Progressing onto iPhone Development

To my great shame I haven’t been updating this blog anywhere near as often as I had once before. Unfortunately I’ve been busy with other more important things, the one of most significance is co-founding The National College of Ireland Computing Society (NCICS) in addition to my usual roles at Atamia and QHC Consulting.

That wont be true for very long as I’ve just ordered a Mac Pro and will be starting iPhone App Development in the very near future… as soon as the Mac Pro arrives in all its 8 Core, 8 GB, Quad Screen, Aluminium glory. Of course I dont need a Mac to design an iPhone App, so I’ll leave you with some tantalizing sneak peaks of some of the Apps I will be developing and with any luck releasing later this year:

* Concept utilises an image by Buster Brenson

Independant Game Developer book

I’m looking for feedback:

Readers who don’t religiously follow my twitter are likely unaware of the current discussion surrounding a ‘Homebrew/Indie Game Development’ book.

Ever since my first foray into programming with ClickTeam Klik N’ Play back in ‘99, I’ve just stumbled into situations where I’m surrounded by independent game developers. Over the years I’ve grown a great respect for what they do, and admittedly a little jealousy for what some have achieved with dedication (*cough* James Silva *cough*); I was never really that ‘into’ game programming, just programming in general, after all making apps can often be far simpler than creating an entire game with little reward for your hard graft.

I’m thinking its about time to give back a little to those who give so much, and all just for the love of it.

For the past 3 months (give or take) I’ve been spending most of my time researching console development and much of that time was concentrated on finding out as much as humanly possible about Developer Kits (SDK’s, DevKits), which are the cool magical boxes from which awesomeness springs (video games mostly). The difficulty being the sparse information available without a publishing deal and various non disclosure agreements (NDA’s) being signed.

So the book idea is basically a compilation of all the information I’ve gathered, and will continue to gather, about how independant developers can get the tools required to develop games on the Xbox360, Wii, PS3 and so on. Of course, I’d likely want to interview independant publishers who’ve survived and continue to develop indie games.

So what I’m looking for is feedback from people, I’m totally at concept phase now, so I’m taking on board all opinions people have. Please contact me with your comments or suggestions using the forms on this website.