Johan Rensenbrink's Blog

With the release of iOS 4 now several weeks ago, most of the game features were broken in the ‘Zombie Survival’ app. I’ve released an update that should fix a large list of features and it should be available on the App Store soon.

The changelog is actually long enough to be considered too long for this post, but let’s just say most of the changes are fixes rather than new features, although there are also some speed improvements. Another update should be released later to fix a few known issues as well as try to increase the performance of the game much more efficiently.

I’ve decided to update the GoVia app after a long time of absence. It is a simple app and doesn’t require a lot of management. I can’t add a lot of features such as direct money transfers due to Translink’s current policy but I will be upgrading the interface to use a similar sort of system that the ‘My Go Card’ app used.

The reason I can distribute the GoVia app while not the Go Card app is because GoVia is managed by a different department of Translink. The Go Card app may or may not be re-released if Translink decides to change their terms again.

On other news, I’m working on a new game, this time hopefully not as glitchy as the Zombie Survival game released a few weeks ago. This one’s sidescroller based and has physics as a main element of gameplay, while not being a rip-off from other games such as Angry Birds (there’s like 10 clones of that now?).

Ever since Translink has asked me to take down my Go Card app (and ironically at the same time when I was beginning to earn a drastically increasing amount of profit from it) I haven’t done much with apps, other than create a reasonably fun zombie game. I’ve noticed my Go Via app still sells about 5-10 units a week, and I might release an update for it if I can think of anything people might like. As for a new app, I really need to get some ideas together.

I’ve started working with Cocos2D, a rather popular game engine for the iPhone, making it a little easier to manage games and such. Right now I’m working on a zombie project of mine, everyone loves zombies anyway. I know I haven’t posted for a while so here’s a screenshot to compensate:

This seems to be the only thing I’m talking about lately, although it’s really caught my interest.

Anyway, another post about the ‘My Go Card’ app. No, it’s not gone free, sorry. Although I’ve just released another update, bringing it up to version 2.0, with more features already planned.

Here’s a list of changes:

-Fixed display error in ‘History’ tab
-Removed possible repetition bug during login process
-Reworked internet check code to be slightly faster
-Completely rewrote ‘History’ tab
*’History’ tab is now more compact, all details are in one cell.
*’History’ tab is now more future proof and easier to browse.
*’History’ tab now includes much more detailed information.
-Replaced registration button with tab
-Added tab bar during login process for future ‘Profile’ feature
-Added two new tab icons to compensate for the new tab bar
-Registration page now has the consistent transparent theme like the rest of the application
-Set minimum OS requirement back down to 3.0. Unfortunately 2.2.1 is no longer available in my version of xCode, I hope this doesn’t put off too many users.

It doesn’t end here! Suggestions and criticism is welcome, and a new ‘Profile’ tab will be added in the next update. This feature will allow Go Card owners to share their account information with just one application, allowing users to store multiple Card Numbers for friends and family.

I’ve been spending most of the week so far working on several new versions of the ‘My Go Card’ app for the iPhone. I’ve been learning a lot, and I’ve written a whole lot of new stuff, it’s really educational and entertaining to me. I’ll post some pictures once I’m done with a few more features!

Alternatively, a very simple information page for the ‘My Go Card’ and ‘My GoVia’ apps can be found respectively at the following links:

My Go Card – http://www.renscreations.com/mygocard/

My GoVia – http://www.renscreations.com/mygovia/

I have, after some time and money, got my iPhone Developer Program enrollment accepted, and have submitted my first app to the Australian Appstore.

The app allows you to check your current card balance along with the last access date which can be a handy tool when you’re constantly on the move. It’s $1.19, which hopefully doesn’t put people off, and it’s a fairly good alternative to having to use a computer to check your balance.

I’ve been working on a simple tower defence game for a school project for the past few days now. It’s coming along pretty nicely and I’ve finished a decent level editor for it. Saving, loading, AI pathfinding, all the nice things.

Showing my signs of lack of style.

I’ll release it on here some time when it’s completely finished. We’re restricted to Visual Basic 6.0 – aka 1998 software, but ah well.

I’ve recently gotten a bit into the more raw process of programming with nothing but just C++ and DirectX involved. It’s quite educational to learn more about how it all works instead of just letting a modern engine doing it all for me. So far I’ve managed to create a triangle and a blue strobing screen. I found it quite interesting to create a bluescreen, it just reminded me of the raw basis of a 3D application for some reason. It also reminded me of the beloved bluescreens Windows let us know about. I haven’t actually had any since only recently with Windows 7 with ‘Stalker’ installed again.

I’ve spend a few days working on a simple little game recently, based on Tic-Tac-Toe. It doesn’t have Crysis graphics, it doesn’t have 35 weeks of continous gameplay, it doesn’t use DirectX11, it’s a simple game.

I made a blog post a while ago about starting back from the beginning with some very simple 2D games before I do anything more entertaining to other people.

It looks like this (It’s huge, I don’t know why I made the game big):

And it has a fancy configuration panel I made as well:

Technical details:
-Game written in C++.
-Settings window made in Visual Basic.
-data.bin is just a zip file, music.bin is an OGG music file renamed, config.bin is a text file renamed, just leave them, it looks cool.
-I spend several days getting the game to load from zip files, ugh.
-The libraries used in the game are:
-*SDL (Graphic handling)
-*SDL_Image (for… who knows)
-*SDL_Mixer (for music)
-*SDL_ttf (Font handling)
-*PhysFS (Loading from ZIP files)
-Visual basic loads settings from the file it saves, or sets default settings if the file doesn’t exist. The game then loads these settings line by line.

Download
http://www.renscreations.com/files/TicTacToe.exe

Johan, why do you make us bother having to install it first?
Because, grasshopper, a battalion of Dynamic Link Libraries needs to be unleashed in your Windows directory for the game to work, and it’s just easier this way.

Do not use the shortcut, instead open the directory you installed the game. Sorry, I broke the shortcut somehow.

Bugs:
-Possible crash when top-left square is left empty for AI to use when all other squares are filled.
-AI doesn’t necessarily fill a gap to stop the player from winning.

Challenge:
-Put difficulty on hard and make naughts (computer) start first. If you can beat it, well done (it’s not that hard).