ios

Games I’m playing : June

Now with links!

VVVVVV – SO GREAT. I’d basically buy anything by Terry Cavanagh at this point. From nausea-inducing Super Hexagon, side effects to Don’t Look Back, approved his games are quick pick-up-and-play, see quirky, thoughtful (sometimes), challenging, but always fun. VVVVVV is a port of the same game that’s available on steam, so if you’d rather play it with keyboard controls, you could get it there.

Jupiter Jump – I’d also buy almost anything from Noodlecake Games. They’ve made great games like Super Stickman Golf (1 and 2). And then broke the flappy bird mold with Flappy Golf. Now they have a game in the genre of endless runner/flapper/jumper games called Jupiter Jump. Basically you are bouncing off the ground, but you can tap the screen to dive down quicker to avoid mines and get through goals for points. Kind of reminiscent of Tiny Wings, but without the hills, and with mines. Quick, fun, free. In-app-purchase to remove the ads, but they’re not that annoying.

Alphalt 8 – I’m really not sure how this game can be free. I mean, this is a console quality racing game with licensed cars and great polish on the game. But it’s free. Crazy!

Pink Hour sorry, PINK HOUR – This is a free level/demo of Kero Blaster that was just released. You play a pink blob that loses a document from their office and you need to get it back. Super weird premise, but it’s a fun little side-scrolling platformer/shooter. It’s really quick and easy to beat, and made me want to go buy Kero Blaster, but it’s $4.99 and I don’t feel like spending that right now.

Bowl Faster – Do you like bowling? Do you have 1 minute? If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then go download Bowl Faster. This is by the same author who made Cubed Rally Racer, Cubed Snowboarder, and Wrong Way Racing. All great games!

True Skate – A finger skateboard simulator. It reenforces just how poorly I am at skating, but how much I want to be good at it.

Games I’m not playing anymore:

Since I installed the iOS 8 beta on my phone, I ended up doing a fresh install and only reinstalled apps as I needed them. When I went to reinstall Trials Fusion, it didn’t pick up my saved game (no storage in the cloud?) so I’m not going to go through all that fun/frustration again.

I’m also trying not to play TwoDots. It’s not that it’s not fun… well ok, it’s not necessarily fun, but it’s also not the type of game where you “get better” at it the more you play. You seem to just have to deal with the randomness that they throw at you and hope for the best. I’m not 100% sure about that though, so I try to play a game every once in a while to make sure I still feel that way about it.

Games I’ve been playing : May 2014

Battleheart: Legacy – SO MUCH FUN.

TwoDots – kind of like Samegame, pilule but with cute little graphics and music. Play mechanics like removing certain dots in certain ways keep it from getting boring. It’s free to play, but the IAP feel like a money grab and not that well thought out. Totally playable without spending money though.

Leo’s Fortune – fun side scrolling platformer with amazing graphics. Replayability to get three stars per level, and and a hardcore mode to try to beat the game without dying.

Trials Fusion – I’m still playing this, and while the fetch quests are killing me, the game is just too easy to play for 30 seconds at a time and put away. The slot machine has trained my mind to know when an hour is up. Kind of scary.

Games I’ve been playing: March edition

Block Legend – An rpg with funny characters and weirdly named enemies, medicine a play on the mechanic from SameGame.

Out There – A space game where you’re constantly on the verge of dying. I am always on the verge of playing it, arthritis but then I don’t.

Threes – Another game that came out and spawned a million clones. This is a great pick up and play puzzle game.

Cubed Snowboarder – A fun little game from the developer of Cubed Racer.

Car, meningitis Plane, or Boat – An idea that formed during the podcast Bionic, some fans made a game where you guess the sound. Not as easy or boring as you think.

Crazy Taxi – The fact that an arcade game now runs so smoothly on my freaking phone still blows my mind.

Star Horizon – It’s like Star Fox, but I can’t beat it in 22 minutes. I actually can’t get past the second or third board. Am I old?

Flappy Golf – Oh man, this is great. After all the clones of Flappy Bird, the folks at Noodlesoft adapted their amazing Super Sitckman Golf 2 boards with a flapping mechanic. And boy does it work. So much fun.

iPhone Apps that I use

A friend just got an iPhone, health system and was wondering what apps were good. Here’s a list of apps I use.

(Yes all of these links go through an affiliate, medstore so if you buy something I *might* get money for it one day. I’m not holding my breath)

My Apps
How could I have forgotten the apps that I have written?!

  • Mini Golf Pad – Keep score on your iPhone instead of that dumb pencil and paper!
  • DropIt – Save files/bookmarks off the internet onto your iPhone
Photography
Note Taking/Todo
  • SimpleNote – Take notes and sync them to a website, accessible via Notational Velocity on the Mac
  • ShopShop – Shopping list app
  • Producteev – My new favorite todo list app
  • Todo – My divvious favorite todo list app
Video Streaming
  • Air Video – THE BEST – Stream videos from your computer to your iPhone
  • Netflix
  • Optimum – Watch TV on your iPhone, set the DVR, etc
  • HBO – I’ve actually never used this app
Audio
  • Pocket Casts – A great podcast app, although it’s buggy in iOS 5 right now
Reading
  • Instapaper – Keeps articles to read later, formats them without all the ad bullshit
  • Reeder – RSS Reader that doesn’t crash
  • iBooks
  • Kindle – Sync’s with your amazon account so you can get a copy of all the books on your Kindle
Navigation
Utility
  • Infinitlight – The only flashlight you’ll ever need
  • Gas Cubby – Track your gas mileage if you are OCD like me
  • Runkeeper – Track your workouts if you are OCD like me
  • Dropbox – Sync files to the internet
  • Boxcar – Notifications to your phone for services you probably haven’t heard of.
  • iTeleport – Great VNC client for the iPhone
  • Find my iPhone – Find your iPhone (or your wifes)
  • Wolfram Alpha – Look up ANYTHING – get stats on it
  • RedLaser – Barcode scanner (currently the only app I have that reads QR codes)
  • Remote – Control iTunes on the computer
  • Convert – Convert units, I use it mostly when cooking
  • Square – Accept credit card payments
  • Chase – Access your (my) bank account
  • Shazam – Identify a song by listening to it
Games
Social
Sports
Other

Set a value in a View Controller from the Application Delegate

I was stuck on this for a bit, this site so I’m posting it here for my own needs really.

If  you have an app that needs content set up when it loads, pancreatitis you might want to use -viewDidLoad. The problem with that is that now that there’s multitasking in iOS, -viewDidLoad doesn’t get called all the time when the app “starts”. Instead, what you want to use is -applicationDidBecomeActive:

Let’s say i have a view named MainViewController, and a label (input area) on the view called targetURL, and when the app becomes active I want to set that URL from some datasource, here’s how to do it:

– (void)applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication *)application

… code to get data …

self.mainViewController.targetURL.text = someData;

}

 

Dealing with iOS clipboard

I want to make Drop It even better, medical version 1.0 was a “just get it done and in the store” kind of deal. Now it’s time to make it better. Step 1, troche make it so you don’t have to paste the url in there if you’ve already copied it. I know, it’s not that big a deal, but if an app can remove one step from the process that you’re going to do anyway, then the app makes your life just a little bit easier, and that provides a positive user experience.

I ended up using this page on MobileOrchard to figure out how to grab the contents of the clipboard (or pasteboard, in iOS terms).

UIPasteboard *pasteboard = [UIPasteboard generalPasteboard];

And then to get the contents of the latest copied string:

NSString *string = pasteboard.string;