TOKYO (MacHouse) – A few weeks ago, I released TileObject. It’s one of the two applications that I intended to develop before I put myself deep into SpriteKit game development. TileObject is a desktop application that lets you create a large platform map by combining graphical objects. There is another desktop application that I need – an application that lets me combine body parts to create different frames of a game character. It’s been actually complete and already submitted to Mac App Store, though. This new release is called Puppet Motion.

If you are a person like me who uses a vector-based application to create body parts to form a game character, naturally, you want to move some of them little by little, resizing some of them little by little, rotating them little by little to create different frames. Puppet Motion lets you do just that. It’s used to combine body parts of a sprite character so that you can create different frames by moving some of them little by little, resizing them little by little, rotating them little by little. After creating several frames, you can animate your sprite character with those frames. Finally, let the application save all frames as image files so that you can use them as SKTexture objects with SpriteKit through Xcode.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – Nintendo‘s 1985 Super Mario Bros. is still a topic of the occasional talk among game developers. Maybe, it’s not terribly difficult to create a platform game like it if you use Apple’s Xcode and SpriteKit. Yet, those who know little about platform game development with me included, there are still many things to learn from this 30-year-old game.

One aspect of difficulty in developing a platform game with SpriteKit for iOS is that you have to deal with different interface sizes. You have iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and iPad. Naturally, you will learn to position sprite nodes relative to the center of the world. But that makes it difficult for one to figure out the position of another node relative to the one that you have already placed.

TileObject offers an integrated development environment for those who develop platform games with Xcode and SpriteKit. You can create a vast game map by adding dozens or even hundreds of graphical objects to the canvas. Use the same image multiple times. Flip an image horizontally. Flip the same vertically. Repeat an image consecutively or regularly to create a bigger graphical object. Find the positions of assets (graphical objects over the map) relative to the bottom-left corner and the center of the map. If you are finished, you can just let the application save the entire map as a texture atlas. And the application will even create a code file for Objective-C/Swift so that you can easily integrate your game tiles into an SKScene file as far as you are familiar with SpriteKit.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – When you try to show pictures with an HTML table on a remote server, a few things can go easily wrong. You probably know relative paths to image files on your remote server, but you can’t really test your html code on your local computer. And you create thumbnails out of actual pictures, and you create them again after making some changes, and again and again. That’s so cumbersome. That’s why I’ve developed Img4Web, which lets you generate HTML code with thumbnails. But there are limitations. For example, it won’t let you generate multiple rows of tables when you have a lot of pictures to show with an HTML table. So what can I do about that? Well, I’ve worked my butt off for the last several days in order to upgrade this more-than-two-year-old application. As a result, I submitted Img4Web 3 to Mac App Store a few hours ago.

MacHouse

MacHouse

What’s new?

1. Create presets for HTML settings.
2. Test your HTML code locally or generate HTML code for hosting pictures with thumbnails on a remote server.
3. Set a border color.
4. Set the number of columns with pictures.
5. Create not just one row of pictures but multiple rows pictures by letting the application figure out the number of rows, depending on the total number of pictures you have.
6. Save all settings by choosing Save Settings under Img4Web 3. Choose Load Settings at any time to load saved settings. Optionally, let the application automatically load saved settings whenever it starts up.
7. Drag and drop source pictures directly onto the file list.
8. The application comes with a built-in user guide with graphics.

Img4Web 3 lets you create thumbnails out of actual-size pictures at the same time when it generates HTML code to show them in a multi-row table.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – It was deskShots 2 a week ago. There was justIcons 2 two weeks ago. Yeah, right… I’ve been upgrading existing software titles for the past three weeks or so. Here comes another one. I submitted a new software release to Mac App Store some 12 hours ago. This new release is called Deskcap 2.

The two-year-old Deskcap was indispensable for me because it let me create a visual work area smaller than the entire desktop area of 2,560 px X 1,440 px. It’s old and now dead.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – Life can get unexpectedly brutal, sometimes. In the last seven days I’ve struggled to find a solution to a software development issue, due to which Mac App Store rejected three new software submissions and three software updates. They say all the binaries that I submitted to them contained an entitlement (com.apple.developer.maps) that they didn’t need. Well, I didn’t put it. It seems that I’ve finally located the root of the problem. Anyway, I submitted a new software title to Mac App Store yesterday. I managed to submit a good copy to them just half an hour ago after fixing the entitlement issue. This new software title is called deskShots 2.

deskShots 2 is the first major upgrade to an existing desktop application that lets you take desktop screenshots effectively. Taking a desktop screenshot can’t be any easier with deskShots 2. Take a screenshot of the full or a partial desktop area with a click of a button without letting the application prompt you to name each file. Select a shape like a circle, a triangle, a square, a heart, a diamond that surrounds the mouse pointer.   Continue reading →