iPhone Game – LyricalGenius

Months ago I spoke briefly about a new iPhone/iPod touch game that I was starting to develop for Mammoth Graphics, well recently (a week or so ago) the work was finished, but I hadn’t had time to really sit down and blog about it. The game is called LyricalGenius and is a game targeted at people that want a general quiz game about song lyrics. Obviously the aim of the game is that for each level there is a target of correct answers the player needs to get, and if you get too many wrong, then tough luck! Development of this game has really enabled me to build on my experiences with the development of the Tour de France application which I blogged about summer last year.

The game is now in the hands of mammoth, who are in the process of final testing and adding more questions (as song lyrics need approval from Sony Records) and hopefully will see it up on app store very soon, so if you fancy a new game, give it ago!

Android and iPhone progress

Hey guys! This will most likely be my last entry before the new year, which I’m looking forward to. One hopes next year will bring some great new experiences and hopefully a new start in some aspects of my life, though not forgetting to hopefully have more success in my professional life either! I think this year has been full of drama in some aspect, some sad moments but also a new opportunity to take my career to the next level.

Moving on, yes my mobile development seems to be coming along ok. Currently I am in process of designing the data model of the iPhone game, and also have started building the interfaces which is exciting to see come together. I will obviously have alot to do over the christmas holidays with it, but I guess it will keep my mind active in that sense. As more development happens and I have screenshots to show, I will post them.

As for the android development, like I said in a post not long ago I was planning to development a music catalog and mobile app, well I have artist data being stored, and also album names being stored (though I get the occasional unhandled exception, that I need to look into). I need to look into being able to get a album artist, as different songs may have different artists (Say if there was a colaborative song). I am currently thinking to get the album artist from the artist folder it is stored in, as I dont think there is way of accessing the album artist ID tag using the library I have. For the android side of it, currently I have a SAX XML Parser running, and just displaying everything in a console-like program. For the moment I am programming the logic and fetching of data, the representation layer of my app will be sorted last. Im thinking to have a search page that terms can be searched across artist and album…

Android app screenshot showing parsed artist data

Android app screenshot showing parsed artist data

Only issue that I am currently having is there seems to be an issue with either “/” or “&” in the XML when it comes to parsing, which I will need to sort out before I continue, though I think I’ve made a good start considering the limited time I have to put to this project.

Anyhow, will update you when I have to talk, or show.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Current Activities – Opportunity matching and mammoths

Hey guys! Been quite busy lately with this and that. Currently as you know I’ve been working with Mobsventures on their Slenky branded social networking system. This has been going better than it was, partly because of my learning curve with Elgg has excellerated lately.

Anyhow I’ve been working on opportunity matching on the platform that I’m now just polishing up for a littel demo and presentation I have to make this Tuesday for the client. I’m currently wuite happy with whats been implemented but like I said there are some parts that need polishing before I’ll be happy to display it to anyone other than my superior. Currently I have implemented different types of users (Client, User and Admin) which obviously have different functionality. The Client can add opportunties which can be diactivated and activated (not shown and shown). This opportunties can then are shown in the “All Opportunities” section for the user. The user can then choose to add these opportunities to their favourites for easy retrieval.

The nifty thing I think is that I created a kinda “smart” search. This gets all opportunities and matches based on the following in the following order:

  1. Same borough and on a category found in a favourite.
  2. Same borough.
  3. Category found in a favourite.

Tomorrow I’m hoping add a category hierachy system for the admin to control the different pre defined categories. Previding this can be done I’ll be ready for the presentation on Tuesday. If not, Monday night will be a very long one.

Laters.

Tour De France Screenshots

Sorry about the wait, I’ve been busy creating the standings program for mammoth graphics to create their standings feed for the iPhone app. Here are the screen shots:

The app is still in review stage, to which I hope is all approved as soon as possible. Hope the app gains at least some popularity, at least till the next app is done 😉

BTW. The name of the app is TDF2009, support will be greatly appriciated!

Speak to you all soon

“On ya Bike” – Tour De France iPhone App

Hey Guys, good time now to say that the iPhone app i have been working on is a Tour De France app. This app now is in the final stages of development before uploading to app store this monday.
The main features of this app is contain information about the stages, including detail map images, profile images to show the contours of the stage, have fly through videos of the stage and to contain information about the different climbs and sprints.
Information about the teams including the riders in the teams is included. A history section is included in the app to show all winners of the Tour De France since the first race in 1903.
In addition to this, you will be able to keep track of the overall standings of the race, which categorises the results in to:

  • Individual (Yellow Jersey)
  • Points (Green Jersey)
  • Team
  • Climber (Red Pokadot Jersey)
  • Youth (White Jersey)

I will be putting up screen shots of the app on sunday when hopefully its complete (or near). I have been working with Mammoth Graphics to complete this app. The app i think will be on app store for free, so any tour de france fans should give the app a try and hope to give a good user experience for such an amazing race!

Anyhow, going for now but screen shots will be up soon!

Laters

And now press refresh

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of blogging but I have been snowed under with work. This iPhone app that I am doing is on such a strict schedule that I have next to no time for anything but programming. Plus also I have a great assignment for my masters that need completing too :(. I do promise that when the iPhone app is done and is publically available I will show screenshots of it, but I don’t want to get into trouble showing it before hand! I have also some plans for the summer too.
The first is that my website and server need a complete overhaul! The website I did when I was 18 is massively out of date and I feel that I should have the Web 2.0 services I use shown. I also need to do a rebuild of my server as it is currently running Fedora 8 and I hope to upgrade it to Fedora 11. By doing this I’m hoping to add email support to this as by then I will have purchased my very own domain name with I hope will allow me to do this.

Secondly I have a idea of a taxi app for the iPhone, which I may start as early as June providing the other parties involved allow me to. Will Keep you posted!

Viva la France!

Hey Guys! Sorry for the extreme length of time since my last post, to say I have been slightly busy would be a complete understatement! Since my last post I attended a paper workshop in Windsor for colleagues on our project to meet, discuss the current dissemination strategy and overall try and start some paper writing. This session proved to be extremely productive, but since has gone rather flat, well at least that’s my opinion. Since then I have been starting a new project for a client involving an iPhone Application development. This development has now commenced and has a deadline, at least for the iPhone development side in the next 4-5 weeks. Overall feel slightly concerned, mainly that I am the lead programmer for this (which I feel is slightly crazy for such a tight schedule). I’m slowly getting the hang of Apple iPhone development, though inexperience in using Interface Builder is causing me some head ache. Hopefully this weekend will prove productive and lower some stress I have currently. Until next time people!