TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – Although I’m committed to developing games with Sprite Kit, I realize that it’s very difficult for me to compete with other game developers at App Store since I’m not really good at drawing pictures. The worst part of submitting an iOS game or any iOS app to App Store is that people may never find your app unless it’s introduced as a new comer. Choosing the right category is also important because some of them don’t even introduce new comers. So I’ve decided to switch to macOS. Actually, I’ve submitted the first macOS game to Mac App Store some 30 minutes ago. This new game is called The War of The Worlds.

It’s a simple game where you are attacked by a single enemy that regularly fires a laser beam or drops a bomb and attacks your city. Your job is of course to protect the city. Fortunately, your city is protected with electromagnetic shield, which won’t last for a long time, though. So you have to go offensive and defeat the space invader. The city hall is actually equipped with a line gun that is powerful enough to reach the space invader.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (Tom Bluewater) – These days I develop more iOS apps than desktop applications. And I face some difficulty in creating iTunes Connect screenshots. Shown here below is a picture with a hand holding an iPhone. And it’s quite difficult to fit a rectangular picture into a non-rectangular area in green. If you use Adobe Photoshop, it might not be that difficult. If you use Adobe Fireworks, … Well, Fireworks is the last application you should use for this task. What else could I use? How about Fit Perspective? Right, Fit Perspective is the desktop application that I submitted to Mac App Store a few minutes ago.

Tom Bluewater

Tom Bluewater (from Masked Man or Woman)

Making this type of application might not be so difficult. But the question that I initially had is how I let the user set four corners over a picture efficiently. Really, software is all about saving user’s valuable time. What else is more important? It’s not about how beautiful it looks superficially, compromising user efficiency like Big A belives in, I believe. So it took me a while to come up with somewhat a creative way. I can definitely tell you that I won’t have to use Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks for non-rectangular distortion any more. In other words, I’ve developed this application just in order to make my work more efficient.

Fit Perspective is a desktop application that lets you fit a rectangular picture into a non-rectangular area over another. It won’t just rotate a picture. It’s designed such that the user manually moves four numbered-markers with their mouse to so that the application can be distorted accordingly. Also, the user can apply the same marker positions in order to distort multiple images at a time.
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