Every once in a while, I come across a tool that makes a big difference to you doing just small things. When I say ‘small’, I don’t necessary mean ‘simple’. I mean, it is so integrated into another tool that you may already use, that its differences are never in your face, but you feel it all the time. Before I confuse you any more, I am talking about TotalFinder by Antonin Hildebrand an extension to Snow Leopard’s Finder.The Finder is to Snow Leopard what the File Explorer is to Windows. You use it for everything – copying, deleting, finding, mapping drives and what-not. While the OSX finder is in many ways better than File Explorer, I also think it had limitations. Instead of telling you what they are, let me just describe TotalFinder and why I loved it.
Archive for the ‘Arjun Roychowdhury’ Category:
(Book Review) Cocos2D – Its raining books, Hallelujah!
Till just a few weeks ago, there were no real books one could read on Cocos2D game programming. While there are an almost infinite number of web tutorials, a book has a different charm – it is usually more structured and hopefully better researched. A few weeks ago, the first book on Cocos2D surfaced, “Learn iPhone and iPad cocos2D game development” by Steffen Itterheim. I bought it on day 1 of its release, and posted my review here. In short, it was well written and, well, the very first book for cocos2D, so it had that first mover advantage. The other book I am eagerly waiting for is Rod Strougo and Ray Wenderlich’s book “Learning Cocos2D“. The book is yet to be released, but I get the feeling it will be more ‘advanced’ than the other available books. In the mean time, I was contacted by another company, Packt Publishing who sent me an email to review a new book from them: Cocos 2D for iPhone 0.99 – Beginners Guide by Pablo Ruiz.
Embracing digital tools for early development – all in 45 minutes a day.
When I grew up, it was common for parents (including mine) to assume that making your child watch TV, or play video games at an early age was not the right thing to do. Anything to do with TV or video gaming was assumed to ‘corrupt young minds’ and the general thought process was to ensure your child grows up on traditional things (like real physical toys, pen and paper, chalk boards and educational books).There was a valid reason for this – in old days, content in such mediums was purely for entertainment and little was done for conscious education for children. Interestingly, that notion persists very strongly even today. I have lots of friends who have brought up their children pretty much devoid of TV and digital tools. When I say devoid, I don’t mean a total ban. They let them use these objects once in a while, but not in a ‘let it help you grow’ mode. It is treated as pure entertainment and curtailed often to just one show, played over and over again, or just one game, played over and over again. It is impossible to state what is right and what is wrong when it
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Cocos2D iphone tutorial: Die, Grossini, Die! – Part II
(Click here Part I) Previously, we described the fundamentals of a Cocos2D game (or in this case, ‘show’) and explained how everything is set up. Let’s describe the game, now. If you came here directly, Part I is here. The image on the left is the splash screen that I use for the game. I replaced the default Default.png cocos2d image with this one. You will notice Grossini has a nice 3D effect here. That’s just a simple Bevel effect on a layer. You can do this in GIMP, Photoshop or many other editors. The source for this classy looking Grossini image (well, just the regular image with a stick drawn on the right is here)
Cocos2D iphone tutorial: Die, Grossini, Die! – Part I
Click here for Part II. What do I have against Grossini? I don’t like the way he dances. Okay, if you are shocked, take it easy. Its my spotty sense of humor. Who is Grossini? Well, Grossini, is a bald headed dancing sprite that Cocos2D has made immortal. I have just started learning Cocos2D as a platform for game development. After my earlier effort of building Bricks using UIKit, I discovered Cocos2D-iphone and this is my first venture into it. Cocos2d-iphone is a port of the cocos2d engine for the, umm, iphone by Ricard Quesada. Cocos2D is an excellent and easy to use iPhone 2D gaming engine with pre-built operations for a whole bunch of stuff. While there aren’t too may good books on Cocos2D today (there are some that will be released later this year), there are excellent online resources and tutorials on the same. The Obligatory Video of what we will be developing No, its not really a game. Just sit back and watch some jumping and blood-shed. What “GrossiniDie” is intended to do You may have already figured it out from the video. Basically, our goal is to present a user with a “Main Screen”. Once he
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Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Unless otherwise mentioned, the images (except the logo) are part of the Microsoft Clipart Gallery, subject to their licensing, or from Open Clip Art library, subject to their licensing.
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