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Phit for the iPhone and iPod Touch is now available from the iTunes store. Get Phit!
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Progress on porting Phit to the iPhone has moved quickly this week. On Wednesday I set out to port my 3D renderer from Windows to the iPhone. This is a renderer I've maintained for several years and which I use in teaching 3D rendering for games at the Guildhall. (A renderer is a piece of software that displays 3D objects on the screen.)
Porting the renderer proved much easier than I expected. Now I can load and display 3D models—like this one from Unreal Tournament 2004—on the iPhone simulator.
I was surprised that the renderer ported over so well. It was written for the PC. On the PC it supports both Direct3D and OpenGL—I stripped out the Direct3D portion. It is quite a large piece of code, with about 40 files or so and maybe 15,000 lines of code. I've only ever compiled it with Visual Studio, and the gcc compiler used for iPhone is substantially different.
I thought the biggest hurdle would come from the fact that the iPhone framework is written in Objective-C, whereas my renderer is all C++. As it turns out, Objective-C files that have the extension .mm happily coexist in both worlds: they can call C++ object member functions as well as Objective-C object methods. So I wrote one or two Objective-C classes to interact with the iPhone OS and framework. I have my two dozen or so C++ classes that make up the engine. And then I have three or four "adapter" classes in .mm files that help my C++ classes talk to the iPhone OS.
I tried to get an iPhone this week to test the code on. (The iPhone Simulator on the Mac tells you nothing about how your code will actually perform on the iPhone. Presumably the iPhone will run quite a bit slower for complex 3D scenes.) Unfortunately, with the June 9th announcement of the new iPhone, nobody is selling iPhones anymore. So I got an iPod Touch instead. But I'm still having to wait because Apple hasn't gotten us our Developer certificate yet. You need that to make your iPhone/iPod Touch into a development device.
So on the one hand I'm learning the iPhone SDK. On the other hand I'm working on Phit, upgrading it for life on the iPhone.
Specifically, I wanted to improve the way the pieces move in Phit, making them smoother and more natural. The iPhone sets a high standard for user interface "feel", and I want iPhit to meet or exceed that standard.
So I'm creating a new physics system for iPhit. It uses Verlet integration to move and constrain pieces, and features a sophisticated collision detection system so that pieces can "stack" and won't pass through each other. The implementation I have now seems to work very reliably, but is slower than I'd like. Still, it begins to give an idea of iPhit might feel on the iPhone. Feel free to try out the new physics and let me know what you think.
Labels: games, iPhone, Phit, programming, technology
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Since the release of Phit last year, this simple, addictive puzzle game has become one of the web's most popular past times. Now it's time to spread the word that Phit is coming to the iPhone.For the past few weeks I've been working with Armor Games to port Phit into a native iPhone application. We're adding multi-touch capability so you can drag more than one piece at a time. We're updating the way pieces move to be more fluid and responsive. And we're providing a whole new set of fresh puzzles—even experienced players will discover new challenges.
We think Phit will be the perfect boredom-basher for iPhone users everywhere. Keep an eye on this space to find out when iPhit will be available in the iPhone App Store.
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This week I start a new project. I'm porting Phit to the iPhone. The FedEx man just dropped off my new MacBook—my first foray into Mac. Liam uses them at school, so he initiated me. He showed me the button on the bottom of the Mac that tells the battery life. He helped me figure out which power cord to use. He assured me that the white light on the front of the Mac bodes well rather than ill. Then we formed a GarageBand and recorded our first megahit.I considered a Mac a few years ago but chickened out at the last minute. No right mouse button? No delete key? Why don't you just cut off my arm?
This time I have no choice. I'm making a game for the iPhone, and the SDK requires a Mac. So here I sit, searching for a Home key that doesn't exist (though Command+Left Arrow does much the same thing). Isn't it a little bit ironic, considering Apple's 1984 commercial, how totalitarian is their approach to user interface?
The Mac interface is so slick, though. A high-energy, full-screen movie greets me on startup. Everything is smooth and colorful. It's a beauty bath. I go back to my PC running Windows XP, and it's like watching an old Land of the Lost rerun. Great special effects, for the time.
My goal is to get Phit ported over soon after the iPhone AppStore opens. Daniel McNeely (of ArmorGames) and I have partnered to make it happen. We think people will absolutely love Phit on the iPhone. What do you think—how does Phit with multi-touch sound to you? You'll be able to drag two pieces at once, yank this one out of the way to get that one past. Sitting on a train. Or driving your car. It will rock.
You haven't played Phit? It's a simple puzzle game I made last year that you can play on the web. Try it—it won't bite. Though people do tell me it's addictive. I had a note from a lady who was quitting smoking and using Phit as a replacement.
Over the next few weeks I'll keep you posted as I delve into the dark, mysterious, vaguely Fascist world of making games on the iPhone. Check back often or you'll totally miss it, and then your friends will ask if you saw the last awesome post and you'll have to admit you didn't and then they'll realize you suck.
One last question. Who thought it was a good idea to sharpen the edges of a laptop?
Labels: games, iPhone, Mac, Phit, technology
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In other news, I finally put my music up on mp3.com. Now maybe a record company will contact me and make me the new Elvis.
