TOKYO (MacHouse) – When I run out of software development ideas, I often get on the Internet and meaninglessly visit one web site after another. This time, a screenshot of an iOS game has caught my eyes. And I have thought to myself “Hmm… I wonder if there’s a simple way of creating that text image?” As a result, I submitted a new software release to Mac App Store several hours ago. This new software title is called Text n Colors.

Tom Bluewater

Tom Bluewater

Text n Colors is a desktop application that lets you create text with letters of alternating colors. You select one or more colors to create a color list, which will be temporarily saved in a drop-down menu. Text n Colors sets the fill color of each letter according to this list. You can save text as an image file or a rich text file to your disk.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – Last week, I introduced a desktop application that allows the user to create a firework display movie. It was a bit difficult to develop without the QT Kit. The application that I submitted to Mac App Store yesterday is similar to the extent that it produces movies.

Pict2Movie is a desktop application that lets you create a movie (.M4V) with a folder containing pictures they select.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – If you write Objective-C, you probably know that the QTKit (also known as the QuickTime Kit) has been deprecated with introduction of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. And Apple, Inc. proposes that we use AV Foundation instead. A problem for transition to AV Foundation is that it’s quite difficult for us to create a movie with a bunch of images. Well, I really wanted to know how several months ago. So I opened a technical support ticket and asked DTS (Developer Technical Support) how. The guy who answered my request didn’t appear to know exactly how under OS X. It seemed that he was an iOS software developer because he gave me some links to web sites that shows how to use AVAssetWriter in iOS, which wasn’t the development platform of my choice at that time. Anyhow, I’ve eventually managed to create a movie with an array of NSImage objects.

Well, I haven’t used this new technique till now. A new desktop application that I submitted to Mac App Store several hours ago lets the user create movies. This new submission is called Fireworks Maker.

Tom Bluewater

Tom Bluewater

Fireworks Maker is a desktop application that utilizes the QuartsCore framework (also known as Core Animation framework) to animate a firework display. You can save the firework display as a still picture (BMP, GIF, JPEG, JPEG 2000, PNG or TIFF) to your disk with a click of a button. Also, you can save the firework animation as a movie to your disk. Note that this application is suitable for a computer with a non-Retina display.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – I’ve spent the last four weeks developing a new platform game with Sprite Kit. Game development is quite tiring as you probably know if you do it all by yourself. And it can take weeks or even months. So I’ve decided to quickly release a desktop application. I have already submitted it to Mac App Store. This new release is called TileObject Chopper.

Tom Bluewater

Tom Bluewater

TileObject Chopper is a derivative of an existing desktop application called TileObject, which is already available at Mac App Store. The sole purpose of using the former is to chop a large platform game map (like 6,400 px times 128 px) into smaller square tiles. The beauty of using this application is that it will generate a file containing lines of Objective-C code so that you can read your texture altas fairly easily with Sprite Kit.   Continue reading →