71² – The ramblings of two 30-something developers

Simon  on July 16th, 2010

Awesome work!

Looking forward to seeing it complete.

I also though I’d note the anniversary of your last feature length tutorial. One year old today, or there about’s :)

Here’s hoping for many more to come ;)

Simon  on July 16th, 2010

Also the video is set to Private, so not able to view it at all!

You’d be lost with out me lol ;)

mike  on July 16th, 2010

@Simon, I just don’t believe it, I must be going completely mad. I’ve changed the settings to public, although I don’t remember setting it to private, so the defaults may have changed.

ANYWAY…..thanks again for spotting that and letting me know. I’m not a complete noob at this stuff, honest ;o)

There are certainly going to be more videos and also a new fresh look to the blog as well :o)

Family, work, book and Particle Designer has just about eaten all the time I have, so with the book in its final, final, final stages and PD 1.3 almost done, I can see some time over the summer to do some more full length videos :o)

Mike

Simon  on July 16th, 2010

I kinda thought there’d be a new look to the blog in the offing + vids – Just hope it don’t get too commercial – I enjoyed the early days.

:)

But I’ve done my bit, I bought the book. Although not that impressed with rough cuts’s in ability to say which parts of the book have actually been updated each time it lets you know there’s a new version for download. So I’m just gonna wait till the final version, before revisiting it.

Looking forward to reading it and seeing the new site, which will no doubt come around at about the same time.

:)

mike  on July 16th, 2010

Thanks Simon

The new site is not linked to the book release, I’m not that organised and John who is working on it is trying to get another new site up and running which is keeping him busy.

I’m certainly not planning on making the site commercial. The adverts help with the running costs and hopefully the apps we are creating, such as Particle Designer, will earn enough to keep everything we have free.

At the moment I’m much more interested in providing a resource for the community as I get a real buzz from being involved.

The new site design is looking REALLY good and I’m sure people will like it.

As for the book, it really is down to my very last proof read, and then its off to the printers :OD so really looking forward to that.

Thanks for the continued support and I’m looking forward to 71squared continuing to be a great resource to other developers.

Mike

Simon  on July 16th, 2010

Well if there’s anything I could do to help, let me know :)

mike  on July 16th, 2010

Cheers Simon, much appreciated :oD

Mike

Ralph  on July 16th, 2010

The new PD really looks amazing. Good work! I must admit I’m a little jealous I didn’t think of it.:)

Looking forward to getting the book. I agree with Simon about not know what the changes are. I download the first few updates but now I’m just waiting for the real thing.

nexus6  on July 17th, 2010

Great job Mike!!! and John

The new PD 1.3 looks awesome can’t wait to play with it. I bet you can’t wait till the book is finally done… whew!! That’s a lot of work. I also purchased the book and PD, I admit it is frustrating not knowing which sections of the book have been updated.

John has done a great job with the site and your Tutorials are still the best that I’ve ever seen not counting the book of course and PD speaks for itself!!

Dan  on July 17th, 2010

Excellent application. Well worth the purchase if you plan on using the 71squared particle emitter (I havnt done any research, does the version within the book work with the Particle Emitter? Or the one with the tutorials).

My only gripe is the fact that you only offer it in dollars. Offering it in GPB and Euros would be nice. We all know that the internet has its very harsh way of converting. Same with the book. It seems it costs us in the UK a lot more £ than it should :(

(worth noting however, the two products are still very good value for money)

mike  on July 18th, 2010

Thanks for the feedback Dan. It’s worth noting that Particle Designer also produce configurations that can be used with cocosd2d iPhone, incase people use that engine.

We did spend a long time thinking about the cost of Particle Designer. We wanted a price that would enable us to continue to develop the app but would also not be prohibitive to indie developers.

I didn’t have PD when writing the book, so the books ParticleEmitter code does not use the config files from PD. That said, simply replacing the ParticleEmitter.h and .m files in the books code with the class that comes with PD is all you need to do. You then have full compatibility with the PD version :o)

Mike

Ricardo Quesada  on July 18th, 2010

PD 1.3 looks great Mike. Realtime sync with the device is a very nice feature!

mike  on July 18th, 2010

Thanks Ricardo, I’m hoping it will help developers speed up their testing and also give designers the ability to see on the device how things will look, so they get what they expect :o)

Mike

Tweets that mention Particle Designer 1.3 – Preview | 71² - The ramblings of two 30-something developers -- Topsy.com  on July 18th, 2010

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by 71Squared, mikedaley. mikedaley said: Check out the Particle Designer 1.3 Preview video at http://bit.ly/asEkoV [...]

Dan  on July 19th, 2010

Cheers Mike.

I read about the fact it works with Cocos2D which seemed to have got you more noticed. A lot of good things are said about you all over the interweb. Well deserved to be honest, the app, book, blog and tutorials are perfect.

Ill also say that i wasnt actually ‘upset’ at the cost of the PD. Infact, $7.99 is excellent value for money. I would have expected it to be more considering its a specialist bit of kit. The only thing that harms us in the UK is paypalls conversion rate. It cost me just under a tenner (still good price actually) because of the conversion.

I have no idea about paypalls functions, but maybe its worth looking at adding function for us £ or euro users. To keep the price down for us and remove the shock that occurs when you check your bank balance.

kingbombs  on July 19th, 2010

It may just be me but i find it hard to find a link to the particle designer website.
I thought there use to be a link somewhere on the site but i was trying to find one and in the end i had to go back to when you first announced the website on a news post.
Having a link somewhere on the site or in every post you make for the partical designer would be useful :D
If it is somewhere obvious and i just had a stupid moment then sorry :p

Simon  on July 19th, 2010

I’d chime in and back KingBombs on the weblink statement. But as there’s a new look site on the way, I’m gonna assume that these things will all be clearly accessible in that new site design :).

If you want a second opinion on it before launch, i’d be happy to cast an eye :)

Gino  on July 20th, 2010

Hi Mike.
I have bought PD 1.2 yesterday and it works great.
Now i am waiting for the 1.3
I am using it into my new game, a 2D platform.
You can see in-game images from beta 1, at http://gallery.me.com/gimbo69#100016.

Gino.

Arif  on July 23rd, 2010

Hi mike,

Your tutorial’s are great …Could you plzz upload diagram for the game..will be great help..

mike  on July 24th, 2010

Hi Arif

When you say “diagram” for the game, what is it you mean?

Thanks

Mike

mike  on July 24th, 2010

@Gino, thanks for purchasing PD v1.2. We are working hard to get v1.3 out ASAP.

The game is looking great :o)

Mike

Arif  on August 3rd, 2010

Hi mike,

Thanks for your reply…I mean by Diagram is UML diagram for the SQL game that you developed. For example -
Class and objects diagram
Activity diagram
Sequence Diagram
Component Diagram
Use case

From my understanding these diagrams gives very clear
and visual understanding about any project …i think specially in the games this will give very clear idea about how the whole game is design and how all the components inside the game interacting
with each other and how data is interacting with different class or when user is playing or interacting with the game how actually all the class interacting to each other.
As you developing the book for the iPhone game programming which I have already brought on amazon just waiting for it to publish and which I think will one of the best book for the game development specially on IPhone….if you include these diagram will help us to understand the depth of the game design and programming more visually and clearly.
Thanks
Arif

mike  on August 3rd, 2010

Hi Arif

Now I understand :o)

I have to admit, that apart from the class diagrams that can be generated in XCode, I don’t have any of the diagrams you mention. Apart from very high level design goals I mention in the early chapters of the book, there are no other specific use cases or sequence diagrams I’ve created. These could be useful for sure, but the organic nature of my development of SLQ means that I didn’t have that depth of design from the start.

The only information around the design and implementation is text based in both the book and in the source code.

Mike

Simon  on August 3rd, 2010

Mike,

I agree with @Arif and that diagrams would be a nice idea; I was a little surprised that these weren’t in the book. I just assumed it would be in the final draft I guess.

I think it would be greatly appreciated by the slightly less knowledgeable among us lol (myself included, especially when I think back to the my early days on here, where it was all a little less complicated lol).

Something simple perhaps? maybe even just on this site or the publishers support pages. I think it would help to make the code more usable. As I know when I thought i’d try out your latest Image class in my latest project – just unplugging it all was a pain in the ass lol. So I decided against it and went my own way, purely because it was quicker for me, this says more about me than your code :)

+ I’m sure if i’d read the book fully it would all be simpler :)

@Arif if it hasn’t been pointed out already the code in the book is different to the code on the site currently so Mike providing a diagram now would not necessarily help you with the book as there are a lot more dependencies in the new code – I think you’ll be pleased with the book and I’m sure once you have it everything will become clearer for you.

mike  on August 3rd, 2010

Agreed, a diagram would be good. I’ll pull one together and publish it online for people to check out. I’ll get this done before the book goes live :o)

Mike

Arif  on August 10th, 2010

thanks mike …for your consideration about diagram
and also thanks to simon to pointed out the importance abt the diagram….

Ace  on September 3rd, 2010

Mike,

any update on a PD 1.3 release date? We all know you are busy but “over the coming week or so” (your post above from July 16th) has passed for weeks now ;-)

Cheers,
Ace

mike  on September 3rd, 2010

Hi Ace

Things have taken a lot longer than we wanted. We were close to releasing PD 1.3 but discovered that issues with device discovery and connections. We have ended up having to re-work that entire area to make it stable.

We are still re-working some of the code and testing. I’ll post an update ASAP on progress and an expected release date.

I appreciate everyones patience for the next release. We want it to be a solid release and one that really moves Particle Designer forward.

Mike