instead of now actually drawing both the alive and dead cells it just sets the background to be the dead colour and only draws the alive cells.

I thought this might speed it up slightly. As it happens it has massively improved the touch drawing speed.

Before if you moved your finger quickly it might draw only one every 5 or 6 cells. Now it rarely misses a cell!

Will be making some custom skins for the settings buttons tonight too.

I've optimised the algorithm a bit further now and also put so Apple-ish skins so it looks like a segmented control. Also put a gray background on the main screen. Just need to improve the colour picker thing. Not really sure how to implement it though?

I'm thinking maybe click the button and get presented with a table view of colours that you can then press to select... or something?

Any ideas?


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=53.863754,-1.677306

I wish I had the brains to write iPad apps. I had a look at a couple of books a year or so ago, and while I got the interface building bit, the code part went right over my he. Maybe I should try again.

*starts downloading XCode*

You should write Android apps instead. It's a lot like building with Lego.

Bloomin' 'eck!

The app went online on Friday aft and I've already had 32 downloads with absolutely zero promotion.

Need to get advertising on the app. Got some updates on it too. Will put an update in for approval tonight.

Right, submitted an update which improves the speed of the display and the touch drawing.

Also gives it a nicer look and feel and I've added iAds just to see what happens.

Will prob be Thursday before it goes live though.

Want to see how many d/ls I've had this weekend! The 32 I've got are all from Friday and it only went live on Friday aft. Want to see what has happened over the weekend!

Should be interesting to see what happens with he iAds on there.

Buena suerte!

Can you download it if you don't have an Apple smart mobile phone pad?

unfortunately not.

You'll also need iOS 5 which means it will only work on a 3GS or above.

If you have done any programming before it helps. (IIRC you have?)

I started with a book from Apress called "Learn Objective-C on the Mac" (or something). The language behind any iOS programs is Objective-C. The book mainly concentrated on command line tools but it was what I needed to pick up the basics (syntax, keywords, classes, functions, etc...).

After that I just messed around creating different apps and stuff. From there I got a book called "Learn Cocos2d for the iPhone" (or something). Cocos2d is the game engine I used to write Doodle Sub.

That's when I went to iOSDevUK - http://www.iosdevuk.com/ which was brilliant and inspired me to do more stuff of my own.

Since then I've been programming most nights writing different apps.

Woop!

I got a 5 star review from someone in Canada today!

Oh, and 27 more downloads!

Noticed a bug though today. If you tap on the info in the about screen you can edit the text but you can't then dismiss the keyboard.



Oh well, easy fix.