In addition to me explaining the history behind some of the projects I’ve been tinkering with over the years, I want this blog to serve as an educational tool for aspiring designers and developers. And so, without further ado, the first of (hopefully) many tutorials.

This tutorial was originally written in February 2008 (pre iPhone SDK days) and was featured on a now defunct iPhone blog. I will repost the original articles along with update notes, where appropriate.

Part 1: Things to Keep In Mind

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when considering iPhone game development. The most important is that iPhone developers currently do not have access to many of the usability features that make the iPhone great. Things like pinch, expand, slide, drag, drop, etc. That may change when the SDK is announced later this month, but for now all we can respond to is a single touch (click). (March 2009 note: The SDK obviously now provides tools for developers to create amazing native apps, all of which include features like pinch, expand, slide, drag and drop, etc. But iPhone web apps are still limited to responding to only one action: a single touch of the screen.)

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Parsec was a simple game. A traditional side-scrolling space shooter. Enemies entered the screen from the right and if you didn’t kill them before they reached the left side of the screen, they would double back and attack from behind. There were only a handful of enemies and three “mini-bosses” (called cruisers) per level. The beauty of the game was that each level was exactly the same, save for a varied background color and slightly faster gameplay, which made each level progressively more difficult. The simplicity of the game made it both easy to pick up, and extremely addictive.

In addition to enemy battle, you also were required to navigate tricky fueling tunnels riddled with stalactites and stalagmites. Powering down your ship into a lower “lift” speed would decrease the sensitivity of its vertical lift, making refueling expeditions much less dangerous.

Parsec seemed simple enough to recreate.

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As I mentioned in my original post, one of the main reason I introduced this blog was to create a way to generate feedback on (and maintain motivation to complete) the various little projects I start here and there… which will hopefully motivate others to do the same. The first project I’ll discuss is Parallax, the art for which can be found in the header wrap of each page.

Many of my projects have a long history, having been kicked around for years, so I’ll regale their tales over multiple updates.

Back before there were Macs and PCs, there was Texas Instrument. The company is still around today but seems to play a less prominent role in normal techies lives (i.e., mine). TI was even common place in schools once the TI-83 calculators became standard issue. These mechanical marvels allowed way-to-fancy ways to solve mathematical equations. And at home, my friends and I had the TI-99/4A.

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